Notes on the work
Content Strategy
The core of what I do: auditing what is already published, building a strategy around a small number of ideas worth sustaining, and writing the pages that carry it.
Content Strategy
Short-form video for a ‘boring’ business
Short-form video can help a specialist business explain its work. Give it a clear message, a role in the wider strategy and a reason to keep funding it.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
When production is cheap, decide what to stop making
Before adopting AI, decide what to stop making, what to automate, who reviews the result and how to assess the whole workflow.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Before you publish another page, decide what it must achieve
Give business content a reader purpose, a measurable objective and a review point. An account of consolidating location pages shows why each page needs to justify its place.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
SEO content strategy: an on-page and audit checklist, sourced from Google
The SEO specialism carries more unsourced statistics than most of marketing. The on-page checklist and the audit checklist, with the circulating claims replaced by what Google's Search Central documentation actually says.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
What a web content strategist does, in one working week
The strategist decides what gets published, for whom, and how it is measured. The responsibilities shown as one working week, the skills that carry them, indicative UK salary ranges, and how the role grows.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Content governance, and who is allowed to change what
Governance is not a framework document. It is a small number of decisions about who may change what, and what has to stay true in every place it appears. The one-page version for a business without a content team.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Transparent communication, and what it is reasonable to disclose
Transparency is a set of decisions about what you disclose, to whom, and when. This covers where the evidence is strong, where it is weaker than claimed, and how to set a disclosure boundary you can keep.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
AI in content strategy, and what you have to decide
Generative tools made drafts cheap without making review cheap. The decisions worth making explicitly: where machine drafting is allowed, who answers for the output, what gets checked, and what is disclosed.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Crisis communication: what changes, and what you can prepare
Crisis communication is normal stakeholder communication with the tolerances removed. The comparison with everyday conditions, the failure modes that do the damage, and the one artefact you cannot build mid-crisis.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Measuring stakeholder communication: a minimum viable plan
Five numbers cover what a small programme can honestly measure: coverage, satisfaction, frequency, implemented feedback and willingness to recommend. Here is how to baseline them, set a threshold that triggers a decision, and keep a review cadence.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
A stakeholder engagement framework for your digital project, in one worked example
One realistic digital-project decision traced through the whole framework: the map, the engagement levels, the communications plan and the measurement, showing exactly what each conversation changed.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
A transformation communication plan you can fill in
A communication plan template for transformation programmes: 4 phases crossed with audiences, messages and feedback routes, worked through a CRM replacement example. The phases where input can still change the plan, and the honest version of the failure statistics.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Internal versus external communication, and how to translate between them
Most significant messages go to both audiences. What decides success is the translation between the two versions and the order they arrive. The comparison, the sequencing rules, and a same-message worksheet covering what, channel, timing and replies.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Survivorship bias in marketing, and how to spot it
Marketing runs on case studies, and a case study is a sample of one that has already been filtered by its outcome. What survivorship bias is, how the famous bomber story is told wrong, and a table for finding who is missing from your evidence.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
What a stakeholder engagement framework is
A stakeholder engagement framework is 4 artefacts maintained as one practice: the map, the engagement strategy, the communications plan and the measurement plan. What each contains, the IAP2 levels that set depth, and the smallest version a small team can keep.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Stakeholder engagement versus stakeholder management, and how to tell them apart
Management is the what and who: registers, analysis and plans. Engagement is the how: consultation, communication, negotiation, compromise and relationship building. APM's definition folds the first into the second, and PMI has moved the same way.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Stakeholder engagement roles, and who holds each one
Five working roles make stakeholder engagement function: sponsor, delivery lead, subject expert, affected user and decision-maker. A responsibility matrix showing what each role owns, what it needs, and what breaks when nobody holds it.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Stakeholder engagement versus a communication plan, and how to tell them apart
A communication plan carries information to stakeholders. Engagement exists when what they say back can change a decision. A composite scenario shows the failure mode: consultation that starts after the decision that mattered.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Internal versus external stakeholders, and how to tell them apart
The definition that matters is decision rights: who you can direct, and who you can only influence. A classification matrix covering what each stakeholder can decide or stop, what they hold at stake, and the approach each one needs.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Difficult stakeholders, and what each one needs
Difficult stakeholder behaviour is information, and the response depends on the diagnosis: opposed, disengaged, overloaded or scarred. The decision tree, the response that fits each mode, and the moves that make all 4 worse.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Web content roles, and which one your problem needs
Content roles are a checklist of responsibilities someone must own, whether or not they are job titles. The decision tree from symptom to role, each role compressed to what it owns and the signs it is missing, and how small teams combine roles without dropping work.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
What marketing operations management is for
Marketing operations is the machinery behind marketing: process, people, technology and data. A decision tree for telling ops problems from strategy problems, what the function owns, and how it is set up.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Culture change in a digital transformation, and where it stalls
Digital transformations stall on decision rights, incentives and handovers rather than on the technology. How to assess the culture you have, which interventions hold, and which signals show the change is real.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
How to understand your audience and make sure your message resonates
Audience research works when it starts from a decision. The questions worth answering, the method that answers each one, and the evidence record that keeps the answers checkable.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Data-driven content strategy, and what data cannot decide
Most small businesses do not have enough traffic to test the things they are testing. What a data-driven content strategy can settle, the sample sizes it would take, and the decisions that stay editorial.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
Your guide to content strategy frameworks
A content strategy framework is the structure you use to write a strategy: diagnose the problem, decide the approach, then decide what to do. This is the framework I use, with the questions to answer at each stage.
Read annotation →
Content Strategy
How to set KPIs and marketing objectives
An objective states the change you want, a KPI measures it, and a threshold turns the measure into a decision. How to build that chain, one measure at a time.
Read annotation →