Content planning is the process of creating a content production plan of what content you’ll create, how it will be created, when it will be created, and where you’ll publish and distribute it.
The entire process can be broken down into 12 content planning tips.
1. Assess Your Goals
The first step you need to take is to figure out what you want to accomplish with your content. What do you want your content to achieve?
Every company’s goals will be different. You may have one goal or multiple goals that you work on simultaneously.
Common business goals for content that you can consider include:
- Increased brand awareness
- Drive traffic
- Improve brand authenticity
- Conversion
- Higher page rankings
2. Create a Buyer Persona
Buyer personas enable you to comprehend the pain points and desires of your readers better. This empowers you to do a more effective job of appealing to those particular wants with your content.
Most companies create one to three buyer personas. The buyer persona should cover the age range, sex, habits, values, employment, and pain points of your ideal customer.
An example of a buyer persona is:
Tiffany is a 27-year-old influencer living in a big city. She shops on a daily basis, both online and in person. She values good friendships and has a vast social network. She struggles with finding new products to promote on her social media channels.
All you need for each buyer persona is a few, succinct lines that sum up the person’s demographics and pain points.
3. Choose Your Brand Voice
Everywhere that readers interact with your business, the brand voice should be consistent. Whether they view an Instagram post, a Facebook post, or read one of your blog posts, it needs to read as if it came from your company.
A brand’s voice is like a personality for your business. It includes tone, point of view, and message. For example, your brand voice might be formal, and in the first person.
WriterAccess makes it simple for businesses to direct brand voice when you place a content order. You simply check off what brand voice you want the writer to create content in. Once you decide on your brand voice and you’ve ticked all the appropriate checkboxes, you can save your order as a template.
That way, all your future WriterAccess orders will automatically have those boxes checked.
4. Conduct Competitor Analysis
Since the dawn of commerce, companies have been curious about what their competitors are doing. Before the digital age, a business might have sent someone to a competitor’s store to see how they attract customers.
Now, there are lots of online tools to accomplish the same feat. Competitor analysis lets you kind of leapfrog ahead so you can quickly assess what others are doing and decide if you want to do something similar.
5. Create a Content Calendar
Next, create a content calendar. You can do this in Excel or on a sheet of paper. A content calendar is just a list of future content that you are thinking of publishing. It’s not written in stone.
You can edit it as you go along and learn more about which kinds of content your readers are most engaged with. Content calendars help you stay organized and in control.
6. Research Keywords
Keywords offer insights into your readers, offering crucial information such as what they desire and why they desire it.
Typically used for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing, including the right keywords in your content may have a significant impact on your business’s performance.
The keywords in your content tell search engines about your content, which influences how your content appears in search results.
Three very good keyword research tools are:
7. Assemble Tools
Content planning can be a complex process. This guide will help you with each step, but you will also want to assemble some tools to make things easier. One of them addresses the question of where you’re going to get the content. For high-quality written content, you can consider WriterAccess.
On this platform, you can order as much content as you need, using content briefs that you design yourself. Other tools you’ll need include:
- stock photo images
- photo editing software
- website SEO tools
8. Organize Workflows
A workflow is like an operating manual. It lays out what will happen, when it will happen, and in what order it will happen.
It’s worth spending time organizing your workflows so that you don’t have to think about it every time.
Here’s an example of a simple workflow:
- Order content from WriterAccess
- Review and approve content
- Publish content to blog
- Monitor content performance
9. Build a Content Distribution Plan
Once you’ve published your awesome content, you want to make sure it gets the attention it deserves. This is where your content distribution plan comes into play.
Ideas for distributing your content include posting it to LinkedIn, sharing it on Pinterest and Instagram, making videos about it on TikTok and YouTube, and mentioning it on forums.
10. Measure The Results
After you’ve published and distributed your content, you’ll want to measure results to see how much traction it’s getting online.
An easy way to do this is with Google Analytics, a free tool. With this, you can see what the bounce rate is on the content page, where visitors are located, and what behaviors they took on your site, among many other useful features.
11. Be Flexible
Based on what you learn about your content’s performance on Google Analytics, you should be flexible about your content in the future. Possible adjustments might be to publish longer-form content, content written from a different angle, or content using different keywords.
As audiences change, you need to be changing right along with them. A content plan is never set in stone. It should grow and change according to the changing needs.
12. Be Consistent
Finally, be consistent with your content in terms of your publishing schedule. For instance, if you have a newsletter that you send to your subscribers, send it on a consistent basis. Avoid posting sporadically. Both your readers and search engines look for consistency with new content.
The more you do content planning, the easier it will become.
In the end, these content planning tips are all about turning content creation into an actionable process.
To make things even easier, get yourself a free trial at WriterAccess, where you can create your own business content templates for your writers.
