How do you handle content strategy for websites?

I have been doing a lot of research in handling with content strategy. I work at an agency right now and one of the biggest problems is we design first, and then add content later. Everytime the content is added, the design will change. And it will also change everytime content changes. This is pretty frustrating and I’m looking for alternatives.

I’ve heard content first as a solution to this problem but do you have other methods to deal with such problems with your clients?

The question is: how can you design when you don’t know what the content is?

“Content first” is really the way to go…

Exactly, the content always goes in first before you can formulate other stuff. That was one of my concern before as well.

Hi,
Yes, I agree with MarinaK5, you have write content first and then according to that you can design. It will save your time and efforts
Thanks

I’ve also had that problem before. The key is to make sure your content strategies in place before you do the design. Many people seem to be finding that doing the design first leads to more changes being required later.

Who is your target market both demographically and in terms of psychographics?

Can you put a name to your primary target market, your secondary target market and your tertiary target market?

If you do not know who these people are, you are writing and designing by “throwing both up against the wall to see if it sticks.”

Really understand the pain, fear of being in pain, the impending event they want to be ready for, and the goal they can not achieve on their own.

What are the under-lying causes of these, and what is the personal impact they make on this person you are writing and designing for, to solve their problems? They are always problems.

You can chart them on a mind map. When you get that clear about who you are reaching with your writing content and design, you are ready to make award winning content and design.

Once you do, you will know what to write about and how to write about it, and you will plan your design accordingly in the planning of this content. I hope this helped. I find cost over-runs can be avoided by a thorough market research phase, before designing and writing. Just my two cents. Thank You for asking the question.

@Tom_Lincoln I’m curious about what you mean by psychographics? I’ve never heard of this term, could you please expand on how you use it for your content strategy?

Hm… Im troubled about your content.. If its not suits for your design you wrote ot without preliminary planning? Hm… and I want to know what about optimization of your content. Did you write your articles with taking into consideration the Seo optimization? Did you do you KeyWord research?
It is stupid but important question… As there was a case when on my previous work they spent about $4000-$7000 a week for articles writing and they didn`t even know that they should be optimized… So it was another story both to make them optimized and to embed them into the design…
Generally, the answer is :first plan, then do…

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