3.1 Getting Started With Your Website
What Is Content Strategy?
Content strategy involves identifying the type of content (words, photographs, graphics, forms) that will best help you communicate your department’s most important messages and achieve your department’s goals.
It combines writing, organizing and prioritizing copy and placing it in a navigational structure that will guide users to what they seek on your site, and what you want them to find and do on your site.
Your site content is just as important, if not more important than its design, and it must reflect the strategic objectives of your department, as well as the university as a whole.
Without a strategy – a goal – for your program's webpages, you will be simply creating a lot of content that no one really needs or wants. University web content managers are the filter on the fire hose. They set priorities for what the web user will experience.
Questions to Ask as You Develop Your Content Strategy
- What is the goal of your site? What strategic objectives of your department are you expecting your site to help accomplish?
- What are the key themes and messages you want to convey – both about your department and the university?
- Who are your most important audiences?
- What do those audiences seek on your site or your pages? What do you want them to find?
- Does your existing content address your site's goals as well as what your audiences want to see and do on your site?
- What is the most important content to your users on your current site or pages, and is it easy to find that content?