But a content strategy isn’t a 100-metre dash in a straight line. It’s a marathon on windy mountain paths. Try to sprint it and you’ll burn out or lose your way. A content strategy roadmap can help to guide you.
In this article, I’ll give you a three-stage roadmap (and GatherContent has a free template to download below) to help break the content strategy marathon down into manageable steps.
This approach to content strategy is based on Richard Rumelt’s ‘kernel’ strategy model from his book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. Rumelt breaks strategy down into three chunks with a logical order:
These three chunks form the basis for the strategy roadmap and they feed into one another in a satisfying, logical way too—your diagnosis gives you the insight and clarity you need to set your guiding policy; your guiding policy gives you the sense of direction you need to build a coherent action plan.
Richard Rumelt runs through the kernel approach to content strategy.
Now let’s look at each of those three chunks in more detail.
Diagnosis is about getting a clear picture of where you are right now, what challenges you’re facing, and what the opportunities are. In this phase of your strategy roadmap, you should go wide, do lots of research, then refine that down into actionable artefacts and insights.
This phase should include activities like:
You should condense that research into a set of artefacts that you’ll draw on in the next phase, for example:
The final step is to craft a challenge statement, a succinct and memorable explanation of the priority areas that your strategy should address. I do this with a fill-in-the-blanks exercise:
The challenges we’re facing are:
Challenge 1: ....................................................................................................................
Challenge 2: ....................................................................................................................
Challenge 3: ....................................................................................................................
The impact of that is:
Impact 1: ....................................................................................................................
Impact 2: ....................................................................................................................
Impact 3: ....................................................................................................................
So, how do we...:
Question 1: ....................................................................................................................
Question 2: ....................................................................................................................
Question 3: ....................................................................................................................
A simple example of that in action might be:
The challenges we’re facing are:
The impact of that is:
So, how do we:
You can download a free template to help you write a challenge statement of your own here.
💡 See also: Our content strategy resources section with advice on everything from customer journey maps to testing your content.
Guiding policy is the overarching approach you will take to your challenge, based on what you learnt from your diagnosis. It should be the answer to the questions you wrote in your challenge statement.
This is about laying out a bold and memorable direction to guide you. It’s not about specific activities (that comes in the next step). And it’s not about just saying where you want to get to; saying you want a 50% increase in traffic to your content isn’t a guiding policy, it’s a goal.
Your guiding policy should provide a ‘direction of travel’ - a clear signal about where you’re headed that everyone can follow. It should be focused and decisive rather than vague and broad. Again, you can use a fill-in-the-blanks exercise:
The challenge is:
Challenge 1: ....................................................................................................................
Challenge 2: ....................................................................................................................
Challenge 3: ....................................................................................................................
Our solution is:
Solution 1: ....................................................................................................................
Solution 2: ....................................................................................................................
Solution 3: ....................................................................................................................
We’ll achieve this by:
Principle 1: ....................................................................................................................
Principle 2: ....................................................................................................................
Principle 3: ....................................................................................................................
We’ll know we’re successful when:
Result 1: ....................................................................................................................
Result 2: ....................................................................................................................
Result 3: ....................................................................................................................
Going back to our fictional example, based on their diagnosis, the guiding policy might be something like:
The challenge is:
Our solution is:
We’ll achieve this by:
We’ll know we’re successful when:
You’ll find this template in the downloadable content strategy roadmap too.
Coherent action means a cohesive, detailed plan to achieve your goal. This is where you get into the finer details: tactics, operations, and governance.
It’s crucial that everything is coordinated and complementary. One part of this is about coherent planning - making sure that you have aligned all your content plans from different teams and across different platforms and channels to the strategy and that they complement one another.
Another is making sure you’re working in a coordinated and efficient way, with strong content operations and governance. For example, you’re following a process that works, and have guidelines and standards in place.
This part of the process involves creating a lot of different artefacts, including:
If you’re ready to run your content marathon and like the sound of the diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent action approach, download this content strategy roadmap for a checklist and templates to help you get started.
Credit to Sara Wachter-Boettcher whose Content Madlibs exercise inspired the ‘fill in the blanks’ templates here.
But a content strategy isn’t a 100-metre dash in a straight line. It’s a marathon on windy mountain paths. Try to sprint it and you’ll burn out or lose your way. A content strategy roadmap can help to guide you.
In this article, I’ll give you a three-stage roadmap (and GatherContent has a free template to download below) to help break the content strategy marathon down into manageable steps.
This approach to content strategy is based on Richard Rumelt’s ‘kernel’ strategy model from his book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. Rumelt breaks strategy down into three chunks with a logical order:
These three chunks form the basis for the strategy roadmap and they feed into one another in a satisfying, logical way too—your diagnosis gives you the insight and clarity you need to set your guiding policy; your guiding policy gives you the sense of direction you need to build a coherent action plan.
Richard Rumelt runs through the kernel approach to content strategy.
Now let’s look at each of those three chunks in more detail.
Diagnosis is about getting a clear picture of where you are right now, what challenges you’re facing, and what the opportunities are. In this phase of your strategy roadmap, you should go wide, do lots of research, then refine that down into actionable artefacts and insights.
This phase should include activities like:
You should condense that research into a set of artefacts that you’ll draw on in the next phase, for example:
The final step is to craft a challenge statement, a succinct and memorable explanation of the priority areas that your strategy should address. I do this with a fill-in-the-blanks exercise:
The challenges we’re facing are:
Challenge 1: ....................................................................................................................
Challenge 2: ....................................................................................................................
Challenge 3: ....................................................................................................................
The impact of that is:
Impact 1: ....................................................................................................................
Impact 2: ....................................................................................................................
Impact 3: ....................................................................................................................
So, how do we...:
Question 1: ....................................................................................................................
Question 2: ....................................................................................................................
Question 3: ....................................................................................................................
A simple example of that in action might be:
The challenges we’re facing are:
The impact of that is:
So, how do we:
You can download a free template to help you write a challenge statement of your own here.
💡 See also: Our content strategy resources section with advice on everything from customer journey maps to testing your content.
Guiding policy is the overarching approach you will take to your challenge, based on what you learnt from your diagnosis. It should be the answer to the questions you wrote in your challenge statement.
This is about laying out a bold and memorable direction to guide you. It’s not about specific activities (that comes in the next step). And it’s not about just saying where you want to get to; saying you want a 50% increase in traffic to your content isn’t a guiding policy, it’s a goal.
Your guiding policy should provide a ‘direction of travel’ - a clear signal about where you’re headed that everyone can follow. It should be focused and decisive rather than vague and broad. Again, you can use a fill-in-the-blanks exercise:
The challenge is:
Challenge 1: ....................................................................................................................
Challenge 2: ....................................................................................................................
Challenge 3: ....................................................................................................................
Our solution is:
Solution 1: ....................................................................................................................
Solution 2: ....................................................................................................................
Solution 3: ....................................................................................................................
We’ll achieve this by:
Principle 1: ....................................................................................................................
Principle 2: ....................................................................................................................
Principle 3: ....................................................................................................................
We’ll know we’re successful when:
Result 1: ....................................................................................................................
Result 2: ....................................................................................................................
Result 3: ....................................................................................................................
Going back to our fictional example, based on their diagnosis, the guiding policy might be something like:
The challenge is:
Our solution is:
We’ll achieve this by:
We’ll know we’re successful when:
You’ll find this template in the downloadable content strategy roadmap too.
Coherent action means a cohesive, detailed plan to achieve your goal. This is where you get into the finer details: tactics, operations, and governance.
It’s crucial that everything is coordinated and complementary. One part of this is about coherent planning - making sure that you have aligned all your content plans from different teams and across different platforms and channels to the strategy and that they complement one another.
Another is making sure you’re working in a coordinated and efficient way, with strong content operations and governance. For example, you’re following a process that works, and have guidelines and standards in place.
This part of the process involves creating a lot of different artefacts, including:
If you’re ready to run your content marathon and like the sound of the diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent action approach, download this content strategy roadmap for a checklist and templates to help you get started.
Credit to Sara Wachter-Boettcher whose Content Madlibs exercise inspired the ‘fill in the blanks’ templates here.
Lauren is a freelance content strategy and digital transformation consultant, working with organisations that make the world a better, fairer, more beautiful place.
Lauren has been working in content and digital since way back in 2007 and since then has worked with some of the world’s biggest brands, including adidas, American Express, Microsoft and Tetra Pak.
She lives in Brighton, and loves the Downs, the sea, dystopian fiction and bold lipstick.