Reshape Your Operations With This Strategic Framework

Get familiar with a new strategic model that unites content's many forms and functions across the enterprise. Your brand's future success may depend on it.

It’s time to upgrade the content marketing framework. Use this new model to transform how your content gets conceived, delivered, and experienced.

By Robert Rose

Almost a decade ago, CMI introduced a Content Marketing Framework. Those heady days were the “early innings” of the content marketing approach for businesses.

At that point, we had worked for about five years to help global brands build content marketing as a strategic function in business.

The seven pressure points in the initial Content Marketing Framework represented the seven connected areas where we observed teams focusing their efforts:

Plan describes documented content planning that integrates into other marketing strategies.

Audience involves understanding the people to whom you want to deliver value.

Story describes how to develop an overarching set of experiences to deliver to your audiences.

Channels involves developing specific approaches to a multitude of digital channels and content formats.

Process describes how to build a foundation of processes and governance to allow your content marketing to scale.

Conversation explores the distribution model (especially the interactive comments and social aspects) of content marketing.

Measurement covers how to design an evaluation plan that provides insight into the efficacy of our efforts.

We represented this framework as a chain and suggested a brand should press each link to test its strength. If any link was weak, the whole chain was less effective.

The original Content Marketing Framework introduced in 2013

Though it has evolved over the years, the basics of the original framework have served organizations well. It still forms the basis of the how-to guides on the Content Marketing Institute website.

New content framework
is long overdue

In so many ways, this new content framework is a little late. We intended to roll it out at Content Marketing World in 2021. However, the disruptions of 2020 and 2021 changed that plan.

At the beginning of this year, I wrote about a new mission for 2022, which involves preparing for new responsibilities. Since then, I've noticed more pronounced trends that point to the need for a content framework:

Embedded media companies: Our early predictions came true. Companies are, indeed, incorporating media operations as a mainstream part of their business strategy. This is perhaps represented most pointedly by Salesforce’s announcement of a complete streaming network to rival Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Hyper-democratization of content: Since the early days of social media, content production and distribution have been democratized. Now, with the rise of the creator economy, brands are working with more and more influencers and creators.

Digital-first and direct-to-consumer relationships: The pandemic has accelerated the need to develop sharper digital experiences that can act as a proxy for physical experiences. It’s not just content marketing (thought leadership, brand storytelling, etc.) that’s becoming more pressing, it’s creation, management, and effective use of content, full stop.

For future success, your content framework must be based on a holistic content strategy, not just a content marketing one.

In the past 18 months, we've road-tested a new framework based on a holistic content strategy, not just a content marketing strategy. This more complex framework better reflects the more complex practice of content.

The 2022 Strategic

Content Framework

This strategic framework, which we've used in consulting engagements to help more than 50 global brands, is built on the following observations:

1. Content marketing and content strategy are merging
Successful businesses take the function of enterprise content seriously. Similar to how accounting sets the standard for how an enterprise manages its money and legal sets a consistent approach for managing its business affairs, content is becoming the foundation of a coordinated communication strategy.

Content is not just copywriting, thought leadership, storytelling, metadata structure, content management, SEO, or workflow processes. It is all those things. It deserves the same strategic approach, people, and technologies as any other strategic function.

2. Content is scalable only if everyone is enabled
Content can't be scaled by installing a studio of writers, designers, podcasters, and designers charted to produce digital assets on demand from the rest of the business.

My content law is this: The need for more content expands in direct proportion to the number of resources allocated to it.

Strategic content is successful in organizations that create a content function that enables the entire organization to communicate and manage experiences in a consistent and compelling way.

This is one reason you won't see “channels” as a foundational piece of the new framework. A great content strategy focuses on enabling consistent communication independent of the channels or content types that may come and go.

Historically, marketers have been taught to think container/channel first and then content. They think, “I need a web page.” Or “I need a social post.” Or “I need an e-book.” Only then does anyone think about the content to pour into that container.

Content practitioners must unlearn that thinking. Begin by creating content consistently and putting value first. Then determine the appropriate containers or channels for that content.

3. Measurability must consider efficiency and effectiveness
When content is a business strategy, it becomes more important – and more complex – to measure. Don't wait until after you press “publish” to consider measurement.

Content performance is only the denominator. You also must measure the efficiency by which content is created, managed, repurposed, and reused. That's the numerator in content profitability calculations.

Strategic content pillars

With this understanding, the 2022 Strategic Content Framework is built across three core pillars necessary to content as a functional strategy:

Communication involves coordinating the use of content to acquire, keep, and grow customers.

Operations describes how to ensure the efficient and effective creation, production, and use of content.

Experiences establishes how to use content to power designed platforms that provide value.

The framework also includes five building blocks aligned with these pillars:

Purpose (goals and focus) involves creating a charter as a strategic business function.

Model (teams and capabilities) describes structuring needed resources and skills.

Audience (audience and story) involves developing clearly defined audiences and value propositions.

Frame (technology and governance) involves building appropriate standards and processes and the tools to support them.

Value (investment and returns) involves measuring return on investment.

Taken as a whole, the 2022 Strategic Content Framework unifies the methodology we teach through Content Marketing University and is the starting point for all our consulting work with global brands.

Each area serves as a way to organize your efforts to grow a stronger, more agile, and more innovative approach to creating a content strategy that builds value for your business, as well as for your customers.

Strategic content builds a competitive advantage

The subtitle of Edelman’s seminal 2022 Trust Barometer is this: Societal Leadership is Now a Core Function of Business.

As the authors write, trust is “the ultimate currency in the relationship that all institutions – business, governments, NGOs, and media – build with their stakeholders.”

Audience trust is a relationship built with content. That's why approaching content operations as a strategic function of a business is so essential. In 2022, it’s not only a marketing opportunity to generate more leads. It’s a responsibility essential for competitive advantage.

Are you ready? Then I invite you to check out the 2022 Strategic Content Framework.CCO

Apply This Framework to Your Content

Interested in a deeper dive into the Strategic Content Framework? It’s the foundation of what we teach through Content Marketing University.

Learn more about the curriculum and enroll here.

Robert Rose is the founder and chief strategy officer of The Content Advisory, the education and consulting group for The Content Marketing Institute. Robert has worked with more than 500 companies, including 15 of the Fortune 100. He’s provided content marketing and strategy advice for global brands such as Capital One, NASA, Dell, McCormick Spices, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @Robert_Rose.