This post is a sample of the intro content from our NEW, 4-week course, Run Your Business Like a Magazine. Enrollment for the first live round closes the evening of Sunday, April 17th. Join us!

What is Content Strategy?

So here’s the thing: in this creative business realm we’re swimming in, we see terms like ‘content strategy’ fly by on Twitter and we think to ourselves, Yeah, I probably should have one of those.

Or our eyes glaze over when we see yet another jam-packed blog post on Pinterest from some software company full of tech bros dressed in content marketers’ clothes telling us why we need to be writing what our ideal clients and customers want to read, awing us with their brightly colored infographics all the while.

Content strategy. It’s a buzzphrase.

It’s important. It’s essential. It  . . . sounds kind of boring, doesn’t it?

The word ‘content’ just sounds so dry.

The word ‘strategy’ just sounds so . . . strategic, maybe even in a game-y sort of way. And gaming your Right People is exactly what you don’t want to do.

And yet, our attention, as industrious creatives, keeps landing again and again on this idea of having a content strategy. Our curiosity is piqued — because we know we need it. We sense that if we could just wrap our mind around how a content strategy could work for us, in our own brand, with our own intrinsic style applied, it could change everything we’re doing in the realm of words and work.

If you’re thinking along these lines — you are right.

A pragmatic yet inspired content strategy can cause the stars to align in your business and brand.

When you’re writing about what you love and feel deeply inspired by, in a way that scaffolds your Right People’s journey with you — not only their buying journey but their internal journey as a human being — you can rest assured that you are Doing It Right. You’re HELPING people, all the while doing work you find meaningful — and you’re writing about it, or photographing it, or making videos or podcasts about it!

A content strategy is nothing more & nothing less than a really cool roadmap for the journey on which you want to accompany your Right Person reader, client, or customer.

The course we just made, which starts its first live round on Monday, April 18th, will teach you what the world’s great magazine editors have always known: how to craft a compelling roadmap that turns ambivalent passengers into fully awake and aware drivers on the road to becoming your buyer and your lifelong brand ambassador.

Do you want that for your business? If not now, then when?

Now let’s talk for a moment about the editorial mindset.

The Editorial Mindset

The editorial mindset is the perspective on content and audience engagement that an editor has.

Yep, some people are just born with a keen editorial eye — they’re naturally able to spot trends, to predict what will be hot next Fall, and to perceive whose star is on the rise before THAT PERSON even knows.

But if you’re not born with this gift, you can cultivate the skill set within yourself.

This course will teach you how to cultivate the skill set of thinking like an editor about your own content.

When you hone your editorial mindset, you learn how to be be selective, be discerning, develop your intuition, follow your hunches, take risks, do more of what works, kill what isn’t and doesn’t, get the best work out of your writers (even when your only writer is you), and hold people accountable (including, yep, yourself).

If you want a keen content strategy that defines your brand’s point of view in the marketplace and turns your Right People’s brights ON, not off, every time they see a headline of yours fly by on social media, Run Your Business Like a Magazine is made for you.

If you want to think like a magazine editor and rely on a dangerously effective balance of strategy and intuition to create a great product ‘issue after issue,’ Run Your Business Like a Magazine is made for you.

The only question now is: will you join us?

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What’s your relationship to your the editorial mindset? Do you feel like you were ‘born with it’ or is a skill set you’ve developed or would like to develop?