Will your content strategy be the chicken or the egg?
I’m a hopeless shopper when it comes to supermarket visits. Not just because I find the whole experience tedious. But because I so rarely actually get out ahead of myself and plan what I want to create and therefore what I need to buy. I end up with a trolley - and then cupboards - full of ingredients that don’t really work together. I scratch my head trying to make a meaningful meal out of them. And, inevitably, many of them never get used and end up in the trash.
This might not be the end of the world when it’s a £20 or £30 food shop (though food waste should be a crime IMHO). But when the thing that you’ve purchased is a new content management system (CMS) or a shiny new look and feel for your website front end, that could end up being a costly thing to create wastefulness around.
And so this post is all about treating your content strategy in the same way that I ought to treat meal planning. It’s the thing you should do before you go out and purchase all the ingredients.
There are many moments when clients come to us seeking content strategy support:
They’ve just bought a new CMS and figure that now is a good time to put a content strategy in place to take advantage of some of the whizzy features that the new CMS has
They’ve just launched a new website and - gosh - now they probably ought to do something with all that out of control content making their pretty new site look sub par
They’re in the midst of creating a new website or implementing a new CMS (or both) and the process has made them realise that a content strategy would probably be somewhat useful
They’re planning a new website refresh or CMS in the future, and figure that developing a content strategy first might be a smart move.
There isn’t a right way to develop a content strategy (as my online step-by-step content strategy course and my content maturity study helps you to figure out). But I do believe that there are optimal times to develop one. And the first three moments on the above list are not it. They’re not impossible, and I would still take on a client working in those moments (I probably should charge extra for the additional hassle it brings them and us, but I don’t have a cold enough heart to do that), but they’re far from ideal and they generate a lot of waste and inefficiencies when you work that way around.
We’ve worked on some BIG content strategy projects for our clients in schools and universities around the world. And the most effective ones have been when the content strategy comes first and is used as part of the procurement process to inform the purchase of a new CMS or a website design and build agency. Examples of these from our own work include:
Our work with Nord Anglia Education that allowed content strategy to inform web design, and especially gave international schools around the world the chance to prepare their content well before their new websites were created.
Our work with St George’s, University of London from which our content strategy formed the basis of the procurement brief for their new CMS and the design agency to make their new site look great.
Our work with Leeds Beckett University from which our content strategy laid the foundations for - and became part of - the criteria for appointing their new web design and development agency, and the basis on which new templates and a site structure was based, as well as what content was created.
In our experience, putting content strategy first enables you to:
Set a vision that transcends the constraints of the technology or the templates that you have or are thinking of having (don’t build a strategy based on what your CMS is capable of, use your strategy as leverage to improve or get a new CMS)
Creates the essential criteria against which you can assess technology products (such as a CMS, CRM or marketing automation platform) that you are about to purchase to assure that they have features and functionality that you will actually need (and you’re not paying for a whole load of shiny stuff that you just don’t need)
Raises the standards of technology vendors and their products by showing them a roadmap for product developments if their products currently can’t do the things that your content strategy demands or sets the vision for
Enables you to enter a design and build process using actual real content, instead of lorem ipsum. This way the design specification will always work for the content, and you don’t have to compromise content because of design.
I could go on. Let’s face it, if at the checkout I was going to be charged tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds, euros or dollars for my purchases, I’d want to be pretty darned sure that I knew what I was going to be creating with those ingredients. So, let’s start treating our website development and CMS projects the same. Let’s plan first, and then purchase the ingredients and the tools to cook with.
And of course, if you need support in getting your content strategy we are always here to help. So, book a time to chat with us.
Related resources
The Connect Campus: Creating a content strategy to drive engagement with your university (book - opens Amazon)
Content strategy for education institutions (FREE overview webinar)
Creating a content strategy for your school, college or university (16-week online course to develop your content strategy)