Content Strategy Deck

About this template

Getting a quarterly plan approved

Ten slides for getting next quarter’s content plan approved. The flow runs diagnosis, then fixed topics, then a current-versus-revised comparison, which suits a plan derived from numbers you already have rather than a strategy written from scratch. Keep long artifacts such as an editorial calendar or a keyword list out of the slides and distribute them as a sheet; only the summary belongs here.

Only two body slides are yours to fill

The agenda on slide 2 has five lines – current state, topic pillars, current content versus the revision, key metrics, trend – and every one of them has a slide behind it. The first two own divider-plus-body pairs (slides 3-4 and 5-6); the other three are the comparison slide 7, the metrics slide 8 and the chart on slide 9. So the only freely writable body slides are 4 and 6. If you must also cover audience definition, channel mix or the publishing schedule, duplicate the 3-4 pair and add the matching agenda line. To keep the deck at ten slides, finish the story inside the five lines you already have.

• Slide 4, current state, answers where we are now. It ships with “148 posts over 12 months”, “the top 10 pieces account for 62% of views”, and “23 assets worth republishing”. That 62% line is the evidence for narrowing your topics, so it must carry your own data.
• Slide 6, topic pillars, answers what we will publish next quarter. It ships with a 40 / 35 / 25 split across practical guides, customer stories and industry commentary. Percentages alone are never honoured after approval – attach an owner and a piece count to each pillar.

Writing an action item

“Publish more content” cannot be approved or verified. Use a fixed shape: what, how much, who, by when, judged by what.

• e.g. six customer stories, one per week, owner J. Kim, by March, judged by inquiry conversion above 1.5%
• e.g. replace the CTA on the ten most-viewed posts by mid-February; click rate from 0.8% to 1.5%
• e.g. recut 12 of the 23 reusable assets into short video, reassess on saves after four weeks

Metrics and channel bars

The metric tiles on slide 8 ship with 148 posts a year, a three-times-a-week cadence, 2 minutes 30 seconds average dwell time, and 23 reusable assets. All four measure output or consumption time; not one is a cost figure. If budget is on the table, swap one tile for cost per piece or cost per session, because a plan that only raises volume is hard to approve. Slide 9 compares blog 86, short video 142, newsletter 37, community 55 – a channel comparison, not a time series. Short video has the longest bar, but the conclusion flips depending on whether that axis is posts, views or conversions, so state the basis on the slide. Drawing it in conversions makes the budget argument much clearer.

What sinks a plan in review

• Comparing channels on traffic alone, which pushes budget toward high-impression, low-conversion channels.
• Listing pillars with no owner, so nothing starts after the meeting.
• Leaving the targets on slide 7 (3% save rate, 35% search traffic) unjustified. Getting there from today’s 0.8% and 12% is the substance of this talk; if the targets are not set yet, keep the left column and turn the right into three lines of direction.
• Presenting slide 7’s shipped contrast as is – three product posts a week on the left, one deep guide plus two news posts on the right. That contrast declares a change of cadence, so unless you replace it with your own schedule it also contradicts the cadence tile on slide 8.