Conducting Content Strategy Workshops

Content strategy workshops are often the first step towards developing, executing, and optimizing content that aligns with your business objectives. Workshop participants gain insights into key aspects such as research, user personas, SEO, the user journey, and actionable content frameworks through a structured approach. Ultimately, we want to create a content strategy that engages your audience with great content and drives meaningful results, paving the way for long-term growth and digital success. That’s the focus of content strategy workshops. This guide will help you launch a workshop for your project.

Research and Content Strategy Workshop Preparation

Every content strategy workshop starts with a foundation of research. Some of this research might come directly from the client, but to deliver a workshop that truly drives value, you’ll need to do your homework upfront.

When preparing a workshop, I dive into the client’s industry. I review any documentation they’ve shared and study their competitors’ communication styles. If I don’t have enough information, I’ll dig deeper—whether that’s asking AI tools for industry-specific personas or browsing reports on industry trends. Once I have a solid grasp, I build the slides.

Slides are your conversation starters, not your conclusions. I often keep them blank, especially when we’re discussing strategy. I want the client to engage with the content, and not feel boxed in by what I present. If I provide ideas on strategic slides, they’re just that—ideas, teasers to spark discussion. Sometimes I’ll miss the mark, but that’s fine. The goal is to get the client talking and sharing their thoughts.

Remember: your slides are not the final answer. If the client doesn’t respond to open-ended questions, you can introduce some thought-provoking ideas to encourage a reaction. If those ideas don’t land, no problem—you can update them during the workshop. Everything is a draft at this stage.

That’s why I recommend hosting two workshops minimum. In the first session, you’re there to listen. You’ll get feedback on what’s important to the client, and you’ll be able to shape your strategy accordingly. This is also where you’re gathering insights for more research, which you’ll use to refine the content strategy.

Getting the Right People in the Room

Make sure as many subject-matter experts as possible are present at the first session. Everyone has valuable input, and as the workshop facilitator, your job is to guide the room to a working hypothesis. You also need the decision-makers in attendance (like the CEO). I often let them speak their mind before diving into details because their input shapes the conversation, and their time is usually limited.

Key Questions to Ask in the Research Phase

1. What are the objectives of the project?

We often start by thinking from a business perspective, but you also want to approach the project from the user’s point of view. For example, why would users interact with the company’s website or product? Is it to gather information, solve a problem, or complete a task like purchasing a product?

In this step, ensure you’re exploring these objectives from both angles:

• Business POV: Growth, market penetration, brand positioning.
• User POV: Convenience, access to information, making informed decisions, solving pain points.

In B2B scenarios, multiple user profiles are involved, and it’s important to prioritize these user needs during the workshop. For instance, some users might want in-depth details on a specific solution to compare different offers, while others seek a clear understanding of your methods. Each of these objectives has its implications for the content strategy. Which is more important to meet the business objectives? What needs are common and can be combined into one?

2. Who are the typical users (personas)?

Here, the goal is to gain a clear understanding of who will interact with your content and why. You’ll rely on personas provided by the client, but you’ll also conduct your research to flesh out these personas with actionable insights. The following key areas stand out when defining personas:

• Professional Roles: In B2B, personas should reflect not just who the users are (e.g., supply chain managers, business development officers), but also their professional needs and pain points.
• Frustrations: What obstacles or challenges do these personas face in their roles? Understanding this will help tailor content that addresses their frustrations (e.g., navigating international logistics or understanding regional market trends).
• Motivations: Consider the motivations driving these personas to engage. Are they seeking efficiency, cost reductions, or regional market expertise? This influences everything from the tone of the content to the type of information you emphasize.

3. What are the audience segments?

Audience segmentation is crucial in identifying distinct groups that have different needs or ways of interacting with the company. Based on the document, these segments could be divided by industry, role, or geographic region.

For example:

• Geographic Segmentation: Consider regional markets like specific states or counties, or if you are a global actor in regions such as SE Asia. Each market may have unique cultural expectations, legal considerations, and business practices that require tailored content.
• Industry-Specific Segments: Different industries (e.g., manufacturing, logistics, corporate services) will interact with your content differently. A sourcing expert will need different resources than an entrepreneur looking to expand into new markets.
• Decision-Makers vs. End-Users: Key decision-makers (like CEOs) may have a high-level interest, focusing on strategic outcomes, whereas end-users or operational managers are more interested in the practical implementation of services.

Each segment’s unique characteristics will shape how you present content on the website, particularly messaging and navigation paths. I use the BCG Matrix to highlight the stars, the dogs, the cash cows, and the question marks. We can start to categorize our content based not just on user demographics but on real needs with your product or solution.

4. What are the benefits of working with your company?

Understanding the value proposition from the user’s point of view is critical. You should be able to identify benefits by drawing from the company’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP), which might include things like (for example only):

• Local expertise.
• Large network.
• Specialized services.

These benefits should be reflected in the content but may be left open for further exploration in the workshop. You want the client to validate or debate these advantages to ensure they resonate with the audience.

Additionally, ask:

• What specific benefits do your products/services offer compared to competitors?
• How do you differentiate in the market (e.g., experience, cultural knowledge, and long-standing relationships in a region)?

Use an Interactive Quiz to Engage the Audience

An important aspect of the research phase is gathering direct input from participants. I recommend including a quiz or collaborative activity halfway through the session to keep the workshop interactive and engaging. This ensures the participants stay involved, and gives you valuable insights straight from stakeholders that you can later use to shape your content strategy recommendations.

You can use Google Forms or any other quiz tool that offers easy interaction. The quiz should focus on capturing key data points that will inform the strategy moving forward. For example:

• Top 5 Keywords: Ask participants to provide the five most important keywords they associate with the business or industry. This helps align their priorities with the SEO strategy.
• Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Get them to articulate, in their own words, what they believe the company’s USP is. This can highlight gaps in alignment or provide new perspectives you may not have considered.
• Audience Segments: Ask participants to rank or describe the user segments they believe are most critical to target. This helps refine your audience segmentation work.

Using Content Strategy Workshops to Understand the Relationship 

Now that we’ve completed our research, let’s see how users may interact with the company’s products or services. Our goal here is to understand the journey users take from first discovering the brand to becoming loyal advocates. This understanding will help us create content that truly resonates and guides users effectively.

Understanding User Needs

The personas we produced and analyzed during the research phase will give us tools for identifying key user groups and their specific needs. By truly understanding these needs, we can write content that speaks directly to our users, addressing their challenges, motivations, and goals.

Use personas as a guide to provide relatable content to the user. Whether the user’s need is fulfilled through gathering information, using a service, or buying a product, your content should be structured and presented to meet their expectations.

The User Journey

Ideally, your users will go from an inactive, passive state to an active state of engagement, ultimately becoming ambassadors to your product or service. Aligning this journey with your content requires a map. This journey includes several key stages on the map:

• Awareness: This is when users first discover the company. We consider how they find us and what content initially captures their attention.
• Consideration: At this stage, users are exploring more about our services or products. Think about what content engages them further and helps them understand what we offer.
• Decision: This is the point where users make the jump, either dropping off or taking action. The map will help identify what motivates them to make a purchase, contact the company, or request more information.
• Advocacy: After engaging with the brand, how can users become ambassadors? This includes sharing on social media, providing testimonials, or recommending the brand to others.

By defining a user journey, we can map out a clear structure for our content, where users fluidly go from one piece of content to another based on their situation. Our strategy should, therefore, not just focus on attracting visitors, but on guiding them through each stage, providing value at every step, and leading them to appropriate calls-to-action (CTAs).

Audience Segmentation

Content is context. Your audience will have varying needs, motivations, and pain points at different times in their search for solutions. Segmenting your audience allows you to create content pieces or messages that respond to unique user experiences for each visit.

We might segment our audience based on factors such as:

• Behavior: How they interact with our content or products
• Demographics: Age, location, job role, etc.
• Interests: Specific areas of focus or concern within our industry

By creating content that speaks to each segment’s unique characteristics, we ensure that every user feels the message was specifically created for them. This approach increases engagement and satisfaction across our diverse audience.

Content that Connects to Your CTAs

We’ve determined that content should be respected as contextual. Our purpose now is to ensure that every moment a user engages with our content gives them the clarity to move them closer to the intended outcome, whether it’s making a purchase, subscribing to a service, or filling out a contact form.

Our content should naturally guide the user through their journey toward the CTA, offering value at each step while making it easy for them to take the next action. This doesn’t mean being pushy or aggressive with our UX, but rather ensuring that our content creates a logical path that aligns with the user’s needs and the company’s goals.

We know now that providing a healthy relationship between the user and the company involves carefully mapping out the journey, and thoughtfully segmenting our audience so that we can begin to create content that truly engages, converts, and builds lasting relationships. The time and effort involved in generating positive results is well worth it.

As we move forward with our content strategy, let’s keep these user-centric principles at the forefront of our planning and creation processes.

Optimizing for Search and User Intent

Your content strategy needs to plan for optimized content for search engine algorithms and AI tools.  Content strategy, therefore, fosters carefully crafted content to reach the right audience through search engines. Our goal is to identify appropriate keywords, understand search trends, and align our content with current SEO best practices to maximize visibility and engagement. As with our research on personas, we can also apply a contextual approach based on user intent for SEO.

Keyword Research

The backbone of our SEO efforts involves keyword research. Tools like Google Keyword Planner provide valuable data points such as:

• Search volume for insight on how often a term is searched within a specific timeframe.
• Keyword competitiveness for knowing how many other businesses are trying to rank for the same term.

These elements help us prioritize which keywords to focus on. For instance, highly competitive keywords require extensive content development and authority-building to rank well. On the other hand, less competitive keywords, often referred to as “long-tail keywords,” can sometimes deliver more immediate results within a niche market.

Focusing on Long-Tail Keywords

Using long-tail keywords is becoming more and more important with the advances made in voice search and AI search. Given that long-tail keywords tend to be longer phrases than just keywords, they better reflect deeper user intent. So, to use an example in the cybersecurity industry, instead of targeting broad terms like “cybersecurity,” which is highly competitive, you might focus on long-tail phrases like “vulnerability assessment for small businesses.”

Further along the user journey one is, the more useful long-tail keywords become. As a potential customer of your product or service more actively scans the internet for solutions, the more they need richer content that matches their context. The decision-making process requires specific answers to harder questions. By giving users access to this content, you open your site visibility to greater depth.

A strategic approach to keyword planning looks like this (keeping with the ‘Cyber security’ example:

1. Identify key subjects with broad, high-level subjects that define your industry or business (e.g., cybersecurity).
2. Break down subjects into subtopics starting with the key subject, then identify subtopics that naturally flow from it (e.g., penetration testing, network security).
3. Create long-tail keywords by reflecting specific user intents, such as “penetration testing for healthcare systems” or “best network security practices for remote teams.”

This structured approach keeps your team focused on the overall picture while ensuring that your content addresses specific user queries without overwhelming the text with repetitive keywords.

Just Say No to Keyword Stuffing

While we are on the subject, this is a friendly reminder that while keywords are still, for the time being, the name of the game in SEO, the goal is to write your content naturally. Overloading a page with keywords in an unnatural way can hurt your rankings. Instead, use a balanced approach where the primary keywords and long-tail phrases are highlighted appropriately, without losing sight of the overall topic or narrative.

Your content should always address the user, your audience. Writing for robots will be considered unhelpful. Provide valuable information, and engage the reader. Keywords should serve as signposts that guide users and search engines to the relevant information, without detracting from the reading experience.

Aligning SEO with the Bigger Picture

To avoid falling into the trap of keyword stuffing, it’s essential that every content piece, while optimized for SEO, always aligns with your content strategy. The keyword focus should follow the user journey and encourage a healthy engagement with your business.

The keywords you choose should be connected to the company’s core message. Once again with the cybersecurity example, keywords could reflect the various services offered (e.g., “penetration testing,” and “network security”), though the user may or may not think in those terms. Ultimately, there will be a bridge from your site to the user’s education. When writing content on those services, you can explain how your offer will solve real-world problems or address issues like compliance and risk management.

Tracking SEO Performance

Once your content is up and running, keep monitoring its performance. Tools like Google Search Console or Google Analytics will give detailed insights into where you rank and which keywords are driving traffic. You can combine that with other tools to see where users are quitting the site, or which content is underperforming. We understand that this takes much time and patience. If your content strategy goal is to provide a living document, taking into account regular content updates with proper governance and continuously improving the overall SEO performance, you will see positive results in a short amount of time.

Building a User Journey That Connects

Creating a well-defined user journey is the foundation for building a powerful sitemap and crafting content that resonates with your audience. To achieve this, two key questions must be addressed:

1. How do we ensure our content fits all the important contexts for each user persona?
2. How do we craft a core message that speaks to the majority of our audience?

Let’s explore creating a user journey that effectively addresses these questions and lays the groundwork for a robust content strategy.

Why the User Journey Matters in Content Strategy

The user journey gives us the roadmap for where, when, and how to communicate with our users. With the research phase over, including persona development and segmenting (using tools like the BCG matrix), we have enough data to plot the content strategy. This means deciding what content to create, where it should live on the site and the context for each touchpoint.

Segments Focus on Pain Points, Not Just Personas

While segmenting by industry or business size is useful, it’s even more crucial to focus on user pain points at different stages of the journey. I’ll continue with the cybersecurity sector:

• Fear of losing data: “I’m a small business with an e-commerce platform that needs to be online 24/7. I want to be prepared for a cyberattack—what should I do?”
• Urgent attack request: “My site has been hacked! Can I get urgent help?”
• Compliance and regulations: “I’m a large business that needs a cybersecurity solution for compliance purposes. Can you help?”

By focusing on these pain points, we can align content with the user’s needs at specific moments, to ensure we’re speaking to them in a way that’s relevant.

BCG Matrix Maps Your Content to Business Solutions

The BCG Matrix is a powerful tool for aligning content with business objectives. By categorizing segments into stars, cash cows, question marks, and dogs, we can understand where each persona or segment fits within the business model. For example:

• Cash cows: Big businesses focused on compliance solutions.
• Stars: Urgent cybersecurity needs, such as breach responses or immediate threat assessments.

Once these categories are identified, they serve as guideposts for content creation. You can tag content by the segment (e.g., “Urgent Hack Support” or “Full Audit for Large Enterprises”) and prioritize based on business importance.

Financial Data Adds Depth to Content Segmentation

Layering real financial data into your user journey adds more precision. Are small businesses a growing market segment for you, or are they classified as “dogs” in your BCG matrix? By understanding the revenue potential of each segment, you can further refine content strategies. For example, expanding content for “star” segments that drive revenue could be prioritized over those in the “dog” quadrant.

Aligning Sitemaps with the User’s POV

The next step is using this user journey and segmentation to inform your sitemap. The structure should allow users to easily navigate based on their perspective, finding content that speaks to their immediate concerns. This is where your content will come to life: addressing pain points, fitting user needs, and ensuring a seamless flow from one page to the next.

Bait, Hook, Eat Provides a Winning Content Formula

When creating content, I often use a simple approach called bait, hook, and eat:

• Bait: What draws users to your site in the first place? Think of content that answers their initial search query or pain point.
• Hook: What keeps them engaged and encourages them to explore further? This could be in-depth guides, success stories, or expert advice.
• Eat: This is your conversion point. Whether it’s a CTA for lead generation or an e-commerce transaction, this is where you “eat” by turning visitors into customers.

By applying this framework, every content piece has a clear purpose, ensuring it moves users along the journey toward conversion.

Focus on Core Messages that Resonate

Once you’ve mapped out the user journey, identifying core messages becomes clearer. These are the key ideas that resonate across most, if not all, user segments. Crafting these messages is where branding and communication come together. It requires a blend of marketing expertise and creativity, but with the research you’ve already done, the foundation is there.

The next step is all about how you package the story. This will be your defining moment in the workshop, as the way you present these core messages will shape how effectively they connect with your audience.

Content Strategy Recommendations

After completing the research on user personas, SEO, and business activity, and gaining a thorough understanding of the user journey, we can transition our findings into actionable recommendations. The aim here isn’t just to suggest keywords or theories on user engagement; it’s about providing a comprehensive guide that covers both the design and content creation phases.

Here are the key elements your recommendations should include:

• Sitemap
• Core Messages (Storytelling)
• Lo-Fi Wireframes (Zoning)
• Content Templates

Sitemap: Prioritizing User Needs

A successful sitemap is more than just taxonomies and a hierarchy of pages. The sitemap is designed with the user’s priorities in mind. Often, websites place internal interests like “About Us” front and center, when users are typically more interested in solutions or services. Prioritize user needs over business interests. For example, make the most sought-after information easy to find and accessible from the top levels of navigation. Follow the rule of thumb to keep navigation menus shallow. The sitemap should be no more than four levels deep unless you’re dealing with a large site. This keeps content accessible and avoids overwhelming users.

The wording should also resonate with the user. Based on your SEO analysis, you may gather insight into how your personas think in terms of the choice of words. Your sitemap should reflect that choice. Do not underestimate how users can be lost when you write the way you talk, should users be thinking about your service differently.

It’s also essential to start planning internal linking within the sitemap. Think about where pages should naturally connect, leading users to take action or discover related content. Proper linking will move users efficiently through the journey, from awareness to conversion. As you map out the site, consider how one content piece can naturally lead to the next step.

Lastly, document the sitemap in an inventory spreadsheet that tracks content owners, update frequencies, and any special notes. This helps keep the content creation process organized and aligned with your strategy. It also leads to governance of all content which is critical over the long term.

Core Messages: Storytelling That Connects

If storytelling is your thing, core messages will be your creative playground. The core message is the first impression—often captured in a phrase of ten words or less that defines your brand while integrating key SEO elements. It’s more than a tagline; it’s a statement that grabs attention and makes users want to engage further.

A well-crafted core message should trigger an emotional response. It serves as both a guidepost for users and a source of inspiration for the design team, driving everything from site structure to UX. However, crafting a core message can be challenging, particularly in a B2B context where it must reflect what makes your brand unique while connecting with users.

To help simplify the decision-making process, I recommend presenting four distinct voice options for the core message:

• Safe
• Bold
• Direct
• Unique

Choosing the right tone for the core message will influence the overall brand perception and create a prominent voice throughout the project life.

Lo-Fi Wireframes: Structuring for Success

While the sitemap organizes the site as a whole, lo-fi wireframes provide the structural blueprint for individual pages. These basic wireframes are crucial at this phase as they lay out the order and organization for each content template. This ensures the UX/UI design team can translate the content strategy into a functional, user-friendly site.

Wireframes act as a bridge between strategy and design, giving the team a clear vision of how each element should flow, and ensuring the final product aligns with the overall content strategy.

Streamlining Content Creation with Content Templates

Just as wireframes guide design, content templates provide structure for content creation. These templates provide consistency across the site, addressing semantics, SEO, and user-friendly writing. While they can be paired with style guidelines, the key goal is to offer an easy-to-follow framework for content creators.

Content templates also improve efficiency and collaboration. Tools like shared documents, CRMs, and CMS integrations can make the process efficient, allowing multiple contributors to work together seamlessly. This results in high-quality, optimized content that is consistent, easy to manage, and cost-effective.