Content Strategy Constantly Adapts

In the spirit of consuming our own canine victuals, we are reassessing our content calendar — as we do every six months or so. Some of the questions that lead us into a full-scale reassessment are:

• What is working about the current content?
• What could work better?
• How are we speaking to our audience?
• Who should we be targeting?

These are the questions we want our clients to think about, and as a “client” acting out the Tippingpoint Labs (TPL) methodology, we are no different. So we are going back to the drawing [white]board and re-thinking our whole editorial calendar.

Getting schooled

Our strategy team, Andrew Davis and Brad Schwarzenbach, has been conducting 2-day, 8-part workshops to show companies the value of strategic implementation of content in the digital space and how it can work as a catalyst to improve their bottom line. In a time when giants like Pepsi are abandoning the Super Bowl for social media, how can you drive a deeper interaction with your brand? We don’t preach vague generalities or Twitter or Facebook tactics, we preach a digital strategy that works.

So Monday this week, we sat down and put our own selves through the first two sessions of the seminar. We looked at our place in the Galilean web universe. Since we experiment with almost every channel that we find, suffice it to say we have a presence on a huge number of platforms. Where some companies work to build a presence, we are looking to strengthen our presence on the right sites — where our audiences are.

Who’s it going to be?

Speaking of our audience, we also re-examined who we are trying to reach. We made a preliminary list:

• Traditional content creators — need help strategically transitioning to digital
• Business development/sales — need content to push people through the sales funnel
• Digital referrers — buy into content marketing and understand that TPL can actually deliver
• Traditional referrers — need a digital partner to augment their business
• Social Media professionals — strong on tactics but need strategic guidance
• Brand Managers/VPs of marketing — looking for an overall strategy online that can drive revenue
• Startups — looking to grow their brand’s value
• Clients — maintaining an overall conception of what TPL delivers

From this list we will develop digital personae to whom we will address our content. Highly targeted content is much simpler and much more valuable than always trying to be all things to all people.

Where are our home planets in the new web model?

We also made a list of the platforms that we currently control — this site, for example. And we made a list of all the content we have already made, whether for external or internal use. We have an abundance of materials in many different media and formats. Our clients are often surprised at all the content they already have, and how easy it can be to repurpose it for the web.

We also went around the room and asked five questions of everybody about what each person does and thinks is unique about our company. This is a fruitful exercise. From these answers, we sketched one possible calendar of content.

Planning content is quick and simple

By sharing knowledge internally, we are able to generate a ton of new ideas for content very quickly. It is remarkably easy to get the ball rolling. Since you’re continually working towards perfecting this methodology, there’s no need to be  perfectionist about it. That just wastes time you could spend producing and working it all out.

How about some feedback?

You can help us through this process. We welcome your comments below. If you read our blog, you can aid our re-structuring by answering any of these questions:

1. What is your job title?
2. How large is your company?
3. What are your favorite sites to visit?
4. What questions do you have about Tippingpoint Labs?

About the author

Josh Cole - Josh Cole was born to create content -- from his pioneering works in anarchoustic and hobophonic sounds & web content to writing across a wide variety of media. Joining the team in Spring 2009, he has been instrumental in crafting and producing oodles of content for Breville, Putnam Investments, and Tippingpoint Labs. He rides a near mint 1964 Raleigh Colt to work. He still remembers which accessories go with each G.I. Joe action figure. He writes with the kung-fu action grip. Josh is in charge of content for a variety of clients. His favorite Tippingpoint Labs value is: "There is a content solution to every business challenge."