Remember the party game “Telephone”, where a simple phrase is whispered from ear to ear around a circle of friends? The payoff is when the final phrase is uttered out loud by the last person and it is completely transformed.

Content flows online the same way.

No longer constrained to the artificial restrictions of a web site, or even the browser (mobile), content is ‘the story’ that is being passed from blog post to comment to tweet. Content takes on a new reality from its passage across the web. From a marketing and brand perspective, the challenge for content strategy in a social and semantic world (aka web 3.0) is to ensure the key messaging content is still accurate and complete as it evolves.

Before going much further, let me clarify what content strategy means for the social and semantic web. Content strategy is a 40,000 foot strategic overview of content, aligning content, its purpose, creation, publication, and use with the overall business strategy and marketing objectives of an enterprise. Developing a content strategy means it must be resilient against the web reality that the content will be adopted, mixed, mashed and recreated in a post-modern lovefest by enthusiasts and enemies, influencers and newbies. Additionally, there is the hyper-connectivity of users plus the immediacy and velocity of conversation so:

a. Inconsistencies or gaps between the message and the supporting content, or user experience will be called out
b. Gaps filled by users aggregating and adding to existing content
c. Online perceptions of brands, products, or services are created that are a new reality from the user’s perspective

This is complicated by the increasingly interactive nature of the web making not only the content but where, when and how its accessed, organized and read, viewed or listened to, important elements to consider.

To simplify this approach, here are the key questions marketers, strategists, planners and the like may find useful when developing a comprehensive content strategy:

1. Why communicate at all? What is the risk:reward?
2. What are the goals and objectives of:
   1. The enterprise, how can the content strategy help achieve them?
   2. For the content strategy itself?
3. What does real success for each of the above look like?
4. How is success measured?
5. What content already exists?
   • Where are there gaps
   • What content must be created?
   • Will fans create it?
6. What are the desired outcomes of creating and distributing this content?
7. Who are the uber-influencers to carry and serve the content?
   • Where are they?
   • How best to connect them with content?

These musings are most definitely a work-in-progress. What else would you add to consider when developing a content strategy for the internet as it continues to evolve beyond the browser?