A Beginner’s Toolkit for Content Intelligence and Strategy

If you’re new to the content game, you may be scrambling to create a workable content strategy, build your content team, and try to wrap your head around just why content is so important.

But as the old adage goes, you don’t know what you don’t know.

That’s where Content Science (and our award-winning digital magazine Content Science Review) comes in. As leaders in the content intelligence and strategy realms, we’ve spent the better part of the last decade conceptualizing and executing resources for those wishing to take their content to the next level. Think: professional services, publications, insights, and products. Below, we’ve curated a list of our best resources for those just beginning to dip their toes into the world of content intelligence and strategy.

Content intelligence, quite simply, represents the systems and software that transform content data and business data into actionable insights for content strategy and tactics with impact.

Below are some great tools that will help not only help you understand content intelligence, but how to best utilize it to grow your business.

What is Content Intelligence?

This piece by Content Science Founder and CEO Colleen Jones both defines the term and illustrates a three-pronged focus: a systematic approach, integrating software, and content impact.

Content Intelligence Worksheet

Jump-start your content intelligence system with our worksheet, inspired by the three pillars of small data success: collect, analyze, and interpret the right data in order to answer the right questions about your content effectiveness. A must-read for any content intelligence newcomer.

The 5 Characteristics of Intelligent Content

Have you ever wondered what it is about content that makes it, well, good? This piece illustrates the 5 characteristics of intelligent content: being modular, structured, reusable, format-free, and semantically rich.

Worksheet to Access Gaps in Your Content Intelligence Tools

After learning the ins and outs of content intelligence, it’s time to evaluate any potential gaps in your content intelligence tools. This worksheet will help you do just that.

Now that you’ve mastered content intelligence, it’s time to move on to content strategy, an equally important part of the content puzzle. So just what is content strategy? According to CSR’s own Colleen Jones: “It’s a statement. A content strategy states the approach to content. This statement usually can be a few sentences or paragraphs.”

“I’ve also written a content strategy as a slide presentation that included examples, expounded on reasons for the strategic direction, or noted some tactics to achieve the strategy,” she continues. “But the content strategy itself should be fairly succinct. This helps everyone working on the content stay focused on the strategy.”

What is Content Strategy?

In this piece, excerpted above, Jones explains the different takes on content strategy, the definition of which is still very much taking shape.

6 Content Strategy Tools, Templates, and Advice

These content strategy tools, templates, and advice will help you, a content newbie, navigate the many complexities of content strategy.

4 Content Checklists to Take Your Content Strategy to the Next Level

Are you ready to take your content strategy to the next level? These 4 checklists will help you do just that, ensuring you’re prepared when it comes to leading content teams, content vision, establishing content intelligence, and more.