Okay, so maybe you don’t actually have a content strategy. Maybe you’re not quite sure what content strategy really is. Or maybe you still haven’t heard the term after your long hiatus on the Moon. Whatever the reason, there’s no time like now to start thinking of your content more strategically. I asked content strategy expert Jenny Magic, founder and CEO of Better Way to Say It, to explain the concept behind content strategy, why your business needs one and where to start.

Q: What is content strategy?

At its most basic level, content strategy is really just planning your marketing messaging. It’s a simple as that. It’s not a new idea. It’s not something we invented in 2008. But, prior to content strategy becoming its own discipline, we dealt with marketing messaging one small piece at a time. If we needed a new website, we’d go to the website team and we’d think about what content would be included as a function of building the website. If we needed a new marketing brochure, we’d go to the graphic designer and they’d tell us how much space we had for content. We thought of the messaging as it related to that one particular exercise.

Content strategy really came into its own in the last four or five years. Everything moved online, so not only did it start to make sense to think about messaging as a whole, it meant that our messaging really had to be cohesive. When you start adding in SEO, social media, blogging and email marketing you have to consider how these elements interact with each other and the website – essentially these different techniques rely on the same core messaging. Even though we may look to different experts to have them executed, we really need to be thinking about the marketing message as a central idea that stands on its own, separate from each of those deliverables.

Content strategy is the name we gave this idea of figuring out:

• Who are we talking to?
• What do we want them to do/feel/believe as a result of interacting with our content?
• How are we going to measure our success?

Those are the three key elements of a good content strategy.

Q: We don’t have a huge marketing budget. How can content strategy help my business?

The biggest way content strategy helps businesses is by preventing a lot of wasted expense. Right now, most businesses are spending time and money trying to invest in marketing that isn’t getting them the results they need. Content strategy is often what’s missing from that same amount of time and money. What I mean is if you ask any small businesses who they target, they’ll often say something like, “Anybody within 100 miles of my business.” They don’t have a specific sense of who their audience is and they’re willing to take anyone who walks in the door.

When we start talking about defining an audience, we start narrowing down the group we’re going to spend our time and resources attracting. Once we begin to explore this area, the 80/20 rule comes into play and my clients can often identify the top 20 percent of customers who are responsible for 80 percent of their business revenue. Then we say, let’s spend all of our resources attracting that 20 percent. Now we’ve refined what it is we’re trying to accomplish and lessened the scope of our marketing activities. We can be more focused using the time and money we were already spending. We can choose to be in better media channels – whether that’s social media or print – whatever channel we decide to communicate in, we can be more targeted in our approach.

Q: How can we start developing a content strategy?

First, figure out who your target audience is – who are the people who make you the most money or who are you most pleased to work with? If you Google “buyer persona” or “marketing persona,” you’ll find one-page worksheets that ask you to draw a picture of a representative from your target group. Beyond how old they are and where they live, start thinking of psychographics. What do your favorite customers ask about a lot? What are they scared of? What do they care about? Think about their lifestyle. What do they do for fun? Typically a small business knows their customers well enough to guess at the answers to these questions. By drawing this picture we can figure out where we should market, what events should we sponsor, what media channels should we use, etc.

Second, “sanity check” your target audience ideas against your business objectives. What do you hope this audience thinks, feels or does as a result of interacting with your content? You may get them to like your business on Facebook all day long, but what do you want the next step to be? What do you want them to do? If you could get an office full of your target market, would your business thrive?

Finally, decide on some calls to action so you can figure out if the activities you’re doing are working. What are some things you could count or measure as a result of your marketing activities? For example, I might want potential clients to sign up for my email newsletter. I’ll set a benchmark of how many people currently sign up and, after implementing activities as a result of my content strategy, check to see if there’s an increase.

A lot of activities can be hard to execute because you can’t see the forest for the trees. You’re so busy doing the business it can be hard to have an objective perspective on these three important elements. If you sit down to do a one-page persona worksheet and you can’t seem to get it done, or if you try to start a blog post and you keep hitting writer’s block, or you’re not getting the engagement you’re looking for from your blog, that can be a great place to hire an expert who offer guidance like, “You didn’t define your audience narrowly enough” or “Your expectations for engagement are too high.” That’s when you really benefit from having that third party who knows the discipline and can evaluate what you’re doing.

Even if you do plan to hire an expert, start brainstorming in a few different target audience categories – you may see enough results in your business without having to hire someone. Also, make sure you’re getting good information from reliable sources. I’m a big fan of the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.com.

So before you do anything – social media, SEO, blog, build a website – start with a content strategy. It’s the most useful piece of any marketing you can do. Everything else becomes easier if you do this first.

Jenny Magic is the founder and CEO of Better Way to Say It, a content marketing firm that helps companies around the country get to know their target audience and craft tailored website and social media content. Jenny loves to speak and teach about online marketing – she hosts the Austin Content Marketing Meetup to help entrepreneurs bootstrap their marketing efforts. She is also a contributor to the Content Marketing Institute, a speaker/ contributor to All Content Matters – Austin, and a member of the BlogathonATX advisory board.

But how do you go about getting this information from a client? What do you say? While there is an art to interviewing, the good news is that with the right amount of preparation, and a few simple techniques, you too can conduct an effective interview.

Four tips for a great client interview:

1. Do your homework 
Don’t wait until you have the client on the phone to start a frantic online search for their professional biography or company information. Do your homework and prepare a list of 10-15 questions in advance. Ask if you may e-mail follow-up questions, but try to get everything you need during the interview out of respect for their time. Plus, people get busy; this may be your only chance.

2. Avoid yes/no answers
Ask questions that require at least a sentence or two to answer to avoid yes/no and increase your chances of getting a good quote. If you don’t get the answer you’re looking for the first time, try rephrasing the question. If that doesn’t work, move on; you may find an opportunity to ask it again later in the interview.

3. Silence is okay 
If there’s a silence after you ask a question, don’t be tempted to fill it with another question right away. Sometimes the most interesting information surfaces when the person has a moment to consider your question. Also, don’t assume the client will respond with neat sound bites. It may help to ask the question several different ways and allow the client time to “ramble” before they articulate what they want to say.

4. Write, edit and review (and review again)
Now that you’ve spoken with the client and understand their intended meaning it’s time to get all that good stuff down on paper. Only consider using quotes that clearly convey the client’s message. Always give clients the opportunity to review the final piece and request changes before you publish or post.

Keep in mind that an interview is not a sales call; it’s an exercise in listening. As important as it is to ask the right questions, it’s equally important to know when to stop talking and really listen to what the client has to say. Interviews give clients a chance to offer insights into how they work and what’s important to them. Listen carefully because these insights often provide clues about how you can strengthen your client relationships and build your business.

Growing up, I could never squeeze a five-page essay out of the three-page topics my teachers assigned in grade school. On the due date I would sheepishly turn it in, noticeably lacking a page or two, and hope they’d actually read the content and not just slap a “C” on it with the note: “Needs to follow instructions.” It wasn’t until college that I realized, in journalism, brevity was actually encouraged (must leave room for the ads!). Writing with no B.S. filler? Now that was my kind of degree.

Today writing for the web is all about condensing content – making it clearer, to the point, with fewer words – for many reasons: readers are busy, pages need to load faster (see: readers are busy) and, with the migration from the desktop to mobile devices, our screens are getting smaller. A July report by the World Bank says that around three-quarters of the world’s population now have access to a mobile phone.

The “mobile shift” and its impact on content came up during a couple of presentations recently I attended – one with content strategist Kristina Halvorson and also with Tim Hayden, SVP of Digital Strategy at Edelman Digital. One of the major takeaways I heard: never treat your mobile experience as simply a miniature of your full website. While simple sites with little text and few pages might get away with a direct translation from desk to mobile, more complex sites cannot. What might look okay on a 15-inch screen looks terrible on a mobile device and trying to cram it all in makes for a sloppy, frustrating user experience.

Hayden’s rule of thumb for website Wonkavision: reduce your mobile content so it’s four to 10 times less than your desktop content. That’s a ton of trimming and for many, an extremely painful process during which entire blocks of content, full pages and whole sections, will end up on the cutting room floor.

One way to avoid massive amounts of cutting is to maintain focus on the core messages. On the small screen, there’s no room for fluff. And, if the message is tight and clear, it has no place on the big screen, either. As content creators we must plan our content with mobile in mind. Start by asking the following questions:

• What are the main pieces of information we’re trying to convey?
• What do our readers want when they access our site?
• Are we giving it to them and delivering a smooth, hassle-free experience?
• If it’s not important enough to translate to mobile, should it be on the site at all?

So forget the mandatory five-page essay – length is not an indicator of effort or expertise in a subject area. Concentrate on the core message and focus on delivering the information your audience wants. Busy readers will remember it – and come back.

The Seattle stop included coworking space operators/owners and a few freelancers/small business owners (like me) to discuss the current state of coworking globally — who’s out there operating what types of spaces, what small business needs existing facilities are trying to fill, how spaces differ from country to country, the list goes on.

Actually, the list went on for so long that it began to dawn on me what a huge movement coworking has become. I say “movement” because so much of what’s springing up is coming from the grassroots level. The small business owners who are establishing spaces are seeing that as we become a nation of consultants, freelancers, contractors, and entrepreneurs, we need access to spaces and amenities that were once only the domain of the large corporations. Collectively and organically, these spaces are springing up to fill this need. We are in the proverbial “‘wild west” of coworking.

What’s so exciting about coworking to me is that it’s just one more tool small businesses can use to “level the playing field” with large corporations. Along with other tools such as WordPress, MailChimp, Skype, phone/tablet productivity apps, video teleconferencing, virtual assistants, and more that I anticipate coming online in the next few years. When has there been a better time to start small, do your own thing, and still “look professional”?

Deskmag has been the first to build statistics for coworking such as this: the number of coworking spaces has nearly doubled every year since 2006.  There’s a lot more information on their website well worth checking out. Here are just a few takaways from the Space Ship Seattle:

• 40% of people in the Netherlands are registered as self employed
• Coworking visas: several European companies allow employees to share office space
• Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is a huge coworking proponent and plans to include 21,000 square feet of it as part of his downtown Las Vegas revitalization project.
• Corporations are interested in the community-building aspects of coworking
• The biggest competition to coworking operators is the home office — not each other
• The proper spelling is coworking, NOT co-working (members of the media, take note)

For more information about the Seattle coworking scene, check out Coworking Seattle and the Seattle Coworking Google Group.