“What do Content Strategists do?”

It was a great question asked by Scott Abel (@scottabel) The Content Wrangler, at his recent Content Strategy PDX presentation in Portland. The answers were as varied as the folks in the room, a diverse gathering of brand managers, community managers, social media gurus, agency marketers, and full-time content strategists.

The question asked that day isn’t that unusual from what is asked of most digital strategy practitioners on a regular basis, “What is it that you do?”

It is a tough question to answer for anyone who focuses on digital. Some do a little bit of everything: social, content, multimedia, analytics. Some do niche or integrated marketing campaigns.

It is still the norm for many small-to-medium companies in 2012 that digital is a plug-in or a “value-add” proposition. We are creatures of habit and analog habits die hard (just look at the recent controversy over NBC’s Olympics coverage and its high ratings). There has to be a point for a business where the pain is too great to keep doing things the same way.

Integrated is always the best strategy for any emerging market. It allows you to cover your bets while trends play out and a more certain path emerges.  However, at some point, adept business leaders see when something is here to stay and move there.

Digital is here to stay. The worst thing you can do is nothing, especially in the digital field.  The ever-shifting ground under your feet will swallow up the slow-moving. The experts can negotiate it.  That’s what digital strategists “do,” and it’s rarely the same thing for different clients.