Agency content folk spend their days asking questions, because possibilities are inherent in creation. It’s our job to shape these into patterns that serve a purpose.

A mission all the more important in digital content — where we communicate with humans and machines, which both learn by identifying patterns. And at scale — dealing with multiple platforms, markets and subjective stakeholder opinions.

Identifying interrelated elements in content problems helps bring objectivity to what can be paralysingly contentious. Then simplifies solutions to meet brand goals, through structural elements in user, production and publishing experience.

This is structural content strategy; taking from structuralism a concern with the analysis of an idea down to its most basic elements, which must be understood through their relationship to broader systems. And like all the best approaches to tackling tricky problems, it helps achieve step-change one simple step at a time.

Once we have the cultural context of audience, brand and digital interrelations in content challenges, we can start to set out a route to success.

But that plan is not content strategy done. As content is live, content solutions must be too.

Successful content programmes require constant work through actionable and evolving toolkits, which Brain Traffic neatly categorise as either concerned with content or systems design:

Content design dealing with the surface elements of editorial and experience:

“The process of using data and evidence to give the audience the content they need, at the time they need it, and in a way they expect” as coined by Sarah Richards of Content Design London).

This could include tools such as:

• Brand voice guidelines — tone, structure and vocab for different scenarios, complete with actionable examples, ‘to avoid’ lists and word banks.

• Messaging matrixes — messaging hierarchies for different audiences

• Platform playbooks — content focus and formats for specific platforms

These are designed to make it easier to create great work, but they don’t do that creative work. The messages in those matrixes aren’t the ones consumers will see; just as a single-minded proposition in a creative brief isn’t the advertising creative itself.

Grounding editorial is systems design — the foundations of structure and process:

“Creating repeatable systems — both for machines and for people — to ensure content integrity over time and allow us to create, deliver, and manage content according to consistent standards and meaningful outcomes.”

For example:

• CMS and information architecture — How to store and structure content for findability and reuse. (Headless CMS systems are a dream come true for structural content strategists.)

• Content governance processes — who decides, and how, what gets produced and how live content is nurtured. This could also include processes for streamlining the feedback loop — bringing refreshing clarity and objectivity to one of the most painful parts of any creative/client relationship.

• Measurement frameworks — how to track content success? So much simpler when you’ve already done the work categorising content from conception.