Scaling Content Strategy

By | May 28, 2019
Intercom Magazine

I recently wrote an article for Intercom magazine’s Content Experience and Content Strategy issue.

Intercom is published by STC, the Society for Technical Communication, the professional association dedicated to the advancement of technical communication.

You can read the full article on Scaling Content Strategy, in PDF format. In summary, any content plan should be developed with the purpose of helping a business to achieve its goals by enabling the creation of compelling content for its customers. Is this strategy scalable?

The nuts and bolts of the creation phase of any content strategy, either for simple content production or for creation of large quantities of content, encompass the same elements. These include, for example, identifying the volume and structure of the content, how it can be found, the experience of the team creating the content and the tools and systems in place to support content creation.

The article outlines how structured content is the key to increasing scalability. I will write about this in more detail in my next blog post.

Best practice for creating consistent content remain the same regardless of the organisation’s size. Tools such as style and tone of voice guidelines, a terminology glossary and guidance on writing in plain English should be available for all writers.

In conclusion the article outlines the similarities in how a content strategy is implemented in both large and small organisations. The principles are common to both. However, in order to create quality content at scale the processes, systems, support and, above all the tools, have to be robust enough to support such an endeavour.