Discovery: The Step Most Content Strategies Skip
Ask a brand owner what their content strategy is, and they will usually describe their channels, posting frequency, formats and what they shoot and when.
Ask them what their content strategy is built on, and the answer is less clear.
Most content strategies start with the content. But before any of that is considered, there is foundational work that determines whether any of it will mean anything.
Most brands either rush through the discovery work, or skip it entirely.
“Skip discovery and the strategy is guesswork. Do it properly and everything that follows has somewhere to go.”
What Discovery Actually Involves
Discovery is a strategic exercise, not a branding one. It starts with three honest questions most brands have never properly sat down to answer.
Who are you, really? Not the tone of voice document, but a vivid, working picture of the brand that everyone creating content can actually use. One of the most effective ways to build that picture is to think about the brand as a person. If this brand walked into a room, how would it speak? How would it behave? How would it make people feel? Connecting brand personality to a real or imagined person makes something abstract suddenly usable.
How are you perceived? There is almost always a gap between how a brand sees itself and how its audience actually experiences it. Surveys, focus groups and social listening all reveal what that gap looks like in practice. A strategy that ignores it is a strategy built on assumption.
Where is your differentiation? Not just in the product, but in tone, perspective and the space the brand chooses to occupy. In most categories, most brands say similar things, so the perfect opportunity lies in the territory no one else is occupying.
What Discovery Produces
Discovery produces gaps that create the perfect brief. Each gap becomes a content objective, every objective a content pillar. The entire strategy flows from what discovery reveals.
Want to take this further?
If this got you thinking about your own content strategy, the Roar Content Framework goes deeper. It's a practical guide to building a strategic content framework that works for you every time.