The Importance of a Marketing Content Planner
Content planners are accountable to develop a vision of content creation, publication and distribution. They also have to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of a plan.
This type of content informs viewers about the services and products that the company offers. It also assists the audience to solve issues and meet their requirements.
A marketing content planner is a spreadsheet or it could be a third-party application. The difference lies in how you utilize it.
1. Set Your Goals
Benjamin Franklin's famous quote "If you don't prepare, you're planning for failure" is a true statement. The structure, efficiency of workflow and clear communication are necessary to transform a visionary strategy into a highly efficient content marketing engine.
The process of identifying your goals is one of the most crucial steps to take in this process. You can either start with a high-level goal for your company or utilize the SMART Framework to make them more specific. It is also a good time to review existing content goals and make sure they still align with current strategy.
A clear understanding of your goals will also aid in monitoring how each piece of content performs. This will help you identify what is working and what needs improvement which will allow you to make necessary adjustments and improve your overall performance. This will ensure that you are reaching your overall goals and delivering quality content to your audience.
2. Identify Your Audience
It's important to know who your audience is to develop content that is relevant, informative and efficient. This can be done by conducting research to determine the characteristics of your ideal customer personas. This can be accomplished by using surveys, data analyses, and other methods to collect information about your clients.
You can then use the results of your research to determine the types of content that are most effective for your business. This can include everything from blog posts and social media posts to webinars and podcasts. Once you've determined which formats will be most effective, it's time to begin creating your content strategy.
A content planning tool can help you keep on top of marketing goals and make sure that the right people work on the appropriate projects. It can also increase productivity by helping teams focus on the most important things and avoid distractions. It's simple to start by downloading a no-cost Content Analysis Report from CopyPress today.
3. Find Your Ideal Platforms
It is crucial to tailor your digital content to the platform you prefer. Instagram users want aesthetically pleasing visuals, whereas TikTok audiences enjoy trendy short-form videos. You can discover your target audience's preferred platforms by conducting some market research.
A marketing content planner will help you plan all the steps required to turn your ideas and concepts into a completed product. It will give you a structure to help you achieve your goals and ensure that everyone in your team is on the same page.
A tool for planning content such as Monday and Kapost can assist with this by allowing you to design, assign tasks and collaborate with others, and keep track of progress on one dashboard. There are other more advanced tools, such as Wrike, which offer drop-down menus and provide an actionable table, a message board, and a general project timeline. Both come with a free version and more comprehensive subscriptions for teams that require more advanced capabilities.
4. Find Your Content Types
No matter if you're an individual influencer or a large marketing team, a planner for content can help you keep track of your ideas and ensures everyone is on the same page. It's also a great tool to manage content for longer lead-time projects like annual or quarterly campaigns.
A good content planner will help you identify which kinds of content to create and the best way to create them. This includes determining what format your content should be like blog posts, infographics case studies, podcasts, or social media press releases. It must also include a timeline to determine when these pieces need to be published and produced.
You should also be keeping track of the metrics that relate to your content marketing goals, such as traffic and engagement. This will enable you to review your results and make necessary adjustments. Ahrefs is a great tool to help you determine what is working and what isn't. It can also provide insights into your competitors' performance.
5. Determine Your Content Goals
If you establish clear objectives for your content this will help your team remain on track to reach their goals. A clear set of objectives will help you achieve your content marketing goals, whether it's to increase SEO traffic by enhancing blog posts or to increase retention of customers by organizing webinars.
A professional content planner can assist you establish your goals by laying out the workflow in a way that is organized and allows collaboration. It could also include tools such as image-generation software, prompts for text-to-image and social management applications to streamline the process.
Aside from setting goals and creating an expected workflow, a content planner can assist you in identifying your key performance indicators (KPIs). This will allow you to monitor the effectiveness of your content and adjust to improve your campaign. Bounce rate, website traffic and social media shares are all examples of metrics that are quantifiable. These metrics should be monitored at all stages of the lifecycle of content including production and publication.
6. Identify Your Resources
A well-thought-out content strategy is useless without the resources to make it happen. When planning, ensure that content writing software tools for seo have enough budget to complete the tasks you've laid out. This can include salary or team payments, production costs as well as web space and marketing tactics.
Once you've got the budget in place, you can begin assigning responsibilities to each job. You could assign various employees to do keyword research, copywriting and editing as well as design. Alternately, you could employ a tool like Sprout to make it easier of scheduling content across various channels and platforms.
You can connect your social media accounts to the Sprout tool and schedule posts to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn company pages and Google Business Profiles all from one dashboard. The scheduling tools of Sprout also have an image library that can simplify asset management and save time in the process of creating.
7. Find your Key Performance Indicators
It's important to ensure that your marketing efforts are worthwhile if you're going spend lots of time writing content. Identifying and tracking the right key performance indicators can help you determine the effectiveness of your content and boost your performance over time.
For instance, a popular KPI for content marketers is the number of returning customers. This metric can be used to determine if your content is converting customers to you and to determine areas to improve your future campaigns.
In addition, it is crucial to determine the type of content you'd like to develop based on your goals and the audience. This could include blog articles videos, infographics, or social media posts. Once you've identified these different content formats, it's important to develop a strategy that includes frequency and distribution methods for each. This will ensure that your content is noticed by the most relevant people at the appropriate times.
8. Find Your Tracking Methods
A marketing content planner is a valuable tool for any business seeking to improve their marketing strategy. It lets you keep the track of your goals for marketing as well as your audience and your resources, while providing you with the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy over time.
A social media content calendar can help you determine when your posts are scheduled to go live, which helps ensure that your content is released consistently. You can also prepare for holidays and events that could affect your followers.
A keyword content strategy is a powerful tool to improve your SEO strategies. It can help you identify the right keywords for your content, which can increase your search engine rankings and visibility. It can also help you evaluate the effectiveness of your content strategy based on keywords over time.
9. Determine Your Measurements
Whatever your preference, whether you opt to organize your content by keywords or themes the marketing plan you create should be able to assist you in identifying the most important metrics for each piece. This will allow you to assess the effectiveness of your content so that you can continue to improve it. A cloud-based marketing content planner, such as Optimizely CMP can make it easier to manage collaboration between team members and create reports that can be useful in making future decisions regarding content planning.