Matt Jarvis is an Advertising and Content Strategist at WP Engine. He’s a proven content-marketing and technology leader with over 20 years of digital experience and he’s managed projects across Fortune 500 firms.

Billboard was our first clients, and his efforts (building a creative, image database, and an access and management system) launched our automated publishing capability, and that launched our integrated content-marketing and advertising efforts.

Using an award-winning content management system built in-house, Matt enables creative and tech teams to manage content across all platforms, work across multiple project sites and tools, and create custom publications. His client list includes Aspiritech, thisLife, Pinterest, Snapdeal, Shopify, Shopify as well as hundreds of Fast Company authors, columnists, feature writers, and global journalists.

In addition to his day job, Matt is a regular speaker and media consultant, and maintains a weekly Fast Company column, “Content Marketing Playbook.”

Top Content-Marketing Decisions to Make Before Brand Insights and Tasty Product Driven Engagement

Here are the 15 process tips that Matt uses to help companies quickly identify the content strategy that aligns with their overarching brand goals, and then set the content strategy up for product, media, and customers to help push through the decision making. These strategies go above and beyond marketing generalization to help you come up with top overall solutions, and then handle the execution and successful implementation of them.

The biggest thing to remember is this should come from a company’s culture, its goals, their goals’ aligned with the unique needs of its audience, and be in line with the goals of core teams.

i) Search is About More Than Search Engines

Brand-effective content marketing means creating a focused content strategy, developing tactics for different parts of your business, and making sure that the content strategies are aligned with what your company cares about. The effectiveness of a content strategy will rise and fall in tandem with results in each area of your business, you’ll fall off track as soon as there’s a disconnect.

i) Create A Way for Everyone To Participate

Achieving excellence in content marketing means creating effective inputs, effective outputs, and effective onboarding. This means a content strategy has to provide content and a tool kit, an organizational structure, etc. that allows your customers, prospects, and internal teams the opportunity to participate.

Customers should be able to ask questions about products, resources, and jobs, customer testimonials be amplified, and customers should be able to make comments, shares, and recommendations about your company’s products. Companies should proactively work to connect their customers with each other, as well as with marketers and influencers who can effect positive branding for your company.

For Drive HX Entertainment, our company’s content strategy is aligned with:

Global Name – “Universal”

Meaningful to Identify A Community & Enterprise (with data + opinion)

Less Management & More Partnering & Collaboration

Immense Success (Voice messages, reviews, recommendations)

As a partnership/consulting agency, our content strategy is aligned with:

Specific Goals (consistent, measurable & actionable)

“Products” – each industry title and event should be distinct and differentiated.

Localize For Time & Locations

There are so many variables to a content strategy! Products should work in concert with the basic level of branding and personality that your company is already providing, adding value by providing unique features and services that typically aren’t on the broad level of other brands. This allows a product-centric process with very specific components for each industry, region, and global market.

The above list and examples are only a part of what a content strategist would use to create best-in-class content for an organization. It’s a tricky endeavor and it will likely take a lot of thought and deliberation to create the right overall strategy for your company, but by understanding, even before you come into this, how the company works, how you brand, and how to create the content that effectively aligns with the overall brand message.