THREE DISCIPLINES · ONE POINT OF VIEW

25 YEARS OF PRACTICE

Expertise.

A common-sense content framework I've used across very different businesses: ten stages, one master context document and a human read on everything that ships.

01 /

Content strategy

A real content function is a system. The posting schedule is the smallest visible part.

Beneath the posting schedule sit ten stages – goals, personas, topics, stories, formats, style, distribution, deploy, measure, experiment – each with its own supporting documents and its own success criteria. I designed and run it from a single master context document that holds the company's positioning, so every piece of work stays on brief without anyone having to ask. AI helps with research, first drafts and planning, and a human reads everything on behalf of the audience and rewrites until it lands.

Define goals

Strategic goals doc. Ongoing and campaign objectives.

Create personas

Customer personas doc. Challenges, motivations, demographics, mindset.

Topics

Master topics doc. 3–5 core categories, approved topics, competitor gaps.

Stories

Storytelling templates. Structure that keeps the human element in.

Content formats

Format specifications. Written, visual, interactive, audio.

Style + tone

Brand and style guide. SEO, AEO, GEO keyword library.

Distribution

Channel strategy guide. The PESO balance – owned, earned, shared, paid.

Deploy

Calendar template. Repurposing matrix. Cross-department content needs.

Measure

Metrics and reporting doc. 3–5 metrics per goal. Dashboard structures.

Experiment

Experimentation log. What we have tested, what we have learned.

ANCHOR

Master context doc.

Single source of truth across all ten stages. Without it, every step drifts.

Product and service descriptions
Brand personality
Key differentiators

Description of industry
Approved messaging
Company background and positioning

APPLIED AT

Sorted

£600K of sales pipeline supported by the content this system produces, per HubSpot pipeline reporting.

APPLIED AT

BankNXT

Page views grew from 1,193 to 46,116 – a 3,766% lift – with editorial standards intact.

APPLIED AT

FoodBev

Editorial work so central that the parent company renamed itself after the publication.

02 /

Internal and change communications

Internal communications shows its value when an organisation is changing fastest.

I plan internal and external communications together, so people hear news before or alongside the market, and I build channels that keep working when a business is under strain. The measure is whether people have what they need to do their jobs, and whether they trust the organisation enough to keep doing them well.

Fig. 1 · Internal and change communications at Sorted, 2024–2026.

CONTEXT → RESPONSE → OUTCOME

THE CONTEXT

Location Sciences Group acquired Sorted in 2024, and the company moved to AIM. The restructure that followed took out key marketing and product roles around me. Then the CEO left and wasn't replaced. I was still new to the business, and with one direct report I kept marketing, content and communications running through to January 2026.

ACQUISITION

Location Sciences Group

LISTING

AIM, as Sorted Group Holdings PLC

RESTRUCTURING

two programmes

MARKETING, CONTENT AND COMMS

run single-handed, one direct report

Two channels designed to do different jobs.

Savvy

AUDIO · PRIVATE · 2024–2026

A private podcast for a team that rarely met in person: company updates, leadership perspectives and change communications through restructuring. Every new joiner was invited on.

Episodes

787

Total downloads

Dedicated subscribers

72.7%

Activation rate

Ketchup

WRITTEN · WEEKLY, THEN MONTHLY

The written record, sent by email and Slack: company news, team spotlights and the dates that mattered. Weekly at first, then monthly.

Editions

OUTCOME

Employee engagement held at 80% in the People Ops survey, through two restructuring programmes and an AIM listing.

THE APPROACH

Manager talking points, all-hands messages, FAQs and market announcements, timed so staff heard news before or alongside the market.

FOODBEV MEDIA · 2008–2015

Coached the print magazine editors in podcasting, video and SEO copywriting as the company moved to digital-first. None of them reported to me.

IEDIGITAL · 2018–2022

Wrote the CEO's speeches and the emails telling staff about redundancies: change communications in the CEO's voice, years before Sorted.

THROUGHOUT

The principle is the same: internal communications is the foundation of external brand. When the inside is clear and trusted, the outside has something honest to amplify.

03 /

Content maturity

Strategic content has a defined job to do for the business.

Connecting content to revenue, culture, competitive positioning and long-term authority is the hard part. The gap between "we make content" and "our content does these things, here is the system that does them" is what I call content maturity. Closing that gap is where I've consistently had the most impact.

Three transformations on this page.

BEFORE → AFTER · A MATURITY MOVE IN EACH CASE

2008–2015

FoodBev Media

FROM

Standard trade-publisher website.

The sector's destination publication. The parent company renamed itself after it.

2015–2018

Backbase · BankNXT

FROM

Near-zero corporate blog.

Page views from 1,193 to 46,116 (+3,766%) in eight months. FT-cited. Breaking Banks syndication partnership.

2024–2026

Sorted Group

FROM

Fragmented channels. Strong visual brand, inconsistent written voice. PR and SEO with agencies.

8.65% LinkedIn engagement. Employee engagement held at 80% in the People Ops survey, through restructuring.

Fig. 2 · Diagnostic intake. The four questions I ask on day one.

QUESTION

What does the business need content to do?

WHAT THE ANSWER REVEALS

Marketing? Sales enablement? Recruitment? Trust? Each answer changes the system that comes next.

QUESTION

What exists, and is it working?

WHAT THE ANSWER REVEALS

An audit of channels, cadence, ownership and reach. Most companies have more content than they think – most of it is doing less than they think.

III

QUESTION

Where are the gaps between what is being communicated and what the audience needs to hear?

WHAT THE ANSWER REVEALS

Audience fluency before topic fluency. The gap is usually where the next twelve months of work lives.

QUESTION

What does success look like, and how will we measure it?

WHAT THE ANSWER REVEALS

Three to five metrics per goal. Quality over volume. Reporting that closes the loop into the experimentation stage of the framework.

WHAT I BUILD FOR

The questions are about system design. A good system keeps content coming long after the launch. I build what makes the next campaign unnecessary.

04 /

AEO and the return to authority

AN HONEST POINT OF VIEW FROM INSIDE THE WORK

AEO at scale is new territory. Most claims of expertise rest on SEO principles and a handful of early experiments. Mine too, and I think that's the honest place to be right now. Anyone selling certainty about answer engines is selling something.

I studied GEO and AEO with Semrush (certified May 2026).

What is becoming clear is that AI favours content that's authoritative, frequently cited, clearly structured and answers the question directly. These systems pattern-match on trust signals – which is why I think we're leaning back into traditional publishing values, where trust and authority were always the point. Visibility only helps if you're cited for the right things. What counts is definitional authority: being the source on a topic.

Structured formats earn citations by being closer to encyclopedia-entry logic than blog-post logic. I've run informal tests with Claude and Perplexity to watch how content actually surfaces, and they keep revealing the same thing – a return to the trust and authority that have always underpinned good writing.

GET IN TOUCH

Available now for senior roles in B2B technology.

Head of Content, Head of Communications or content strategy leadership at a scaling B2B SaaS or fintech company. Permanent by preference, and open to contract for the right brief. Remote-first, or hybrid in Leeds, York or Harrogate. I'll happily share my CV and references on request.

Get in touch Or connect on LinkedIn: in/shaunweston1 →