content-strategy

Trigger phrases

Phrases that activate this skill when typed to Claude Code:

• content strategy
• what should I write about
• topic clusters
• editorial calendar
• blog strategy

What it does

content-strategy is a Claude Code skill from Corey Haines’s marketing-skills repo. It turns Claude into a content strategist who plans around two distinct value modes — searchable (SEO-led, traffic-compounding) and shareable (perspective-led, distribution-dependent) — and refuses to lump them together. The skill activates when you mention “content strategy”, “what should I write about”, “topic clusters”, or “editorial calendar”.

The output of a session is a content plan: topic pillars, cluster maps showing pillar-to-cluster relationships, an editorial calendar with format mix (long-form, listicle, comparison, original research), and a distribution plan tied to each piece.

When to use it

Reach for it when:

• You’re publishing one-off posts and traffic isn’t compounding
• You want to know which topics to own vs. ignore
• You have an inherited content backlog and need to know what to keep, refresh, or kill

When not to reach for it:

• You need a single piece written — that’s copywriting, not strategy
• You haven’t defined an ICP yet; strategy without an audience is wishlist

Install

The skill is distributed via Corey Haines’s marketing-skills repo. Install via the repo’s recommended path — copy the content-strategy SKILL.md into your project’s .claude/skills/content-strategy/ directory, or use the repo’s plugin install if you’ve set it up.

Once installed, the skill activates on the trigger phrases above. The first time it runs, it will check for .agents/product-marketing-context.md (or .claude/product-marketing-context.md) — populating that file with your product context first dramatically improves output quality across all of Haines’s marketing skills.

What a session looks like

A typical session has three phases:

1. Pillar selection. What 3–5 topics are you willing to be the most-cited source on? The skill pushes back on ten pillars (you’ll cover none deeply) and on one pillar (no surface area for SEO).
2. Cluster mapping. For each pillar, the cluster pages — definitions, comparisons, how-to, listicles — that link back. The shape is hub-and-spoke, not a flat blog feed.
3. Calendar + distribution. Format mix per month, audit of existing content (keep / refresh / kill), and a distribution plan because shareable content without distribution is just sad SEO.

The discipline that makes it work: the searchable-vs-shareable split. Most content programs fail because they try to optimize one piece for both modes; the skill assigns each piece to exactly one mode and judges it on the right metric.

Receipts

Honest reporting on what content-strategy produces and where it has limits:

Where it works well:

• The pillar/cluster structure converts a vague backlog into a publishing system with internal-link logic baked in
• The audit (keep/refresh/kill) is often where the biggest traffic wins live — most teams skip it
• Format-mix recommendations stop the all-listicles trap

Where it backfires:

• Without keyword data the cluster suggestions can be aspirational; pair with seo-audit for grounding
• It assumes you can ship — strategy is cheap, execution is the wall

Pattern that works: trigger on a quarter boundary. The output is a quarter-shaped plan, and trying to use it as a 12-month plan loses fidelity fast.

Source and attribution

Originally written by Corey Haines. The canonical SKILL.md and any supporting files live in the content-strategy folder of his marketing-skills repository.

License: MIT. You can install, adapt, and redistribute the skill, with attribution preserved.

This page documents the skill from a practitioner’s perspective. For the formal spec and any updates, defer to the source repo.