Content Strategy from a Product Marketing perspective

Image credit: Boeing.

Many people have expressed confusion on definition and I personally believe it’s because of the disproportionate mind share that Content Marketing has grabbed over the last couple of years.
I wonder how much our background knowledge colors and filters our perceptions.
I come from a Product Marketing background in an industry which often uses the terms “Product Lifecycle Management” and “Product Data Management” — a supplier of software to firms like Boeing. The Boeing 777 was the first aircraft to have a complete 3D digital definition. There are 3 million parts in a Boeing 777, from 500 global suppliers. Talk about complexity! Imagine that each digitally defined part has a 3D and 2D representation, a host of meta data and associated content (such as Bills of Material), and complex data sets (such as stress analysis studies). All that information is effectively “content” that must somehow be managed. Not only have the data files got to be stored for easy access, but design revisions, iterations and ownership have to be managed throughout the lifetime of that aircraft which can be 25-30 years.
I can easily see SAP or Oracle creating or repackaging a system for CLM — Content Lifecycle Management. I can also see Marketing Automation, Salesforce Automation and CRM integrating at some point. What if Amazon became the winner in all of this with Cloud-based Content hosting. What would CS look like then for many firms, just a CS Document? The point being that names and acronyms vary as industries mature.

As a Product Marketer I had to learn how to work effectively in a diverse multi-disciplinary environment and persuade various groups to get involved without any direct authority over those groups. It makes the skills of influence very important.
What we learn from Philosopher Immanuel Kant is that we experience the world through the filters of our own perceptions. “What shapes the filters?” is the key question. People can look at the same data and see different things.

Image credit: W. E. Hill.

My filters are shaped by a background knowledge of:

(i) engineering data lifecycle management and
(ii) learning to influence action without authority.

To my mind, Content Strategy involves both.

This course speaks more to the latter than the former, i.e. more “influencing without authority” than “data management/life cycle/governance”.

But isn’t the influencing part fundamentally the most important thing we can learn here? We all have management systems in place, that handle at least part of the broader scope of Content Strategy — such as CM and CRM.

What we may not have honed to a fine art is our ability to persuade and influence people with our Content — be they customers, stakeholders, partners, whoever.

That is where this course excels.