At The New Zealand Merino Company (now Zentera), content meant telling the story of ethical wool growing to an audience that included some of the world's biggest outdoor and fashion brands. They knew more about their product, but we knew how to join the dots back to the source.
In the outdoors sector - giving people knowledge on technical gear, technical routes and sharing that knowledge without being overbearing or elitist is important to build trust. Being part of the conversation through groups, threads, forums and actually sharing what you know that might fill gaps in other's knowledge was key.
At InCommon, a Christchurch campaign built in response to the March 15 event, content meant something entirely different. This time it meant helping people find what they actually shared across cultures and faiths.
Successful content strategies need the same underlying discipline: know exactly who you're talking to, and say only what actually matters to them.
Most content strategy fails because it tries to say everything to everyone. Everyone (unless you are a very rare brand or company) is not usually who you're wanting to engage. This then means that it ends up saying nothing to anyone in particular and I'd rather produce three pieces of content that work well for the right audience, than produce 30 that are just filling the need to produce content.
If what you publish doesn't match what someone experiences when they deal with you, you've just taught them not to trust you or your brand.