As a kid, you probably learned the phrase, knowledge is power. As a marketer, you prove its validity every day through your content that educates, informs, and inspires your audience. But knowledge isn’t a static construct. Perceptions and attitudes change, innovations emerge, and new insights and ideas arrive to shake up everything you thought you knew. (Before 2016, did you know an alternative to “facts” existed?) To excel in the current conditions and opportunities, make sure these content marketing terms and definitions are part of your knowledge base. Note: I’ve organized these definitions into best-fit categories, though many span multiple areas.
**Strategy terms**
**Audience**
In a marketing context, audiences are targeted, clearly defined groups of individuals and/or organizations that willingly read, listen, view, or otherwise engage with your brand’s content, assuming they will benefit from it. Pinpointing the target audience(s) your content will serve is one of the three pillars of a winning content strategy. But remember: Content marketing is about building a trusted relationship. Your content should have human resonance and reflect their needs, preferences, and priorities to earn their attention and loyalty.
*Definitive resource:* The Marketing Mandate: Build Stronger Bonds With Your Audience
**Buy-in/business case**
A business case captures the organization’s rationale for investing in content as a component of its marketing strategy. Typically delivered to executive management as a document or presentation, it’s a helpful tool for building stakeholder understanding and support to execute the program effectively. At a minimum, your business case should address: Why your company needs content marketing How it can help your organization meet its marketing goals Budget and resources Expected outcomes and estimated times to achieve them
Executive management may struggle to understand how content drives the bottom-line business goals. A little education can go a long way toward winning over “content-clueless” business leaders. Focus your buy-in conversation on the benefits they could gain and support your argument with data and proof-of-concept examples. You can use content to strengthen your pitch. Share relevant e-books, newsletters, and other sources of content industry expertise — the more they consume, the quicker they’ll experience those light-bulb moments of understanding.
*Definitive resource:* How To Snap Out of Strategic Malaise and Get Inspired for 2024
**Content marketing**
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “a strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” Content marketing can work best when used to complement other business strategies, including: Account-based marketing Branded content Demand generation Influencer marketing Product marketing Search engine optimization Social media Public relations
*Definitive resource:* Content Marketing Basics: How To Start (or Jumpstart) Your Content Practice
**Content marketing strategy**
Copyblogger defines content marketing strategy as a plan for attracting your ideal customers and moving them through your sales process by publishing and promoting useful content. However, CMI lays it out more plainly: Your content marketing strategy is your why — why you are creating content (your business goal), whom it will serve (your audience), and how it will be unique (your mission).
*Definitive resource:* Developing a Content Marketing Strategy
**Content strategy**
Content strategy operates more broadly than a content marketing strategy. It is a plan for creating, managing, and distributing all content produced and shared across the enterprise — not just the content in a content marketing program or initiative. For example, the content’s development to deliver an optimal user experience would fall under a content strategy, not a content marketing strategy.
**Content mission statement**
A content mission statement is the centering principle of your brand’s unique content vision. Ideally, this statement reflects your business values, distinguishes your storytelling from competing content, and governs your content team’s creative and strategic decision-making. It includes: What stories your brand will tell (e.g., topics) How those stories take shape (e.g., core content formats and platforms) How your content assets work collectively to create a desirable experience for your audience
*Definitive resource:* How To Write an Inspiring Content Marketing Mission Statement
**Goals**
Goals are the business outcomes your content marketing strategy will achieve. While the ultimate goal is profitable action, program goals should be more specific, such as sales growth, budget savings, or greater customer loyalty and brand satisfaction. Goals also must be measurable and include an achievement date.
*Definitive resource:* 4 Content Marketing Goals That Really Matter to the Business
**Personas**
A persona is a composite sketch of a target audience’s relevant characteristics based on validated commonalities. It informs your strategic plans for reaching, engaging, and driving your audience to take meaningful action on your content. Without well-researched personas, you can only guess what your audience wants, often reverting to creating content around what you know best (your products and company) instead of what your audience seeks.
*Definitive resource:* How To Build a Better Audience Persona
**Planning and process terms**
**Channel and media planning**
Media planning is the process of deciding where, when, and how often to deliver a message to an audience. The goal is to reach the biggest number of the right audience members with the right message as often as needed to achieve the desired effect (e.g., brand awareness, leads, sales). Similarly, a channel plan — including social media planning — directs how your brand manages its content on the ever-evolving list of media platforms. It spells out the rationale and expectations for using each channel. Compiling this guidance ensures you don’t waste time and budget on distribution that can’t help your content marketing and business goals.
*Definitive resource:* How To Choose the Best Distribution Channels for Your Content
**Content brief**
Often provided to freelancers, consultants, and other outsourced writers assigned to create content, a content brief documents the guidelines and instructions to ensure a properly focused asset that meets the brand’s editorial standards and marketing expectations. A well-constructed brief should include an elevator-pitch description of the assignment, relevant branding details (e.g., tone, voice, and stylistic considerations), key messages, and target audience insights.
**Content inventories and audits**
Paula Land, author of Content Audits and Inventories: A Handbook, says a content inventory is a collection of data about your content. It’s a comprehensive, quantitative list — typically created in a spreadsheet — of all content assets, ideally across all content types, channels, and distribution formats. It enables marketers to make data-based content decisions. In contrast, as Paula explains, a content audit is a qualitative evaluation of the inventoried content. It helps you see how your content helps (or hinders) your brand’s success. Assess your content against customer needs and business objectives to identify which assets are performing well (and which aren’t.)
*Definitive resource:* 4 Things To Ignore (and 3 Things To Do) in Your Next Content Audit
**Content/editorial plan**
A content or editorial plan details the operational, technical, tactical, and team resource decisions involved in executing your content strategy. This outlet helps ensure all the correct elements are in place to produce content efficiently and deliver the best possible experience for your audience. Ideally, your plan should cover four key areas: Governance and guidelines around the quality standards, preferred practices, and principles that define and distinguish your brand’s content Processes and systems, such as the production tasks, workflows and routing practices, and technologies that facilitate the work Team resources, including the roles and responsibilities and the skills required to fill them or address the gaps Creative and distribution details, including key focal topics, content types and formats, calls to action, and priority channels and platforms.
*Definitive resource:* 4-Point Guide To Crafting a Winning Content Plan
**Content operations**
Content operations are the big-picture view of how all content-related organizational functions coordinate and manage their work. It covers all the components outlined in your content plan, from strategy and creative planning to governance, execution decision-making, measurement, and optimization.
*Definitive resource:* Don’t Avoid Content Operations; Use This Helpful Framework Now
**Editorial calendar**
An editorial calendar is a process tool for tracking and orchestrating the tactical execution of the content plan. It provides clear visibility on the critical details of the creative and production workflows, including topics, titles, authors, and images for each asset and the schedule for packaging, publishing, and promoting it.
*Definitive resource:* Editorial Calendar Tools and Templates To Help You Master Your Content To-Do List
**Content workflow**
Workflows are sets of tasks a team follows to complete a content asset. In her book Content Strategy for the Web, Kristina Halvorson says a content workflow determines “how content is…
Source link
