Content Mission Statement

According to Joe Pulizzi, Junta42, content marketing is about creating content not about what you sell, but what you stand for. An important but subtle distinction. It's the difference between content created for today's marketing pitch and content that truly stands the test of time on a web site. Pulizzi recommends creating a content mission statement.

The Nimble Press mission statement? We care about content.

Mission Statement Development Process

A little downtime this summer gave me the opportunity to review 11 years of business and refine our brand and our direction. It was an interesting and fun process that resulted in our mission statement and a fine tuning of our brand voice. Here's the process we went through:

1. Used Quicken to generate a list of all projects. I created a top 5 and bottom 5. What were my most favorite projects and least favorite projects? Which ones provided the most revenue? Which ones took the most time?

2. Why? I reviewed the projects to see what they had in common. I discovered that I like to make a difference with my work and I like a challenge. Nothing was more satisfying than coming up with a creative solution to a client's problem. It matters to me that the content stands for something, that it makes a difference.

3. How can I do more of the top 5 and fewer of the bottom 5? I realized that I needed to revise all of my materials and marketing to focus on the qualities of jobs in the top 5. That meant a new focus on content strategy, not just writing.

4. A search on "content strategy" helped me find the leaders in the field so that I could better understand their strategic positioning and the market for content strategy. My favorite sites and voices:

• Brain Traffic, Kristina Halvorson put content strategy on the map.
• Content Science
• Eat Media
• Junta42
• A List Apart

5. I followed a brand tone of voice exercise picked up at a Nielsen/Norman Group Usability Conference session led by Catherine Toole, Sticky Content.

6. Using Catherine's templates, I narrowed our voice to 6 essential tones: committed, creative, efficient, responsive, user-friendly, and welcoming. These are not just tones for our web site, but they represent the values that Nimble Press uses in our work.

7. From this exercise, we came up with an about us statement that served as a starting point for all of the content on our web site today:

At Nimble Press, we care about your content. We listen first, then apply our expertise to get your strategy right the first time. Let us help you achieve your goals online with our professional writing and leadership skills.

The Results

The process was fun, enlightening, and rigorous. I completely agree with Joe, it's not what you sell, but what you stand for.