The State of Content Strategy in 2013

Content strategy in 2013 sat at an odd hinge point. Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, rolled out through 2011 and 2012, had already punished sites built on thin, keyword-stuffed pages, and by early 2013 the message had sunk in: write for readers first or watch your rankings evaporate. That single shift changed what “content” meant inside most marketing departments, from a line item for SEO filler to something closer to a product businesses had to build well.

What the term covered

“Content strategy” in 2013 was a looser idea than it sounds today. For some companies it meant a blog with a posting calendar. For others, following the lead of brands like Red Bull, which had run its own media operation for years before “brand as publisher” became a common phrase, it meant treating content as a standalone asset with its own audience, distinct from the product being sold. Both counted as content strategy, but they produced different results.

Where the budget was going

Marketing teams were shifting spend toward content earlier than most outside observers realized. The Content Marketing Institute’s annual benchmarking survey, closely watched inside the industry, showed year over year growth in the share of marketing budgets earmarked for content rather than traditional ads. Native advertising was also becoming a real conversation: publishers like BuzzFeed had shown that sponsored content could outperform banner ads on both reach and credibility, and other outlets were racing to build their own native ad products.

The mistakes that were everywhere

Two mistakes defined 2013 content strategy for the businesses getting it wrong. The first was treating content as a volume game: publishing thin posts on a schedule with no real point of view, a habit left over from the keyword-stuffing era that hadn’t fully died. The second was publishing with no distribution plan at all, on the assumption that good content would surface itself. Neither assumption held up once Panda and Penguin made quality the price of entry and organic reach on Facebook pages started quietly declining.

What the businesses getting it right had in common

The companies pulling ahead in 2013 tended to do three things consistently. They picked a narrow, specific audience instead of trying to speak to everyone. They built a small number of useful, well-researched pieces instead of a large number of thin ones. And they treated distribution, email lists, social sharing and outreach to other sites, as part of the job rather than an afterthought once the writing was done.

Where it was headed

By the end of 2013, the direction was clear even if the industry didn’t have a name for what was coming yet: content strategy was becoming inseparable from SEO strategy, and both were becoming inseparable from brand strategy. Businesses that kept treating them as three separate line items were going to spend more for less, year after year, as search engines kept rewarding depth and usefulness over volume.

More from the archive: browse the Content Marketing category or see everything published in 2013.