The goal of delivering exceptional content and stories to engage audiences in a company’s brand and value proposition is not new. But, with the growing importance of online marketing and social media to deliver these messages, it has become essential to consider content development (and storytelling) a primary lever within today’s marketing strategy. Now more than ever it seems critical to place strategic emphasis on insights that establish clear messaging frameworks and content strategies.

Despite the growing promotion and advocacy of ‘content marketing’, many companies continue to develop and deliver content in silos without a strategy that maps to a larger agreed-upon framework.

If you do not have a messaging/content framework or toolkit,  it’s probably a smart idea to develop one as this sets the stage and tone for how ALL messaging and content will be considered and crafted — websites, SEM, emails, videos, infographics, webinars, display ads, blogs, presentations, tweets, LinkedIn and Facebook pages, and sales communications.

It is also a good idea to evolve your strategy by testing various messaging components and content recipes on your website and social media channels. The world of digital gives marketers more opportunity than ever to test, analyze and refine their messaging platform to align with customer behavior and interests.

The point is: Creating superb content experiences for your audience is not only vital, but very doable. If you are not approaching this through a strategic lens, consider changing that — use your strategic planning process to obtain or refine insights about what’s on your audience’s mind, what motivates them and what they want to hear about. Align it with your value proposition, and use it to create a messaging and content structure that ties to your corporate brand. Then, effectively build and integrate within your distribution channels.