When I first started working in content marketing 15 years ago, the scope of what that work entailed was relatively narrow: blog posts, website copy, email newsletters; maybe the occasional e-book or oddball infographic. With the TikTok-ification of the internet, short-form video became a table-stakes part of the mix.
Most of these assets lived squarely in marketing’s owned-and-operated channels. But sometime over the past decade, “content” stopped fitting neatly inside the marketing department. It’s spilled into every corner of the customer experience: product UI copy, customer support scripts, help-center articles, checkout flows, push notifications, and whatever buzzy new platform will inevitably debut next quarter.
The rise of AI Search represents another turning point. LLM and AI Search experiences often pull from authoritative and widely corroborated sources; brands with consistent, high-quality coverage tend to be cited more. It stands to reason that the more unified a message your brand delivers across every element of the digital ecosystem, the more likely it is that message will make it into AI-generated outputs.
As a result of all of the above, we’re seeing content career opportunities evolve. New roles like “Head of Content Experience” and “Director of Content Design” mark a shift in how organizations think about the choreography of brand storytelling across multiple channels. In the past, marketing teams focused on what to say and where to publish it — landing pages, campaign assets, maybe a few gated PDFs. Today, the mandate is more ambitious: Design the entire content journey so that every touchpoint feels frictionless.
Why Content Experience Matters
With so many platforms and content formats competing for customer attention, brands face a real consistency challenge. People want to feel like the same company that reeled them in during a short-form video ad is also the one answering their questions clearly in a help article or walking them through a checkout process.
While a cohesive brand voice isn’t necessarily a silver bullet for sales, it can make your brand feel more professional and trustworthy. Salesforce research has found that 69% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments. At the same time, trust in corporations is reaching all-time lows; nearly three-quarters (72%) of consumers trust brands less than they did a year ago.
In this climate, inconsistency can further chip away at confidence. Content experience is one of the levers brands can pull to counteract that.
Content Experience, Design, and Strategy: How Are They Different, and Where Do They Overlap?
Unlike content marketing, which often treats messaging as standalone assets, content experience treats content as infrastructure. It involves building the scaffolding that makes every interaction feel connected, from first click to task completion.
Here’s how the different roles tend to break down:
- Content Strategist: Sets the big-picture plan for what content to create, for whom, and why. They define voice/tone guidelines, editorial calendars, governance rules, and KPIs. A strategist might determine that the brand needs a library of onboarding tutorials, but they aren’t usually the ones crafting the microcopy inside the product.
- Content Designer: Works closely with UX and product teams to shape in-product copy and flows. They focus on clarity, accessibility, and task completion, writing for things like error messages, navigation labels, onboarding prompts, and help center articles — typically in the context of the interface.
- Content Experience Lead: Operates between strategy and design, with a systems lens. They ensure that content is consistent, discoverable, and adaptive across channels. This can include building modular content systems, implementing personalization logic, managing taxonomies, and coordinating delivery across web, app, email, and emerging platforms.
Unlike with traditional content marketing roles, content design and experience are not so much about producing more assets, but orchestrating existing ones into a coherent, user-friendly whole. The goal is to make sure that no matter where a customer encounters your brand — in an AI Search snippet, a push notification, or a complex product workflow — it feels like part of the same conversation.
These roles aren’t meant to work in silos; their real value shows when they collaborate across the full content lifecycle. A content strategist might partner with a content experience lead to ensure the high-level editorial vision translates into modular, reusable components that can live across multiple platforms.
That same experience lead might work side by side with content designers to embed those components into product flows and ensure they’re consistent with voice, tone, and accessibility standards. In mature teams, these roles often sit in a shared content or UX organization, but they also act as liaisons to marketing, product, and customer support. The collaboration is cyclical: Strategy informs experience, experience informs design, and design feedback helps refine strategy.
Applying the Mindset Without a Dedicated Hire
You don’t need a Head of Content Experience to start thinking like one. Even without a specialized team, small shifts can move your organization toward a more cohesive, user-first content experience.
Here’s a quick-start playbook:
- Audit your most important journeys
Map your top user tasks — whether that’s signing up for a trial, upgrading a plan, or finding help — across your site, docs, product UI, and support channels. Look for language gaps, redundant steps, or tonal mismatches that create friction or confusion.
- Treat content as a design component
Work with your design system or dev team to bake voice, tone, terminology, and content patterns into the same place you keep visual components. If those standards live in your CMS and design files, they’re easier to apply consistently.
- Create space for cross-functional reviews
Bring marketing, UX, and product teams into the same (virtual) room to critique real user flows. A quick “ad → landing page → trial → help doc” run-through can surface tone shifts and clarity issues that siloed reviews miss.
- Pilot fixes in high-impact areas
You don’t have to revamp everything at once. Try a small, visible project like:
- Launching a unified glossary so marketing, product, and support all use the same terms.
- Applying progressive disclosure in onboarding copy to reduce overwhelm and speed up activation.
- Give teams a cheat sheet
A single-page “language patterns” guide covering voice, tone, and terminology gives everyone a quick reference. When in doubt, they’ll have a shared source of truth.
While there’s a lot up in the air right now about the future of content marketing (and the careers in this space), there’s one consistency we can count on: New channels will keep emerging. AI will keep reshaping how people discover and evaluate brands. The best way to future-proof your message is to make sure it already works everywhere — and that’s exactly what content experience thinking delivers.
At Contently, we help brands put these principles into practice, from developing voice and tone guides to creating modular, multi-channel content systems that keep messaging consistent everywhere your audience meets you. Learn more about our services, including our AI Studio, here.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
- Do I need to hire all three roles — content strategist, content designer, and content experience lead?
Not necessarily. Many companies start by layering content experience thinking into existing roles. If you can’t staff all three, focus on cross-functional collaboration between marketing, UX, and product, and look for people who can work across silos.
- How is “content experience” different from just good UX writing?
UX writing focuses on the clarity and usefulness of in-product copy. Content experience zooms out to orchestrate how all content — in product, marketing, and support — works together, so it feels like one cohesive brand conversation.
- What’s the first step if my organization isn’t ready for a full content design or experience hire?
Start with an audit of your most important customer journeys and create a shared “language patterns” guide for all teams. Even small steps toward consistency can pay off quickly in trust, usability, and discoverability.
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