Startup content strategy: a simple 3-step framework for early success

Greetings and welcome to my first blog post at Wordful in 9 years.

First, let me clarify: “content strategy” per se is a wide, wide field filled with a lot of disciplines, sub-disciplines, job functions and titles, terms, labels, etc.

For the purposes of this post I’m going to refer to content strategy as the content needed to get a startup or early stage company off the ground. And the term “startup” itself comes with some assumptions:

• founder-led
• constrained by team and budget
• pre-PMF (product market fit)

Frameworks are friends

I love frameworks because: (1) they give you a structure to operate from, and (2) you’ll need that structure to take creative liberties later on.

The best framework I can think of for an impactful content strategy is in 3 parts: Strategy, Execution, and Measurement. Let’s have a look:

Step 1: Strategy

The strategy of content strategy is everything that’s behind the scenes that’s powering your content campaigns. Think of it like all the backstage crew, props, script, lighting, and orchestra of a Broadway production.

As you can imagine, it’s a lot to do but it’s vital to the success of the show…right?

A startup’s content strategy would, at minimum, look something like this:

• business goals
• marketing funnels
• style, branding, and messaging guides
• customer personas and target audience
• competitor audits
• content types
• distribution channels
• SEO

Spend some time creating these strategy documents and you’ll put yourself ahead of the curve before you unleash your content team.

Step 2: Execution

You could call execution the hotter sibling of strategy. Why? Because execution is the front stage where your content is seen, read, consumed, enjoyed, and talked about for days if you happen to go viral.

Of course, executing content is complicated. And time consuming. And hard to do right. But let’s have look at what content looks like:

• website and landing pages
• blog posts
• social media posts
• email newsletters
• transactional emails
• ad copy
• sales decks
• UI copy

With solid strategy in place, all of these content types theoretically should have no problem coming to life and executing their purpose: to capture your market and grow your startup exponentially faster.

Step 3: Measurement

The ROI you seek is seeking you — but ONLY if you measure it. After all, how will you know if anything is performing as planned if you’re not watching it…like ever?

Measuring and analyzing content empowers you to make data-driven decisions (vs. intuitive decisions) so you can tweak what’s working and what’s not. And optimized content translates to more sales, deeper loyalty, and stronger growth.

The elements of measurement look like this:

• content effectiveness
• user engagement
• distribution metrics
• conversion metrics

I have a dirty little secret: measurement has been the weakest and the least enjoyable part of content strategy for me. This is because I started out as a “just a writer” like most content people, which is great until you want to move up in the world. Content needs handlers!

And there you have it: a quick start guide to your startup’s content strategy.