Free with account
Content Strategy
Most businesses publish content on vibes — a blog post here, a video there, no idea what works. By the end of this course you’ll run content like a strategist: researching what to create, auditing what you have, briefing every piece, and measuring what matters. Strategy first, content second. Always.
No prerequisites — pairs well with Content Marketing.
Content without strategy is expensive noise. In six modules you’ll learn the research-driven way to decide what to create: audit what you have, research what buyers actually search for, brief every piece like it matters, build original research nobody can copy, and measure the metrics that drive real decisions. Stop publishing on vibes. Start running content like it has a job to do.
What you’ll learn
- Run a full content audit and sort every page into keep, update, merge, or kill — using the Audit Matrix
- Research topics with search data, customer questions, and competitor gaps before writing a single word
- Write strategic content briefs that bake in E-E-A-T, an angle, and a promotion plan
- Build a measurement dashboard and run a quarterly review that tells you exactly what to do next
Is this for me?
Who is this course for?
Anyone publishing content that isn’t pulling its weight — blog posts nobody reads, videos nobody finishes, a library of pieces with no idea which ones work. This course isn’t about writing better. It’s about deciding better: what to create, what to fix, and what to stop doing.
How is this different from the Content Marketing course?
Content Marketing is the production system — creating and publishing consistently. Content Strategy is the decision system — what to create, why it deserves to exist, and whether it worked. Strategy comes first. Take this course, then run the production system with it.
Do I need any tools?
A free Google Analytics account and Google Search Console — both free, both covered in the course. Everything here is manual methods and free tools. No paid software required at any point.
Module 0
Module 0: Start here
Strategy before content. Why most content fails (it’s not the writing), the Strategy-First Rule, and the one-page strategy doc you’ll build before creating anything.
Module 1
Module 1: Know What to Create
Topic research the research-driven way: search data, keyword workflows, customer questions, and competitor gaps — so you never guess at topics again.
Module 2
Module 2: The Content Audit
Inventory everything you’ve published and sort it with the Audit Matrix: keep, update, merge, or kill. Your existing content is your biggest untapped asset.
Module 3
Module 3: The Brief
Every strategic piece starts as a brief: keyword, intent, angle, outline, E-E-A-T signals, and a promotion plan — before a single paragraph is written.
Module 4
Module 4: Original Research
Build the Data Moat: surveys, data studies, and proprietary insights that competitors can’t copy and journalists can’t resist linking to.
Module 5
Module 5: Measure & Decide
The metrics that matter, the quarterly review ritual, and the compounding loop: update winners, prune losers, reinvest in research.
Choose your track
Not everyone needs the same path. Pick the one that fits where you are.
Quick-start track
Modules 0–2: the strategy doc, topic research, and the audit. You’ll finish with your next 10 topics ranked and your existing content sorted — the two highest-leverage moves in this course.
Steady track
All modules in order, one per week. Run one full audit, write six briefs, publish three pieces, and set up your measurement dashboard. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
Operator track
All modules, then the quarterly cycle on repeat: audit, brief, research, publish, measure. Strategy isn’t a project — it’s an operating rhythm. This track installs the rhythm.
Your build brief
Everything you write in the build brief prompts across this course’s modules collects here. Download it as a designed PDF — and we keep a copy too, so when you’re ready for us to build it for you, we already know exactly what you want.
Your answers save automatically as you type — on this device and to your signup email.
Teardown: one weak calendar, one strong calendar
The weak calendar: January — a blog post about the company picnic. February — a “5 tips” post someone wrote in an hour. March — nothing, everyone got busy. April — a video about the new logo. Four months, four pieces, zero connection between them. No documented goal for any piece. No keywords. No promotion plan. No measurement. It’s a publishing schedule, not a strategy — organized around the company’s convenience, not the buyer’s questions.
The strong calendar: Q1, three pieces. Piece one targets “commercial hvac maintenance cost” — a phrase buyers type right before requesting quotes — and it’s an expanded update of the older post that already ranks eighth. Piece two answers the number-one sales-call question (“how long does installation take?”) with original photos from last week’s job baked in. Piece three is the annual pricing survey — original data, pitched to twenty industry sites for links. Every piece has a written brief, a promotion checklist, and one metric that decides whether it worked.
Run the Strategy-First Rule on both. The weak calendar fails at the first question: why does this piece exist? “Because it’s Tuesday” is not a reason. The strong calendar answers it three times over — search demand, sales friction, link-worthy data — before a single word is written. The difference between the two calendars isn’t talent or budget. It’s that one documents the reason before creating, and the other never asks.
What most people would get wrong: they’d fix the weak calendar by publishing more — more posts, more videos, more channels. Volume is the last thing a strategyless operation needs. Three strategic pieces will outperform thirty random ones every time, because each one is aimed at something: a keyword, a question, a metric.
The lesson: a content calendar is a list of dates. A content strategy is a list of reasons. Dates are cheap; reasons are what make content work. That’s the whole course in one sentence: document the reason before you create.
Want this done for you?
Rather do it with us? Our Content Strategy Build ($2,500) — full content audit, 90-day strategic calendar, and measurement dashboard done for you.
See done-for-you services