For those of us working in marketing, communications, and digital roles in education institutions, the term ‘content strategy’ is frequently used but often misunderstood. Or a term that we often use, but sometimes can be talking about totally different things from one another.

Is it just a subset of marketing? Is it purely about publishing content on the website and social media? Or does it go much deeper?

On this blog we often post about content strategy. We assume that our readers know what we mean by this. But perhaps it’s helpful from time to time to go back to basics and offer clarity on the terms that we so casually might throw around.

So, what’s the purpose of a content strategy?

A well-formed content strategy ensures that every piece of content your institution produces serves a clear purpose, aligns with organisational goals, and meets audience needs. It is about so much more than storytelling. It is about structure, operations, efficiencies, impact and long-term sustainability.

To demystify content strategy, let’s break it down into its core components and explore how it differs from content marketing, marketing strategy, and brand strategy.

The strategic vision for content

At its core, content strategy is about aligning content with your school, college or university’s broader vision and objectives. This means ensuring that every piece of content contributes meaningfully to student recruitment, research engagement, alumni relations, and overall institutional reputation or brand awareness. It’s not just about what we say, but why we say it and how it connects to those overarching goals.

A successful content strategy starts by considering:

The institution’s goals and objectives - what are we trying to achieve?
Audience needs and motivations - how do we serve our audiences effectively?
Brand and experience strategy - how do we ensure content aligns with our identity?

Content substance, creative and editorial

Content strategy goes beyond individual pieces of content to consider the broader themes and messages that define an institution’s voice and ensures that you’re meeting your audiences’ needs. This means defining:

Content types - articles, videos, social media posts, course descriptions, and more.
Editorial planning - ensuring a structured and consistent approach to storytelling and publishing.
Tone of voice and messaging frameworks - embedding the brand’s narrative in every piece of content.
Performance insights - using data from existing content to refine messaging and engagement.

In short, when we talk about “substance”, we’re really pointing to what you will produce.

Structured content and content architecture

One of the most overlooked aspects of content strategy is its role in structuring and organising content. A well-defined content model ensures that information is easy to find, reusable, and adaptable to different platforms. With the development of AI technologies, advances in search platforms, and the rise of zero-click behaviours, having a robust approach to structured and well marked-up content is rapidly climbing to the top of the list of content strategy solutions that your institution needs to be developing and implementing.

The structured content aspect of your content strategy should set a direction for and include:

Content models - defining structured content types to create consistency and understand how content components fit together and are used in multiple different ways across different presentation layers
Content architecture - designing navigation, metadata, personalisation, omnichannel publishing approaches and tagging systems or taxonomies.
Channel and distribution strategy - deciding how and where content will be published and promoted, ideally being drawn from a single source of truth or a decoupled content management platform.

Content operations and governance

A content strategy is only as effective as its implementation. Content governance ensures that processes, workflows, and responsibilities are clearly defined to maintain content quality and relevance. This includes:

Governance frameworks - who owns and maintains content? What can they and can’t they do?
Editorial workflows - how is content created, reviewed, and approved?
Content measurement and reporting - tracking content performance and impact.
Content maintenance plans - ensuring content remains accurate and up to date.
Service level agreements - offering clarity on the priorities of a core content team and what they support.

At Pickle Jar we consider a content strategy to be a suite of blueprints that directs your content creativity, publishing and maintenance. This diagram shows what we believe is included in a comprehensive content strategy.

How does content strategy differ from other strategies?

It’s all too easy to mistake content strategy for being another kind of strategy altogether. Or for thinking “isn’t content strategy just a marketing strategy”, or similar. So, let’s distinguish the difference between some of the commonly confused types of strategies that content strategy dovetails with or complements:

Content strategy vs. content marketing strategy

Content marketing strategy focuses on using content to attract and engage audiences, often with the goal of conversion. At Pickle Jar we argue that it is a subset of content strategy. Content strategy, however, has a broader focus on structure, governance, and long-term sustainability. There are also many reasons for needing a content strategy that have nothing to do with marketing goals. A content strategy could be considered to be closer to a information management strategy or a service design component than it is to a content marketing strategy at times.

Content strategy vs. marketing strategy

Marketing strategy encompasses the full range of activities designed to promote an institution, from advertising and PR to market research and student recruitment. Content strategy provides the foundation for effective marketing by ensuring that content is strategically planned, structured, and managed. Content strategy and marketing strategy are therefore likely to sit side-by-side. Knowing an organisation’s marketing strategy can be useful to help inform some of the direction of a content strategy - but not all of it. So, if we’re developing a content strategy for student recruitment, we’re probably going to ask to see your recruitment marketing strategy.

Content strategy vs. brand strategy

Brand strategy defines an institution’s identity, values, and positioning. Content strategy helps bring this to life through storytelling, voice, and consistent messaging across all channels. We’ve had many instances at Pickle Jar when working on content strategy projects where we have ended up having to re-write the school or university’s brand strategy in order to sufficiently inform the content strategy. This is especially true when brand strategy is mistaken for visual identity guidelines. Components like style and tone guidelines, and organisational values can often serve as a useful bridge between brand strategy and content strategy.

Getting on the same page

Ultimately there’s no singular or “right” definition of content strategy. And it’s okay for definitions to differ. The important things is that definitions are made, shared and agreed upon.

A robust content strategy is essential for education institutions looking to create impactful, sustainable, and meaningful content. By focusing on strategic vision, structured content, governance, and integration with broader strategies, schools and universities can ensure that content works effectively across all areas of engagement. And how it dovetails with your other strategies and plans is entirely up to you!

We can help

Is your institution’s content strategy truly supporting your organisational goals? Do you have the components developed that we’ve spoken about in this post. If not, it may be time to build a more strategic approach that goes beyond simply creating content. At Pickle Jar we can help you to develop a content strategy that can transform the ways in which you work and truly embed it in your institution’s DNA.

Contact us for a chat about your content challenges and how we can help.

What is a content strategy anyway?