Map Your Strategic Path to Content Success [Sponsored]

For any successful journey, you need to know where you are, where you want to be, and what paths you can take to get there. Much like traveling in a car equipped with a GPS, a content strategy roadmap can help you navigate complex content decision-making and reach your goal.

What is a content strategy roadmap?

A content strategy roadmap is a high-level plan designed to achieve your marketing objectives. It provides an overarching view of content development and distribution across each stage of the marketing funnel (awareness, consideration, and decision). It should include key initiatives, who’s responsible for each of them, and deadlines for their completion.

While similar to a content calendar, a content strategy roadmap is more comprehensive. It focuses on the broad steps for reaching high-level goals rather than the fine, tactical details of producing individual pieces of content. Think of it as a macro view of your content marketing plan that helps keep you on course as you work toward success. (See the sidebar below for details on building a content calendar.)

Essential components of a content roadmap

A content roadmap should provide a clear overview without diving too deeply into specific action steps. When you’re ready to build it, take note of the critical elements that should be included:

• Target audience: Who you are trying to reach
• Objectives: What you want the audience to do after engaging with your content
• Content plan: The types of content you will create and how you plan to distribute them (e.g., blog posts, white papers, social media)
• Project milestones: Key moments you’ll track, such as kickoff, first draft, final draft, and publishing dates
• Stakeholders: The team members responsible for each initiative and any other departmental partners you’ll involve when necessary.

Building your content roadmap

The first step of developing your roadmap is determining what priority goal(s) you want to achieve. For example, are you aiming to grow your customer base, generate leads, convert prospects into customers, engage your audience to improve retention, or all of the above? The objectives you select will be the destinations your content roadmap leads to.

Next, evaluate your existing content — this represents your current location. Identify evergreen assets that are usable as-is, content that needs updating, and stories that don’t align with your goals and can be discarded. This process will help you set the starting point for your map.

From there, identify gaps along the path that need to be filled and the effort required to fill them. This represents the possible routes you can take toward your destination.

Your efforts may involve keyword research, collaboration with your sales team, and analyzing customer data to understand what content resonates with your audience. By assessing these factors, you’ll identify the milestones you must reach as you progress along your content journey.

Standard features of effective content roadmaps

Although their structure and design can vary depending on your business, effective roadmaps typically share these features:

• Visual clarity: Your roadmap should be easily interpreted at a glance, whether it takes the form of a flowchart, timeline, or map.
• A well-organized structure: This helps ensure consistency when multiple team members contribute to developing the roadmap.
• Accessibility: The full path — and all the steps in between — should be easy for others to understand, including executive stakeholders.
• Fluidity: The roadmap should be easy to update or revise when your strategy, goals, or customer insights change.

When you’re ready to create your content roadmap, a robust content management system can help streamline the process, making it easy to update, organize, and optimize your content strategy.