Full mea culpa here: Content Marketing Institute has been remiss in the way that we've covered the evolving practice of building and executing on a content strategy.
Sure, we've offered up some great thinkers in the space at Content Marketing World. But, here at CMI we haven’t yet (at least, not to the extent that we should) fully embraced the advancement of content strategy, or helped preach the distinction between the skill sets needed for content marketing and those required for content strategy. In fact, we’ve been guilty of using the terms “content marketing strategy” and “content strategy” interchangeably at times (we have resolved to be more clear on this, moving forward).
One of the things that I often discuss in workshops, and with CMI’s clients, is the distinct need for content strategy within the approach of content marketing. Specifically, I point out how many agencies are doing themselves a disservice by throwing a skilled content marketing planning expert into a content strategy project, and vice versa. Additionally, as enterprise marketing organizations reorganize themselves with strategic management of content as a centralizing force, we see managers start to feel lost because they have a skill set that’s specifically suited to one practice over the other.
In short: Content strategy and content marketing are two very different practices.
Are they related? Absolutely, and there’s usually significant overlap. But, as we all move into our budget and other planning for 2014, it’s well worth outlining where the differences lie, so that we can resource our strategies effectively.
