Writing is a skill. Strategy is a discipline. The businesses getting the best results from content marketing understand the difference.
By Linda Pophal, MA, SPHR, Strategic Communications, LLC
A content strategist is someone who develops, oversees, and continuously optimizes a plan for how to create, distribute, and evaluate the effectiveness of content to achieve specific business goals. Goals might include such things as audience growth, lead generation, brand authority, and search visibility. Unlike content writers, whose primary responsibility is producing individual pieces of content, content strategists plan for what gets created, why, for whom, in what format, on which channels, and how success is measured.
I’ve had my foot in both camps for a number of years—as a freelance business journalist, a corporate communication professional, and as a content marketing consultant working with B2B organizations of all sizes.
The single most consistent gap I see is this: businesses hire writers when they need strategists.
It’s an understandable mistake. Writing is visible. Strategy is not.
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