Content Marketing: Content Versus Platform Strategy

Let’s say that you are part of the marketing team of a retail brand. The brand recently released a new line of seasonal clothing and needs content to promote it. You were tasked to create both a content strategy and a platform strategy. As you review your work, you can’t help but get confused along the way. What is a platform strategy, a content strategy, and what is the difference between the two, or is it the same thing?

Content and platform strategies have been a common source of confusion. Here at CDM, we can help you navigate through and answer these questions. Now, let’s discuss what a content and a platform strategy is and their differences.

Content Strategy

A content strategy is how you plan and manage your brand’s content. It provides your brand with its purpose and identity – two things that tells your audience why they should give your brand a chance. Remember, nobody likes dealing with content that makes no sense to them. To understand what content strategy is and how it works, let’s break it down into four sections.

• Identity

Your content strategy must explain who you are as a brand and what you can offer. It sounds easy, but a lot of brands have a hard time explaining who they are and what they’re good at. This is usually achieved by developing a unique value proposition and a big idea that serves as your brand’s identity.

• Audience

Your target market pertains to who you will be sharing your brand’s content with. You can share it with everyone, but that does not ensure both higher visibility and higher engagement. So, focusing on a group of individuals who you are certain will interact with your content is better.

• Voice

How do you sound? Are you formal and precise when creating content, or are you playful and casual? Give your brand its own tonality that communicates how you deliver your message – your style.

• Strategy

This is where content promotion comes in. Do you use social media? If yes, what platforms? What about native advertising and having other promote your content? The decisions you make here is where the platform strategy comes in, it is where you want your content to be seen.

Platform Strategy

If your content strategy is how you plan and manage your content, your platform strategy is your distribution plan. It’s what you refer to when deciding whether the platforms you’ve chosen and are currently using are holistic and being maximized.

In CDM, we use the POGLE framework when talking about platform strategy. It helps with determining the channels and platforms that are most appropriate to the content being published. POGLE stands for Paid, Owned, Granted, Leased, and Earned media respectively. These are the types of platforms you can use to get your message to your audience.

By using the POGLE framework in your platform strategy, you decide on where you will be communicating your content. Do you prefer to use paid media and create ads? What about creating your own website to house all your content? Perhaps you prefer to post organically on social media instead?

Similar to your content strategy, your target audience also plays a vital part in developing your platform strategy. When understanding your audience, you can get a glimpse of their behavior and the platforms that they frequent. These pieces of information on your audience can help you determine what platforms to use.

As you can see, a platform strategy is as important as a brand’s content strategy. You also probably have an inkling on how the two are related but let’s dive deeper into their relationship.

Content & Platform

Now that you know what a content strategy and a platform strategy are, let’s discuss how the two are connected to each other. Remember the four sections above when defining content strategy? The fourth item – your marketing strategy – shows the connection between your content strategy and your platform strategy. Your marketing strategy talks about placements or locations of where you want to place your content, which is the main purpose of a platform strategy.

You start with the content strategy – building content based on your audience, the insights you’ve gathered, your big idea, and your identity and purpose as a brand and developing your brand’s voice – then you figure out where to place your content. When you get into your marketing strategy, you think about placements or the locations of where you want to place your content, which is the main purpose of a platform strategy.

So, is there a difference between a content strategy and a platform strategy? Yes. A content strategy deals with the creation and management of your content. It is the strategy that you refer to when trying to figure out what to communicate, how to communicate, and who you are communicating your content with. A platform strategy, on the other hand, deals with where your content should be placed.

Are they related to each other? Also, yes. You can’t have one without the other. What are you going to distribute if you don’t have any content? How are you going to maximize your content if you don’t know where to distribute them in the first place?

If you wish to learn more about content and platform strategies and how to make one for your brand, then make sure to check out the Digital Marketing Strategist Track. The Digital Marketing Strategist Track is a curated set of CDM programs that will help you become a competent digital marketer.