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Folks, we’re almost done with our series on content strategy. To quickly recap:

In part 1 of this series, we talked about content. In Part 2, we talked about your capabilities. In part 3, we talked about your audience. In Part 4, we took on user experience.

Now we turn to the base of the pyramid, the foundation of it all, without which the whole thing would come tumbling down. I promise to be brief, not only because this has been a long series, but because there’s only a little bit left to cover.

You can have scintillating content; software, tools, and workflow coming out your ears; a well-defined audience that you take care of at every level; and a user experience that is the envy of your peers and competitors.

You can have all of that and still be the proud owner of a content strategy that will eventually grind to a halt, fold in on itself, and lay in ruins at your feet. What am I talking about?

The foundation of any effective content strategy: research and improvement. It’s a continuous cycle of:

1. Evaluating, maintaining, and creating content. Don’t forget to expire the old stuff. Last year’s best practices aren’t necessarily best practices right now.
2. Segmenting your audience, responding to your audience, growing (or trimming) your audience focus, providing special content segments for your audience. The audience is your customer, treat them right!
3. Upgrading systems and tools, taking fresh looks at processes and workflows, making sure that everything still works as a well-oiled machine.
4. Removing ever single rough spot, zit, roadblock, blemish, tarpit, and minefield from every single page and interaction on your site. Just one weird or unexpected thing can cause the whole thing to unravel.

It takes a lot of guts to reevaluate everything you’ve put in place, but you have to do it. It’s a continuous cycle of improvements and adjustments. The ultimate payoff? A Web site whose content is 100% aligned with the goals of the organization.

That’s it–more than you ever wanted to know about content strategy. Let us know if we can help you with any of it on your site.

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