Content Strategy

Strategic conception of the content of an organisation

Companies reach their target groups using content on websites, in social media and mobile apps as well as at touch points at trade fairs and reception halls. They use content to position their brands, demonstrate their knowledge, and explain their services. In the Master’s degree programme in Content Strategy, you will learn how to design content systematically in order to support corporate objectives, address users and facilitate implementation by all involved. You will be introduced to strategic thinking and will learn how to define topics, channels and the tonality of an organisation’s content. Through this knowledge you will be able to strategically plan corporate content yourself or advise companies in the development of their content.

Analysis of all the facts which are important for content

The discipline of content strategy, which was developed in the 1990s, follows an analytical approach. Content strategists analyse all the factors important for the design of the content of a company. To this end you will evaluate various sources of data and use methods which were developed in the social sciences. You will familiarise yourself with these instruments in the course – from qualitative methods of user-centred design to network analyses and website monitoring. With this knowledge, you will be able to present factually based arguments and persuade others regarding the creation and maintenance of content.

Implementation in the organisation and change management

In order to publish content systematically and successfully, many different persons in the company have to collaborate. During the programme, you will learn to plan and implement complex editorial workflows – from commissioning writers and translators, and maintaining content in modern content management systems to quality and success control. You will learn to collect and structure information present in a company, and to make it available to customers and other interested parties. Since rigid internal structures often prevent important content of a company from being published, you will be made familiar with change-management measures. To ensure that you will be able to work together with all those involved in the company, you will also learn how to bring your knowledge in line with the special requirements of an organisation.

Since the course is part time, we try to connect to the different professional realities of our students. Although there are no specific specialisations, there is a lot of freedom regarding the individual area of emphasis, especially in the projects.

User-experience design for content

Online content is only accepted by users when it is both useful and usable, and when they recognise very fast how it can be used. Content strategy transfers methods of user-experience design onto content design. In the programme you will not only get to know these methods more closely, you will also deepen your knowledge of techniques which were developed in search engine optimisation (SEO) to recognise users’ needs. If you specialise in user experience, you will also occupy yourself with the information architecture of web presences and thus how persons with impairments, for instance visual impairments, can get access to content.

Content marketing

Content marketing is about using content to achieve specific and measurable goals promoting company sales. If you specialise in content marketing, you will learn how to define such goals, how to achieve them, and how to measure potential success. The focus is on the identification of topics and storytelling using different media and the development of content sharing communities. You will also learn how to ensure that content is easily found by search engines, and how to design content to ensure successful sharing in social media.

Enterprise content management

Content is an important and expensive asset of any company. It has to be constantly kept up to date and tailored to different conditions, e.g. in various language versions or for special target groups. On top of this, internet providers are constantly developing new channels for companies to offer their content. In the programme, you can also specialise in the management of content for the complex needs of companies. You will learn how to model and structure content so that it can be maintained and reused easily, while also fulfilling the needs of different target groups.