How can you show that you are a strategic thinker in Content Development?

Yes, know your audience inside and out, but go ten steps further and be sure you are including them in the content development and recognizing valuable contributors along the way. Essentially crowdsource what you should produce and then find ways to highlight their input as co-created content.

1. Get the WHO<WHY<WHAT sorted before you sit down to write. It's strategic to pay more attention to the persona or target audience and figure out why you write for them. If your 'who' and 'why' is clear, the what becomes easier. 2. Focus on the medium or the platform you will use to publish your work. Each forum has a different reach and different ways people interact with it. So knowing how what you write will be disseminated is critical 3. Tell a story, always. Part of creating engaging content is hooking your readers and making them want more. That's an unbeatable strategy that takes effort, rewriting and rewriting some more.

Often we tend to underestimate the power of simplicity in content creation. Some of the most successful communication campaigns are very simple. For a critical thinker who wants to be an effective content creator, 'how to say' is as important as 'what to say'. We can spend a lot of time and resources, and overthink a very simple idea. However a strategic thinker, understanding the context, will simplify complicated ideas to touch the hearts of the audience.

Segmenting audience is so important! Being able to customise your content to their specific needs, concerns and pains makes them feel seen, valued and heard.

I have followed this shoe size number 7 story. The shop only sells 7 number shoe means content creator knows what he is making so is the consumer. They know what to expect from the shop or from that content creator

One thing I've found helpful is that it's easy to create content for the sake of it, but a strategic thinker ensures every piece serves a purpose. Align your content with your goals, whether it's to boost brand awareness, generate leads, or drive conversions. According to Content Marketing Institute, 72% of successful content marketers attribute their success to their content strategy. Setting clear objectives and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) not only shows your strategic prowess but also provides a roadmap for success.

In my view, much in agreement with various perspectives, once we have understood our audience well we should be able to map out the reader’s journey from awareness to conversations and finally conversions! I call it the content road trip!

Understand the brand image of your company. Your content tone should align with the brand. Also, use techniques suitable for the type of content you are creating. For instance, content for educating customers is different from the one created for internal team members. So map your content with its purpose to demonstrate your logical approach effectively.

We're skilled at creating content with a purpose – but less skilled at measuring and learning from our content outcomes. You must build regular content measurement and analysis into your processes to maintain that laser focus on your goals.

It is important to understand that strategy and goals are not the same thing. For example you are developing a content piece for benefits of project management tools. Now while your goal is to equip the reader with all the relevant information and get more brand visibility, your strategy would be how you're going to do it, when you are going to do it and why you're doing it in the first place. Aligning strategy with goals will always help you develop a concrete brand image. Otherwise it's just a wild goose chase.

Creativity in B2B is all about tackling dense, niche, or expert topics to present them in an engaging way for audiences. Throwing in new formats, features, or styles can help to drive innovation with your content, however, I think developing narratives is far more important. Not only does this help you understand the story your content should tell, but it also helps you to structure content and make it relevant. Leverage this information to experiment with creative new strategies, while still addressing specific needs and interests. This combined with challenging the status quo of your content and implementing data-driven experimentation is a great way to show creativity and innovation in your content development.

Don't forget Cross-Pollination. Ever thought about borrowing ideas from completely unrelated fields to spice up your content? It's like adding a dash of paprika to your vanilla ice cream—unexpected but oh-so-delicious. So go ahead, mix and match, and let your creativity run as wild as a three-legged dog at a squirrel

This doesn’t mean starting from scratch again and again. Don’t forget that the same initial content source can be the basis for your delivery across different platforms. A single video-taped interview could be cut up to produce online and social video cuts, audio files, and text-based pieces that can be used for different types of media and different audiences.

Innovation and creativity go hand in hand. As a strategic thinker it is vital to recognise the symbiotic relationship between these. In this ever changing industry, there is a constant need to be innovative in creatively utilising these elements for problem solving, user experience, collaboration and adaptation.

Away from all the big marketing words, triggering emotions and getting people to remember and react to your message is about being natural, casual, and relatable. No one will stop and think about what you're saying if they cannot relate. No matter how sophisticated your target audience is, they are still humans who eat, sleep, and go through ups and downs. Also, some humor goes a long way if done tastefully.

Learn what other teams are doing now and what they are planning. Pay attention at all-hands meetings and develop an understanding of the common threads that connect groups in your organization. Don't be afraid to ask questions when you see that your team's project might be relevant in some way to another group's efforts. It is likely someone up the management chain planned it that way--but your supervisor now knows that you are paying attention and have a growth mentality.

Consider a shared calendar with the schedule of content (e.g. blog posts, collateral, videos), as well events, enablement, website updates, demos. Some tools like Monday.com or Smartsheets enable sharing a calendar more readily than others.

Collaboration and communication are essential elements of any content development strategy. After all, the performance of your content should be directly tied to how well it supports your teams and joint strategies. Align with your teams and field their feedback at the ideation and scheduling stages of your content strategy. For example, input from sales leaders on what their teams are uncovering through outreach (common misconceptions or pain points) can be incredibly informative. This will allow you to develop content that supports a unified and well-structured strategy that spans across departments and benefits your company as a whole. Encouraging two-way communication will drive the best results.

The thing about dialogue is that it takes two. And the thing about good dialogue is that you need to be thinking less about yourself, and more about the person you're talking to.

Take the time to learn about what other teams care about. What are their goals and objectives? How do those align with content? Ask to join their standups or grab a coffee where you discuss what's top of mind for them. After you understand this show the other teams how working together can help you accomplish your objectives together. This can help you leverage resources and truly build trust.

When you have a growth mindset, you’re more open to embracing feedback from others and using that as an opportunity to refining your content development strategy. Instead of getting discouraged by setbacks, you focus more on pushing yourself out of the comfort zone and expanding your knowledge. More importantly, you understand that progress happens incrementally over time.

Sharing what you learn along the way is a great way to avoid the paralysis of expertise. People don't always like content that is teaching them or telling them what to do; it can be very refreshing to read the account of a student going through their own breakthroughs.

As you keep learning and sharing your journey with your audience, you'll find your impact growing, your community growing and your content always available. As you grow, you're inspiring more people than you realize to do the same.

Being self-aware and managing ego allow room to recognize there is more to learn. Particularly in the content development/creation space there are new discoveries happening all the time, so there's always something to explore. The worst place to be is on the tail end of the relevance spectrum, leaving room to incorporate the latest innovation and technology can amplify the tried-and-truest of workflows.

I read the other day, that a person who constantly writes in a way that seems to know everything about the topic, makes readers disengage from the article. On the other hand, If you show some weaknesses and combine it with some real life examples, it can help to make your audience connect with you through that piece of text they're reading.

Another way to show you are a strategic thinker is to be very clear about the context around the content you are creating. Where does what you are offering fit into the competitive landscape and connect to or push back on industry trends?

Strategic thinking is essential for content development, you must research and ensure you understand your audience, your objectives, and your challenges. After understanding your audience properly from their behavior, challenges, demographics, etc. Next is to segment your audience and align the content and context with your goals.

If the content you’re creating is going to be versioned for other markets around the globe, thinking ahead of time about how the content is being built and might need to pivot without losing the creative integrity is so crucial. Production and Creatives working hand in hand produces powerful results. Also, why yourself constantly, why would anyone be interested or care about this?

Start by conducting thorough keyword research to identify a primary focus keyword Keyword Variety Incorporate variations of the focus keyword (LSI keywords) throughout your content to make it more comprehensive. F Content Structure: Create a well-structured content piece with clear headings and subheadings. Quality Content: Focus on providing high-quality, informative content that adds value to the reader. User Intent: Understand the intent behind the keywords. Are users looking for information, products, or services? FAQs Around Keywords: Create a section of frequently asked questions (FAQs) related to your focus keyword. Competitor Analysis: Analyze the top-ranking pages for your focus keyword. Look for gaps in their content

Your content automatically elevated when you structure the crux into a framework. Here’s a framework to structure your content into frameworks 1. Write. Starting on an empty page is difficult. Dump your thoughts into a document. 2. Extract. Once you have your first draft into a doc, you’ll start to see patterns emerge. Extract the patterns 3. Structure. Once you have the patterns, start moving things around into different buckets 4. Name. Name the buckets so it’s easy for audience to understand and relate Pro tip: You can also leverage ChatGPT to create these buckets.