Creating a content marketing plan doesn't have to be daunting. Here are some basic pointers to take on board and get you started. And remember there is no 'one size fits all' approach. Work with the understanding of what is important to both your organisation and your audience.
Your buying personas should already be identified and in place for your overall marketing strategy, but it is worth revisiting them with content generation in mind. Do you want to expand or refine your audience when it comes to content? It may be worth undertaking some additional research into ‘who’ you are reaching out to and fully get to grips with exactly what is valuable to them, what they read and what problems they need solving.
Look at your organisation’s overall customer journey too. How can you tailor content to the different stages of their journey that could help to inform, educate and impact decisions.
Reviewing what content your organisation has historically produced will be important for defining what is worth using moving forward. This includes everything from website to blog posts, thought leadership, social media, emails etc. Even if it hasn’t been closely monitored there will be some indications of whether it has worked or not. Anything that shows good performance is worth keeping and importantly refining and improving upon. Ditch what hasn’t. And be prepared to introduce new channels to experiment with.
What message do you want to get across? This should be aligned with the overall business objectives. Determine your tone of voice and keep it consistent across ALL content that your organisation delivers. Your messages and how you deliver them will drive the reputation of your organisation, and so it is important to take the time to work these through.
Brainstorm content ideas and encourage the whole business to contribute. Ask your customers what they would like to see generated. Find out what exactly is valuable to them. Not everything is going to be relevant or possible to execute all at once so create a knowledge bank that you can tap into at anytime. And keep updating, refreshing and adding to it. In this way you'll always have a resource on hand to back up content marketing efforts.
Once topics have been identified you will need to work out how to deliver and how frequently to do so. Select a mix of content channels [blog posts, social media, website, podcasts etc.]. Those that are already performing well for your business will be most pertinent but be prepared to experiment with others. Learn how to re-purpose your content across a variety of channels too. Chunk thought leadership down into individual blog posts, break up further for social media activity. Get creative and maximise your content creation efforts.
Do your keyword research and incorporate core ones in your copy to help increase reach. But be careful. It will be important not to litter your content with keywords for keywords sake. This will only serve to dilute the message, will be easily spotted by your audience for what it is and ultimately act as a complete turn off. Make sure keywords only enhance relevance and value.
Determining when you will create and deliver content will also be a key feature of being able to measure it.
Work with what is realistic for your business in terms of budget and resources as it will be important to maintain consistency in order to grow your audience. If you plan to blog weekly - make sure you deliver. Your audience will begin to expect it and look out for it.
Draw up a basic editorial calendar. It doesn't have to be complex or reach too far into the future. Key elements to include will be topic, author, type of content, delivery channels, completion and publishing dates. See below for what the CMI include in theirs.
And consider investigating the growing number of content marketing management systems that can help you with your planning, scheduling and monitoring of your content efforts.
A key element of your content plan. How are you going to make your content stand out and engage your target audience? Expectations these days are high when it comes to impact. You'll need to incorporate visual imagery, rich media and interactive elements if you're going to get ahead of the competition and keep your readers' attention.
When it comes to publishing you'll need to ensure that you are optimised across all platforms and that your content is easy to share via all major channels.
It can become prohibitively expensive to outsource content creation so spend time to look for tools that can help. There are plenty out there that are cost effective, have great UX and require little or no training.
And bear in mind that if you are looking for a one stop shop include in your criteria a platform that has a smart, granular, inbuilt analytics package.
87% of B2B marketers surveyed by Forrester say they struggle to produce content that truly engages their buyers.
Consider paid promotion. But not with a specific aim of driving sales but rather with the aim of attracting interest. A less pushy in your face 'buy, buy' buy' and more 'please read, this is interesting, you may learn something'. More and more marketers are aligning their content marketing efforts to their overall advertising campaigns. This helps ensure that their content reaches an already defined target audience. If valuable, relevant and engaging your content will be received well.
And finally don't forget to document how you plan to measure your content marketing efforts. Align your content metrics with those of your organisation's key performance indicators to ensure they match overall business goals.
Use tools with strong and insightful analytics packages. The more in-depth insight you can achieve the greater the learnings and scope for improvement. Look for tools that can provide you with specific page performance, engagement metrics (what does your audience interact with, what do they share) and the ability to track individual reader journeys.
Your content marketing plan needs to remain flexible. Be prepared to review and improve on a regular basis. Use what you learn from your content performance to do more of what works and strike out what doesn't. Make it a living document. And accessible to all those involved. And finally, don't forget ... keep asking 'why'.
Top five skill-sets missing from today’s content marketing teams: content creation; content marketing leadership/strategy; promotion; performance management/metrics orientation; subject matter expertise. [Source: Curata]
