Put simply, a content strategy is a business plan for your content.
According to Val Swisher, Content Strategy Guru and CEO of Content Rules, Inc., “Content strategy helps you identify what content you need, what content you don’t need, and where to put your resources for the most ROI.”
Do I Really Need a Content Strategy?
The truth is, all organizations can benefit from a content strategy, but organizations with greater volumes of content and audiences typically see a greater need.
“A content strategy helps companies deliver content when, where, and how their customers want to see it."
Val Swisher | Content Rules, Inc. CEO

A cohesive content strategy can drive multiple positive business outcomes, including:
- Reduce costs of creating, managing, publishing, and localizing content
- Speed up time to market for content delivery
- Improve customer experiences through consistency at every point of the customer journey
- Increase content reuse (and a corresponding decrease in redundant content)
How to Implement a Content Strategy
Developing and implementing a content strategy requires consideration and alignment of content models, structured authoring guidelines, reuse strategy, taxonomy, metadata, workflows and governance.
This is no small task.
When implementing a content strategy at scale, technology becomes a critical driver of success.
“Most organizations that develop a content strategy decide to purchase a new content management system,” Val says. “Often, this system is a component content management system (CCMS).”
“We’re proud to partner with Val Swisher and the entire Content Rules team to help organizations create, manage, reuse and personalize content efficiently at scale. We are experts in structured authoring and granular, component-level content management, and Val’s content strategy expertise coupled with our industry-leading CCMS platform provide significant, measurable value to our customers.”
Leslie Farinella | Xyleme COO
About Val Swisher | CEO of Content Rules, Inc.

Val Swisher is a well-known expert in content strategy, structured authoring, global content, content development, and terminology management, and has co-authored a new book, The Personalization Paradox: Why Companies Fail (and How to Succeed) at Delivering Personalized Experiences at Scale (XML Press, 2021). Together with co-author and senior content strategist Regina Lynn Preciado, Val lays out exactly what it takes to deliver personalized experiences at scale.