5 Things Every Marketer Needs to Think About When It Comes to Content Strategy

And yes, I learned most of these the hard way.

Let me tell you something. I've been creating content for over 12 years. Two thousand plus videos. Hundreds of podcast episodes. Blog articles I've lost count of. And if you'd told 2012 George that content strategy was going to be the thing that built his entire career, business, and life? He would have laughed, grabbed another pot of coffee, and gone back to doing everything wrong.

Because here's the truth: I didn't start with a content strategy. I started with chaos. I started sporadic. I started with what I call "plan A, plan B, plan C, and when those didn't work, plan M." Just jumping all over the place, never hitting the same spot twice.

I actually started my first business called Graphics for Worship. We designed images and videos for churches to use during worship and sermons. It was a great idea. I was genuinely good at it. And if I would have stayed consistent, if I would have had an actual strategy instead of being so dang sporadic, I've often wondered where that business would be today, especially with how massive multimedia has gotten in church services.

But I didn't stay consistent. I didn't have a strategy. I had enthusiasm and a Wi-Fi connection. And let me tell you, those two things alone will not build what you need them to build.

So here are the five things I wish somebody had grabbed me by the shoulders and told me about content strategy before I spent years learning them the hard way.

1. Know Your Humans Before You Create a Single Piece of Content

I said humans, not "target audience." Not "buyer personas." Not "ideal customer profiles." Humans. Real, breathing, struggling, hoping, frustrated humans who are trying to figure something out.

Here's where most marketers mess this up (and yes, I'm raising my own hand). They sit down, open a blank document, and ask, "What should we write about?" Wrong question. The right question is, "Who are we writing FOR, and what keeps them up at 2 AM staring at the ceiling?"

If you don't know the answer to that second question, close the laptop. Go talk to your sales team. Go read support tickets. Go sit on a strategy call and just listen. And I mean really listen, not the "I'm waiting for my turn to talk" kind of listening, but the "listen with your heart, not just your ears" kind.

Your content strategy doesn't start with keywords. It doesn't start with a content calendar. It starts with empathy. It starts with deeply understanding the humans you're trying to help.

Because here's what I've learned: when you create content for everyone, you create content for no one. When you create content for that one specific human who's sitting there going, "I just need someone to explain this to me like I'm not stupid," now you've got something powerful.

2. Consistency Is the Superpower Nobody Talks About

This is the one that changed everything for me. And I mean everything.

After Graphics for Worship fizzled out (along with about six other sporadic ideas), I finally learned the lesson. When I started George B. Thomas LLC and was thinking about going into the agency world, my brain immediately went to its old tricks: "I'm gonna do podcasting. I'm gonna do video editing. I'm gonna do HubSpot. I'm gonna do it ALL." And then, for the first time, I caught myself. I was like, "Yeah, I'm not gonna be able to be consistent on all of that."

So I focused. And I got consistent. Painfully, boringly, unsexy consistent.

A tutorial a day. Then three a week. Then seven a month. A podcast episode every single week. Week after week after week. 272 episodes of the HubCast. On the input side, I was consistently educating myself through HubSpot Academy day in, day out. On the output side, I was consistently teaching what I was learning.

And here's what happened: without that superpower of consistency, we wouldn't be sitting here. I would not have the brand I have. I would not have the life I have. More like a crock pot, less than a microwave. Good things take time. But they only take time if you actually show up and do the work, consistently, even when nobody's watching and nobody's clapping.

So when you're building your content strategy, stop asking, "How do we go viral?" Start asking, "What can we commit to doing every single week for the next two years without stopping?" That's where the magic lives. And honestly? It's the most boring answer in marketing. Which is exactly why almost nobody does it.

3. Educate First, Sell Never (Okay, Sell Rarely)

My buddy Marcus Sheridan taught me this one, and it rewired my entire brain.

I remember sitting on the couch with my laptop late one night, and my brain traveled back to when Marcus would tell the story of him coming home at night and writing blog articles and creating content and learning what inbound marketing was. He had no idea what that change would make to his life or who he would become through the things he was doing in the evenings with that extra effort.

And I realized I was doing the same thing. I was giving myself a future gift. I didn't know what that gift looked like yet, but this wasn't time I was wasting. It was purposeful based on a passion.

Here's the principle Marcus drilled into my skull: there is no secret sauce. Give people everything. If someone can fix their problem from a free tutorial you made, that's a win, not a lost sale. That sounds counterintuitive, right? Every marketing bone in your body is screaming, "But if I give away the answer, why would they hire me?"

Because trust. That's why.

When you educate generously, when you answer the questions your competitors are too scared to answer (yes, even the ones about pricing, problems, and comparisons), you become the most trusted voice in the room. And when those humans are ready to buy? They're not Googling your competitors. They're calling you. Because you were the one who helped them for free when everybody else was gatekeeping the good stuff.

Growth should be shared, not gate-kept. Build your content strategy on that foundation and watch what happens.

4. Build a System, Not Just a Calendar

Here's where the "doing" gets real. Most marketers think a content strategy is a spreadsheet with dates and topics on it. Cute. But a calendar is not a system. A calendar tells you WHAT to publish and WHEN. A system tells you WHY you're publishing it, WHO it's for, HOW it connects to everything else, and WHAT happens after someone reads it.

Think of it like this. Your content strategy needs three layers:

Layer 1: The Why Layer. Every piece of content should connect back to a business goal and a human need. Not "we need to post three times a week because someone on LinkedIn said so." More like, "Our prospects consistently ask this question during sales calls, and if we answer it thoroughly in content, we shorten the sales cycle and build trust before we ever get on a call."

Layer 2: The Connection Layer. Your content shouldn't be a pile of disconnected blog posts floating in the internet void. It should be an interconnected ecosystem. Pillar pages that go deep. Cluster articles that support them. Internal links that guide humans from one insight to the next. Every piece of content should have a "where do they go next?" answer baked right into it.

Layer 3: The Action Layer. What happens after someone reads your article? If the answer is "nothing, they just leave," your system is broken. Every piece of content needs a logical next step. A related resource. A helpful tool. A conversation starter. Not a hard sell, but a clear path forward.

There's a place where good ideas go to die. It's called the meeting where everyone agreed it was a great idea, and no one did anything about it. Your content strategy needs a system that turns ideas into published work, consistently. Execution is king.

5. Stop Chasing Metrics and Start Chasing Meaning

I'm gonna get a little philosophical on you here, but stick with me. It's worth it.

For years, I chased the metrics. Page views. Subscriber counts. Download numbers. Social shares. And look, metrics matter. Math is math. You need data to know what's working and what isn't. I'm not telling you to throw your analytics dashboard in the trash.

But I am telling you this: if your content strategy is built entirely around "how do we get more traffic," you're building on sand.

Here's what I've learned about significance versus success. Success is about personal achievement, the numbers, the awards, the vanity metrics that look great on a slide deck. Significance is about making a difference that outlasts you. And here's the kicker: success comes WITH significance, not the other way around.

The content that performed best for me, the tutorials that built my brand, the podcast episodes that changed lives, the blog posts that people still reference years later, none of them were created because I was optimizing for a keyword. They were created because a real human had a real question, and I genuinely wanted to help them find the answer.

Does that mean you ignore SEO? No. Does it mean you skip keyword research? Of course not. It means you start with the human problem, create something genuinely helpful, and THEN optimize it so the right humans can actually find it. Heart first, then head. Not the other way around.

The Bottom Line

Content strategy isn't complicated. But it is hard. Not because the concepts are difficult, but because the execution requires the one thing most marketers don't want to hear: patience, consistency, and genuine care for the humans you're serving.

Know your humans deeply. Show up consistently (even when it's boring). Educate generously. Build systems that connect the dots. And chase meaning over metrics.

I went from a sporadic, unfocused content creator who lost a business because he couldn't pick a lane, to someone who built an entire career, brand, and agency on the back of consistent, human-first content. And trust me, if this happy, helpful, humble, high school dropout can figure it out? You absolutely can too.

Now stop reading about content strategy and go create something genuinely helpful. Somebody out there needs exactly what you know. Don't keep it to yourself.