Content strategy is the process of planning, creating, delivering, and managing content. It is not a product or a one-time effort. This is why it can be so difficult for businesses to adopt content strategy, though it is known that a good content strategy can help a business grow. How does one sell content strategy to the boss?
Selling Content Strategy to Your Boss
Selling <a href="http://www read this article.unifusion.com/blog/what-is-content-strategy”>content strategy requires more than merely promising results. It requires effort on your part to show that there will be an ROI associated with it. To sell content strategy to your boss, you need to:
- Know What Great Content Can Do
- Understand the Company
- Speak the Company’s Language
- Show Your Tools
What Can Great Content Do?
Great content can help drive traffic through multiple mediums. It can help inform strategies for social media or e-mail and is the backbone for a successful organic or SEO campaign. Great content can also bolster sales and build a social following for your business.
Many frequently visited websites are built off great content. Think about a few of the most popular sites such as Wikipedia, Craigslist, or Reddit. All these sites are built on content that has already created a following. Their content drives traffic, generates links and social shares, and helps achieve business goals. Well, actually all don’t. This is why Wikipedia had to start asking for donations and is an example of a poor or missing content strategy.
Understand the Company
Make a point to learn the company’s voice, tone, and its current technology. Most importantly, learn the company’s goals along with what success metrics are important to the business. This will help guide your strategy, and when selling your strategy, you will be able to speak to these goals.
Learn the company’s internal hurdles to produce and market content. Understanding these hurdles will help structure content governance, which is an important part of a content strategy.
Speak the Company’s Language
When talking to your boss, be sure to speak the company’s language. Speak to how content strategy can help achieve the company’s primary goals and success metrics. This will make your pitch go much more smoothly.
Beyond company goals, speak to how content will solve current marketing or company issues as well. This way, you’re not only increasing opportunities but also solving other company problems with content.
Show Your Tools
Showing the tools you will be using will demonstrate that much of the heavy lifting has already been done, leaving little work left for your boss to worry about. The tools for a great content strategy include:
- Content Audit
- Message Architecture
- Voice & Tone Guidelines
- Content/Editorial Calendar
- Analytics/Audience Research
- Content Governance Plan
Having all this in place should increase your chances for your boss’s jumping on board with content strategy.
If you have something else that worked for you when selling content strategy to your boss, please share.
