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What is a content strategy? A content strategy reveals who the end users are, the goals they are pursuing and what tasks they must do to reach the goals. The content strategy explicitly describes what type of information end users need to do the tasks, which gives us the content to include and not include in a manual and how to organize it to make content searchable. A content strategy shall answer a number of questions (for example, open the document via link "information design questions" On http://www.sesam-info.net/planning.htm). The answers are sometimes referred to as the information model.

The content strategy shall also deal with areas such as metadata, reuse strategy, creation and release processes, publishing mechanisms, content ownership and responsibility, tools etc.

Let us elaborate two types of content creation organizations within the technical communication domain: Explicit and implicit organizations.  In the implicit organization there are no content strategy written down. Each member (technical writer, SME etc) has their own view on what content they believe end users need. In the best of worlds these views are aligned without the members having discussed it. In other implicit organizations an information designer has taken the role to plan and design the content (together with the team or not). But the strategy and principle that the information designer is following may not be communicated or understood by the technical writers or SMEs. So the information designer has to be consulted every time a new manual is developed or a macro content change is proposed in an existing manual. In explicit organizations the strategy and principles are written down and communicated.