Content strategy
The decisions about who you are writing for, what you will and will not cover, and why that produces a commercial result. Everything downstream is execution.
In depth
What it really means
A content strategy is mostly a set of refusals. Choosing a topic area means declining others, choosing an audience means disappointing adjacent ones. A document that says yes to everything is a wish list, not a strategy.
The test is whether it changes a decision. If your strategy would not tell a writer to reject a plausible-sounding topic idea, it is not doing the job. Most B2B content strategies fail this test.
How it works
- Define the buyer and the specific problem you are credible about.
- Pick the topic territory you intend to own and name what is out of scope.
- Decide the formats and channels that fit how those buyers actually decide.
- Set the measure that tells you it is working, and the review cadence.
- Build the topic clusters and calendar from that, not before it.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Stops the endless debate about what to publish next.
- Concentrates effort, which is what builds topical authority.
- Gives you a defensible reason to say no.
Cons
- Requires committing before you have proof, which is uncomfortable.
- It takes two to three quarters before results validate it.
- It gets ignored the moment a senior stakeholder wants something else.
Common mistakes
- Writing a strategy that never names anything you will not do.
- Starting from a keyword list, which produces coverage without a point of view.
- Confusing a content calendar with a strategy. One is a schedule, the other is a set of choices.
- Setting traffic as the goal when the business needs pipeline.
- Rewriting it every quarter, which means never finding out whether it worked.
Best practices
- Write the out-of-scope list first. It is more clarifying than the in-scope list.
- Anchor on a problem you are genuinely credible about, not the largest addressable topic.
- Pick one primary measure and stop reporting the rest as if they were goals.
- Give it two quarters before judging it.
- Keep it to two pages. Nobody reads the twenty-page version, including the person who wrote it.
FAQs
What is a content strategy?
The set of decisions about audience, topic territory, format and measurement that determines what gets published and what gets rejected. It is a decision framework, not a plan of posts.
How is strategy different from a content calendar?
A calendar says what publishes and when. A strategy says why those things and not others. A calendar without a strategy is a schedule for producing whatever was suggested most recently.
How long should a content strategy document be?
Two pages. Longer versions do not get read or referenced, which means they cannot influence the decisions they exist to influence.
How do I know if my strategy is working?
Pick the measure before you start. For most B2B SaaS that is pipeline influenced rather than traffic, and it needs two to three quarters before it means anything.
Who should own content strategy?
Whoever is accountable for the commercial outcome. When it sits with someone who only owns publishing volume, it degrades into a calendar within a quarter.
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