There is so much fear and uncertainty swirling around in the business world.

Anyone else picking up on this? 

From the layoffs at big tech companies to the Silicon Valley Bank fiasco for small businesses, the business world is in a mild state of PANIC 😱

As a result, work is weird. You may be experiencing any/all the below:

• Your pipeline is drying up

• Clients have lower budgets

• Clients are more risk averse

I get it. I’m seeing it myself. 

And I’ll just say: I don’t have the solution. 

But I do want to share a way we can shift the narrative more in our favor. 

Rachel Kennedy, a member of the Content Strategy Lab*, recently told our Slack channel that she’d pitched a mentorship as an add-on to her strategic content retainer. 

A mentorship! I’d never heard of this type of offering, and I was intrigued. I had to ask Rachel how she structured it. 

The bulk of her retainer focuses on monthly content strategy direction, Rachel said. But she’d added 1:1 mentorship time blocks each month on the client’s request. The client has a young marketer on the team that needs help understanding content strategy. That marketer especially needed help connecting individual content projects to the bigger picture.

So each month, Rachel will meet with the young marketer and help them see the forest through the trees. 

(By the way, Rachel has a great newsletter with “juicy content tips” that you can subscribe to.)

Rachel’s creativity in offering her content strategy expertise got me thinking of all the ways to structure a project.

So, today, I’m recapping the primary ways to structure freelance content strategy work. 

It’s important to recognize the moments a company needs a content strategy — there are more than you think.

So here’s the short answer to the question I opened with: A company needs a content strategy at first, and again whenever something changes. 

Read on to get the longer answer, with more context.

Content strategy, content marketing, content design, writing and editing…

These are all highly sought-after skills — especially if you’re a freelancer available for hire.

They’re also skills that must constantly adapt in a rapidly changing landscape (ChatGPT, anyone?).

As freelance content experts, it can be overwhelming to try and provide our services AND regularly learn and grow to boot.

Fortunately, there are some really smart minds out there sharing articles, newsletters, live streams, and courses for content folks like us.

This article outlines the people to follow in the content space. It also includes my perennially bookmarked articles on content strategy, content marketing, and/or content creation.

Enjoy!

There are countless ways to hold a workshop. Here’s mine.

I gather together key content stakeholders at the company for 2-4 hours. Together, we share our perspectives on the state of content at the business. 

My goal is to learn what is working, what isn’t, and what they’d like to change. 

I’m also trying to uncover misalignments — where people are thinking differently about something.

Why do I want to learn these things? They’ll inform my content strategy. It’s my favorite form of research.

While I am sharing my tools I use in content strategy projects here, it comes with a very corny, but very true caveat:

Your brain is the best tool you can bring to a content strategy project.

I know we’re all looking for that magical tool to make content strategy easier and more approachable. I’m here to tell you that you already have it.

This was the first week in January. While I am decidedly NOT in the camp of New Year’s resolutions, diets, or major overhauls — I was raring to go after a long time off. The week was, unsurprisingly, spent ramping up new clients and projects.

This was a busy week for me, but I recognize that “busy” is subjective. For me, I cap out at about 20 hours per week Monday-Thursday. 

Get answers to FAQs about building content strategies to grow your freelance business — without adding more work.