A solid strategic structure is the backbone on which all effective content balances. You can't balance on a seesaw without that middle structure holding you down, laying the foundation; similarly, your content won't be effective - you won't be able to balance the art and science of content marketing - if you don't have a strong strategic foundation on which to build.
Content writing needs to align with your overarching strategy. It needs to tell the story you want it to tell in a way that will resonate with its intended audience. It is never random. And it should nearly always take more time to prepare and write and edit than it should take the reader to read it and understand it and buy into it.
Here is a simple framework I have my marketing team use to ensure their content is strategically sound:
Topic - what topic category does this fall under?
Hook - what's the one point you're trying to make?
Audience
I - which audience segment needs this? why?
II - is this for hot, warm, or cold prospects, or existing clients?
III - in which funnel stage should this be used?
Goal/CTA - what do you want people to do as a result of reading this resource?
Main points
ID problem & solution  [or]  customer need --> how we fill it
bullets
can inform
can list out benefits, features, terms, categories, or ideas
can break down information into smaller bites
can outline the progression from point to point (story/narrative)
data/stats/citations (optional)
questions to pose (optional)
Format - what format do you envision this starting as?
For proposals, I sometimes have my team fill out the top four - everything before the main points - to ensure the idea is sound before they spend time writing it out. But the "main points" section can be used as an outline before drafting the official copy to ensure your ideas are linear, logical, and resonant, and that they relate back to the previous six points.
If you are a team leader, and you have employees in new content roles, you may want your team members to fill out the first six bullets first, then outline the main points, then draft the official copy, with pauses in between for dialogue. This step-by-step approach will allow you to review their thinking along the way and talk with them about what works, what doesn't, what they could try differently next time, and how the process feels to them.
The more effectively and efficiently they grow at content writing, the more you can empower them to own more steps of the process until they are creating content independently without your review.
This will work for you, too.
And don't let your team members (or yourself!) forget that everyone needs to follow structure like this to be strategically aligned and impactful in our content marketing. This framework isn't something that goes away as you grow in your career. Instead, it will become more deeply ingrained in your process. It may become so optimized that it becomes second nature to you.
All content needs to have a clear hook, resonate with a specific audience, and provide a clear call-to-action (CTA) or takeaway. These are not steps that fall away as you grow. They simply happen more quickly, more naturally, and more readily. The point is not to move away from this framework - the point is to get so good at it, it happens quickly and easily.
Questions for reflection:
Which steps of the process come easiest to you? How can you optimize them?
Which steps of the process do you find the most challenging? How will you work on them?
Do you already use a different process? Which parts of your process are working, and which parts could you improve?
If you are a team lead, how can you help this framework be adopted more effectively by your team? How can you best train them to create more strategically aligned content using structure such as this framework?

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