How to develop a brand-driven content strategy in 5 steps

Ever wanted to know how to create better content that not only makes your users happy, but also plays into your brand message in a long run? Then you should definitely read this blogpost, in which I am going to introduce you to the process of creating a brand-driven content strategy. 

Inspired by a blogpost by Paloma (one of my fellow students in the master's programme Content Strategy at FH Joanneum Graz ), in which she talks about tips and tricks on how to create a content strategy that supports your brand values and messages, I will jump on the bandwagon as well. In the following you'll learn how to develop and implement a brand-driven content strategy in five steps. These are: 

1. Message architecture
2. Content audit
3. Content types
4. Content model
5. Editorial style guidelines and calendar

The process presented orginates from Margot Bloomstein, who is not only the founder of Appropriate, Inc., and the author of the two pioneering books Content Strategy at Work & Trustworthy (release date March 2, 2021), but also was the lecturer of the course Brand Values & Message Architecture, which I attended this semester. So, let's get started.

By definition, content strategy is planning for the creation, aggregation and governance of content that’s useful, usable, and appropriate in an experience. Brand-driven content strategy then helps us understand and apply the key differentiators of organizations so that their content can reflect their differences – not just the needs of their audiences. It assures brands to be unique and consistent with their communication and in the end to reach their target groups in a positive and sustainable way.

Goal: Define clear communication goals

First you need to be sure who your organization is and which qualities you want to convey. Do you want to be perceived as traditional or rather innovative? Are you funny or rather serious? As a consensus on communication goals forms the basis for a successful brand identity, it is very important to be clear about that within the team. That’s why for a start you need to build on a message architecture - a hierarchy of communication goals that reflects a common vocabulary. 

It is best done with a card sorting workshop, participated by core members of your team. This is how the activity will look: You will need a deck of 150 cards, labeled with different adjectives (get them here) and a huge table to work on. Within three steps the task of the participants is to sort all these cards in three different categories – namely “who we are”, “who we’d like to be” and “who we’re not”. In general, the activity works best with no more than six participants plus one moderator. The result should be a clearly defined message architecture. 

Goal: Get a clear picture of the existing content and determine what needs to be updated to be consistent in terms of tone, content types and channels

As you have defined your organizations communication goals now, in a next step you need to audit the existing content in order to find out how good it aligns with the message architecture you created. The content audit is crucial within the process to understand what you have and what you'll need in the future. Questions to be answered are: What is already there? How does your existing content stand up the task of being current, relevant, appropriate, and fulfilling your brand values? Is it any good? What do you need to update in order to meet your (new) communication goals? To keep multichannel consistency, I would therefore recommend doing an audit across all channels (website, social media, blog, etc.).

Goal: Prioritize appropriate content types and platforms to address specific communication goals

After you have determined the status quo and identified opportunities for future content, it’s time to prioritize new content types and platforms that address the defined communication goals (not all channels fit all goals). My experience shows that there is room for content types improvement in nearly every organization: Maybe a blog is not enough to make your company more approachable or the content audit process showed that your website is crowded with old, inconsistent content. That’s why you should focus on (new) content types and platforms in a third step.

Goal: Structure your content and map relationships between different content types

To put it all together it is recommended to proceed with creating a content model – a powerful tool for fostering communication, which helps to structure your content. A content model documents all different types of content by containing a detailed definition of each content type’s element as well as their relationships to each other. For example, your content model might include the content type “Blog post”, which in turn may comprise elements like headline, title image, intro, etc. “Blog post” then might be linked to the contact page. Here you can see an example of a content model by the Content Marketing Institute.

Goal: Define clear editorial rules to ensure brand consistency across all channels & assure structured content planning for the next months

Finally, it’s inevitable to work with an editorial calendar to keep everything on track and make the message architecture actionable. Moreover, I would suggest developing an editorial style guide, which ensures brand consistency in terms of voice, tone and style across all channels. Especially if you have a big editorial team it is essential to follow this last step, as a style guide guarantees that no matter how many content creators are contributing, it all looks, sounds, and feels like the company’s voice. So, in this fifth step you need to work on an editorial calendar as well as an editorial style guide for each of your channels. 

And now, let’s make the content strategy magic happen. If you're interested in the topic and you would need more detailed instructions I would really recommend you reading Margot's book Content Strategy at Work.