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Is it Content Strategy? Planning? Advisory? (ANSWER inside)
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When you start something new, it's good to know what it's called, right Reader? So what the heck, then, are we going to call the consultative process of identifying the right audience and formats and topics to achieve content marketing goals? Enter, the official LinkedIn poll for content strategy: what is it? (You can see the poll live here if you want to weigh in as a comment.) Overall, people in my circles describe the consultative process of identifying the right audience and formats and topics to achieve content marketing goals "content strategy." Some strong takes in the comments that are worth responding to, then I'll share my perspective as someone who teaches this stuff: It's hard out there, Dion. I think the term strategy is the safety blanket we pull over our big butts when we're trying to stay warm in a storm. I hear your point, but I'd also say that this feels like semantics: I can be strategic about how I put my tactics into place, right? I feel like "a blog" is a tactic and "what the blog is about" is strategic. Worth noting: your middle sentence is the most true. It's a problem to start being strategic at the point when you're generating content. But that's where I find most of my writing clients are, anyway. Somehow they made it all the way to assigning a deadline without a real strategy behind the ideas. Treasa brings SEO, competitor analysis, and content audit and analysis into our definition, and that's worth taking note of. This version of [strategy/advisory/planning] is like the bottom of the iceberg, shape-your-brand, shape-your-message content strategy. You should sell it and bill for it as such! The real takeaway here, IMO, is that before you go out into the world and do it, you want to make sure you're on the same page with your client or boss about what the need and what you can give them. I think that's what I'm most interested in right now and what I'll hover around in the Content Strategy Starter Kit taking place next week — this idea from Sangeet Paul Choudary's piece Humans as 'luxury goods' in the age of AI: Curators who develop reputations for selecting well - investors, critics, researchers, designers - gain influence not because of what they produce, but because of what they elevate and exclude.
So while AI can give you ten plausible answers, the final step - which one feels right - still belongs to someone you trust. That trust doesn’t come from logic or even pattern recognition. It comes from accumulated long-form discernment, taste, and context.
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Elite curation - which really commands economic value - is less about matching preferences and more about shaping them in your favour.
That comes only through narrative control. You choose what to elevate and what to exclude and you then get to tell the story of why that curation matters. In fact, if you check out that essay, you'll have already completed some of the assigned reading for our session next week. So why not join us? ;-) Permission to be strategic, Sarah G. P.S. The early bird pricing on the Content Strategy Starter Kit for Writers ends on Wednesday! The event takes place next week and it's going to help you lay the foundation for content strategy in your skill set from a very practical perspective. If you want to join me, save a few bucks to do it here: |
Smart Buyers Won’t Settle for Bad Content
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