For high school history class weekly assignments, we’d have to summarize beefy articles into one sentence summaries our teacher called precis (pré·cis). The neat part was the reprieve we’d get from the crushing rigid grammatical environment of an all-boys school (you could get a “Great job!” for writing a half-page run-on sentence).
A precis for content strategy
My stab at a CS precis:
A content strategy is an intentional approach to planning, organizing, writing, and promoting a growing body of content based on an accurate assessment of a) where you are (content audit!) including actual current trajectory (gut check) and b) where you want to be (goals!) with consideration to your environment (competitive landscape, current audience needs) and analysis of available data that, properly executed, provides a path of least resistance for traffic, subscriptions, and sales, your the ultimate benchmarks for success (how many people you’re helping) in your business.
Roughly how I think about it
The above may seem obvious but our brains don’t do that automatically
The problem is that the human brain is riddled with all sorts of biases. Availability Heuristic (using what’s available at hand in decision making), Mere-Exposure Effect (having a preference for the familiar), Sunk Cost Bias (not being able to accurately assess a situation and recognize when it’s time to cut your losses) to name a few.
That’s why to understand where you’ve been and therein where you actually are, you need to take an inventory AND look up and around to better understand the current landscape.
That way you can adjust your trajectory:
- slowly and steadily through enhancing your daily regimen
- refining out things that eat up valuable time with a team and systems
- making big frickin’ moves with campaigns and projects because the current landscape demands it
Articles referencing this one