Why content orchestration is the strategic advantage you have and can’t ignore in 2026
The appearance of AI Overviews has turned a lot of B2B marketing heads, but before rushing to create content solely to appease AI Overviews and LLMs, Google’s Danny Sullivan has sent a clear message that should give every content professional pause for thought: Google and its engineers insist that “content written for humans” remains the focus of their ranking systems, and tactics designed solely for SEO or AI visibility may yield temporary gains at best, but cause more damage to audience trust.
The rules of visibility and engagement are evolving fast. If marketers are still thinking about content as isolated pieces – blog posts, infographics, social posts, white papers – they’re missing a bigger transformation that’s underway. Which brings me to Aristotle. “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” so said the great classical philosopher, pre-dating AI Overviews by a few thousand years! In marketing narratives, fragmented content only creates fragmented understanding. In contrast, well-structured, strategically connected content strengthens authority, credibility, and message consistency.
2026 is the year to stop chasing your AI tail
So it’s time for marketing pros to sit up and take note: 2025 may have been the year where everyone experimented with AI but the results were underwhelming when every brand’s content started to sound the same! It’s not just about content creation anymore. It’s about how that content flows across teams, systems, and audiences in a unified, strategic way. It’s about strategic content orchestration!
From chaos to cohesion: content orchestration 101
At its core, content orchestration is the discipline of coordinating the full lifecycle of content, from planning and production through to publishing, distribution, and optimisation. It brings structure to what might otherwise be a fragmented ecosystem of tools, teams, and channels.
Unlike content operations, which focuses on execution of workflows, approvals, and tactical assets, content orchestration is about integration and strategic alignment across the business. Operations make sure the work gets done — orchestration makes sure the right work gets done in the right way, at the right time, for the right audience.
- Evergreen content: Core stories are created and broken down into reusable pieces – snippets, stats, visuals, quotes, that can live on a company website, in someone’s LinkedIn carousel, or can be used to get ahead of timely trendjacking opportunities.
- Zero-in on a captive audience: Stop treating social or search as afterthoughts. Design for zero-click visibility from the start. The trick to perfecting zero-click content for B2B marketers lies in repurposing content and shaping it to fit across multiple channels to reach a wide range of audiences across different platforms.
- Governance with teeth: Yes AI tools can be trained on editorial and brand styles but it doesn’t prevent people from writing bland, copycat content. Style is more than compliance, it’s also curation and discernment of quality. It’s important to define what AI can and can’t touch. Make oversight real with the introduction of AI policies.
- Look beyond the vanity metrics: Track outcomes that move the needle instead of vanity metrics such as counts, UVPMs, and impressions that look good on paper. The truth is some metrics just aren’t as important as they look and chasing high engagement won’t always get you the results you’re after. What’s on the surface may look large, but organizations just need to know where and what to look for — information such as audience breakdown by industry and geography will be a better measure of success and help inform future decisions.
Phased approach
CMI recently shared a helpful blueprint on how companies can take a phased approach to build momentum. It breaks down content orchestration into three key phases for a 12-month campaign, starting by establishing goals and existing material, then implementing across five cornerstone themes, then refining from there based on performance:
Phase 1: Clarity (the next 60 days)
- Define 3–5 editorial themes tied directly to business priorities
- Redesign intake around problems to solve—not “assets” to produce
- Audit the top 50 assets and tag them: reuse, revise, or retire
- Document an AI policy with clear guardrails and approvals
Outcome: Shared focus, less clutter, and a clear definition of success.
Phase 2: Build the system (90-120 days)
- Select five cornerstone stories and break them into modular content kits
- Create zero-click versions (snippets, summaries, visuals) for easy distribution
- Focus on the metrics that matter such as share of voice, website traffic, and sentiment analysis, which can help teams gauge the impact of campaign efforts
Outcome: Fewer one-offs, smoother workflows, and smarter content decisions.
Phase 3: Scale and prove (for the rest of the year)
- Expand your modular library and retire anything that doesn’t fit the system
- Run quarterly reuse sprints to extend high-performing ideas across channels
- Publish an internal State of Content to show what worked, what didn’t, and what’s stopping
- Continuously train AI tools and editors on proven patterns and performance
The result is a content system that scales, evidence that it’s working, and one that serves target audiences and supports business goals.
Hannah Watson is PR Lead – Analytics at IBA International.
