Get cooking with content strategy.

There’s a legendary story in our family. It’s the one about the time, as a beleaguered young mom during the “witching hour,” my husband appeared in the kitchen and I asked him to put the spaghetti on the stove. I went upstairs to collect two over-stimulated, under-fed kids and came down 20 minutes later to find a box of spaghetti sitting on the cold stovetop.

There are things that are so ingrained in our being that we forget not everyone understands how they become fully-formed.

The same can be said for content strategy. As content marketers we know why it’s vitally important —because it’s the strategic groundwork that sets up a successful end product. It’s the agreed-upon direction. It’s the wealth of information distilled down into project-specific details.

But sometimes clients just want the cooked spaghetti served up on a plate. And it’s not their fault. They don’t always get to see how we interact with a strategy document, hanging onto descriptions of how the audience thinks and feels so we can change the way they act. Or picking apart a single most important message to be sure we can pay it off with telling details. Or how we’re poring over tone and voice guidance to choose words that support our theme.

Even when a deliverable like a sustainability report is clear to a client—they can envision it in its finished form—the team doing the work needs to step back and go deep in order to start writing. Here’s why:

Direction

Similar to a recipe, you can’t buy the groceries, measure the ingredients, or cook without it. Content strategy provides step-by-step instructions so that your team can do their best work, not guesswork.

Efficiency

When you skip strategy, projects take longer and cost more than they should. This is proven, and the evidence can be found in an old Dropbox folder of ours labeled “Round 10.” Without foundational strategy as the guide, it’s harder to get everyone to agree on what needs to be accomplished and how the story should be told.

Understanding

So often, the quality of the first draft is directly correlated to the quality of the content strategy brief. And especially the insights about the audience. Before we write a single word, we must be able to truly understand and empathize with the people who will be reading our content.

Results

An up-front investment in strategy will pay dividends when the final deliverable is on brand, on message, and resonates with the audience.

When we start with strategy, the entire team from client-side marketers, product managers, and leadership to creative directors, writers, and designers are all working from the same recipe. And success is that much sweeter when we develop a greater understanding for what it takes to get a stellar end result that resonates with your audience and inspires action. It’s a process. But when done right, we can all cook our spaghetti and eat it too.