Conduct content audits. Inventory all existing content assets, evaluate each for quality, relevance, accuracy, and performance. Categorize by status: keep as-is, update, consolidate, or archive. Identify content gaps in the user journey.
Develop brand voice and tone guidelines. Define the brand's personality in writing: vocabulary preferences, sentence structure patterns, emotional register, and formality level. Provide concrete do-and-do-not examples for each attribute. Specify how tone shifts by context (support vs. marketing vs. product).
Map content to the user journey. Align content types to funnel stages: awareness (educational, thought leadership), consideration (comparison, case studies), decision (demos, testimonials, pricing), and retention (onboarding, help docs, community). Identify gaps where no content exists for a critical stage.
Design editorial calendars. Create publishing schedules with: themes, content types, target audiences, authors, publication dates, distribution channels, and promotion plans. Balance evergreen and timely content. Account for production lead time.
Plan distribution strategies. Map each content piece to its distribution channels: owned (blog, email, product), earned (PR, guest posts, partnerships), and paid (ads, sponsored content, syndication). Define channel-specific formatting requirements and promotion cadence.
Define content performance metrics. Select KPIs that measure content effectiveness at each funnel stage: awareness (traffic, impressions, share of voice), consideration (engagement, time-on-page, return visits), decision (conversions, pipeline attribution), retention (support ticket reduction, NPS correlation).
Build content governance frameworks. Establish content lifecycle policies: review schedules, ownership assignments, archival criteria, and quality standards. Define who can publish, who reviews, and what the approval workflow looks like.