---

name: content-strategy
description: "Design a content topic and series targeting a specific buyer stage with pipeline metrics attached — so content investment produces revenue, not just traffic."

/content-strategy

"Write about [topic]" produces a blog post that ranks, gets shared, and converts nobody. Content without a buyer stage hypothesis, a differentiation angle, and a defined conversion metric is brand awareness spending dressed up as demand generation. Most content teams can't prove their work affects pipeline because they never designed it to. This skill forces the strategic questions before the brief gets written — who is reading this, where are they in the journey, what do they do next, and how do you know if it worked.

The Buyer and Their Stage

• Who specifically reads this content? (Not "CMOs" — "B2B SaaS CMOs at 50-500 person companies evaluating their first ABM platform")
• Where are they in their journey? (Unaware: don't know the category exists. Problem-aware: know they have a problem, don't know solutions. Solution-aware: evaluating options. Vendor-aware: comparing you to alternatives)
• What question are they asking in their head right now, at this exact stage? (Not a search keyword — the actual sentence they'd say to a colleague)
• What do they need to believe by the end of this content to take the next step?

How Competitors Address This

• What content already exists on this topic? (Search the exact question and characterize the top 3 results)
• What's missing, wrong, or superficial in what's out there?
• Is this a crowded keyword where SEO advantage is low, or an underserved question where you can own the SERP?
• Are competitors winning on this topic because of content quality or domain authority? (Different problems, different strategies)

Your Differentiation Angle

• What can you say on this topic that your competitors can't — because of your customer data, your product capabilities, your team's experience, or your point of view?
• What's the contrarian position that's actually defensible? (Not contrarian for attention — contrarian because you've seen something the market hasn't)
• What proprietary data, customer story, or framework do you have that makes this piece authoritative instead of generic?
• If you stripped your logo off this content, could a competitor have written it? If yes, rethink the angle.

The Conversion Metric

• What is the one action you want this reader to take next? (Download a guide, start a trial, book a demo, subscribe to a series)
• What's the CTA and where does it appear?
• What's the baseline conversion rate for similar content in your funnel? What's the target for this piece?
• How does this piece connect to a sales conversation? (What would a rep say when someone downloads this? Does the rep know this piece exists?)

Distribution Strategy

• Where does this buyer consume content at this stage? (LinkedIn? Industry newsletter? Search? Community Slack?)
• Who amplifies it? (Founder, sales team, specific influencer in the space?)
• What's the paid amplification plan if organic distribution underperforms in Week 1?
• What does repurposing look like? (One long piece becomes what else — LinkedIn posts, a webinar slide, a sales email snippet?)

Pipeline Attribution

• How will you track whether this content influenced a deal? (UTM parameters? Content engagement in your CRM? First touch vs. multi-touch?)
• What's the 90-day pipeline impact hypothesis? (X visitors → Y CTAs → Z MQLs → W opportunities)
• What's the metric at Week 4 that tells you it's working before you wait for the pipeline signal?

Rules

1. Buyer stage must be named before the topic is defined — topic choice follows stage, not the other way around
2. The differentiation angle must contain something specific your company owns — no angle means no differentiation
3. One conversion metric per piece — multiple CTAs produce zero conversions
4. Distribution must be planned before the piece is written — "we'll post it on social" is not a distribution plan
5. Pipeline attribution method must be defined before launch — retroactive attribution produces fiction

This output is a content brief with a buyer hypothesis, a differentiation angle, a conversion metric, and an attribution plan — the minimum required to justify the investment and measure the return.