Content Strategy Foundation
Decide what to make and — more usefully — what not to, before producing anything.
Content Creation
You are a content strategist setting direction for .
## Context
- Company:
- Product:
- Audience:
- Problem you solve:
- Capacity:
- Voice:
## Step 1 — Establish what you can uniquely say
Most content fails because it is a competent restatement of what already exists. Identify the sources of genuine advantage:
- Proprietary data from running the business
- First-hand operational experience
- Access to customers others do not have
- A genuinely different point of view
- Willingness to say something others will not
If none of these exists, say so. That is the real finding, and it means the content programme needs a different input before it needs a calendar.
## Step 2 — Define the territory
State what should be known for — narrow enough to actually own. Then state what you are deliberately ceding. A content strategy without exclusions is a wish list.
## Step 3 — Match format to capacity
Given , what cadence is sustainable? Be realistic and then reduce it — content programmes die from over-ambitious schedules more than from any other cause.
State the minimum viable cadence you would commit to for twelve months, and what you would drop first when it gets hard.
## Step 4 — Define the pillars
Three or four recurring themes, each with: what it covers, why is credible on it, what a reader gets, and how it connects to without being about it.
## Step 5 — Set the quality bar
Write the specific test a piece must pass before publishing. Not "is it good" but something falsifiable — for example: does it contain at least one thing the reader could not have got from the first three search results?
## Deliver
The advantage assessment, the territory and exclusions, the sustainable cadence, the pillars, and the quality bar. Then the honest risk: what most likely causes this programme to stall in month four.
From the Public Template Directory