Struggling to work out what to say on your social media posts, or in your email campaigns?
Fret not, because today I’m going to share with you how I put together a content plan for my business and my clients, so that we always know what to post, where to post and when to post for maximum impact on our desired call to action (CTA).
What is a content plan?
A content plan refers to a strategy for exactly what types of content you will post, when and to which outreach platforms: your website, email list, or via social media.
It is a direction for all the tangible media you create for your business and shares detail on format and messaging.
Using this guided plan, you will be able to create content quickly and easily every single week.
How do I start a content plan?
The easiest way to start your content plan is to refer directly to your annually updated marketing plan. If you haven’t already created one of these, then I suggest spending some time doing it, because it makes a big difference in understanding where your marketing should be leading your business this year and what goals it should be reaching.
What is the purpose of a content plan?
By laying out in detail what your content plan is, you should end up with 3 key things;
Clarity about the content to be produced for each of your outreach platforms
Create timely content monthly that gains the traction and CTA responses you were looking for
Time saved – knowing ahead of time exactly what content you need to produce, helps avoid staring at a blank screen and helps you achieve a higher workflow productivity.
When should I create a content plan?
I recommend planning month to month, by scheduling an afternoon each month where you plan your content in detail from your marketing plan. This allows you to create and schedule specific content on a weekly basis according to your daily, or weekly workload.
Over the years I have been creating marketing content I have tried lots of different methods, weekly planning, and creation on a quarterly basis. Here are why those methods did not work and why I ended up switching to monthly with better results.
Firstly, I tried weekly planning and creation and I found it wasted too much time. As my businesses got busy, having an afternoon each week where I would plan and create content for scheduling on my various platforms just simply took too much time. This resulted on my leaving out marketing altogether in the weeks where I got too busy to spare the time. I felt like each week I was continuously starting from scratch.
Planning quarterly on the other hand meant I wasted time creating a content plan that was not always fit for purpose when the time to post came. Let us take the Covid-19 lockdown situation as an example. My business took a big hit, as did most and ultimately in the space of a week I found I had to pivot my business in order to stay in business. Imagine if on top of that I had already spent time planning 3 months of marketing in detail, in advance? I would have wasted an incredible amount of time building a plan for content that was no longer needed.
A monthly content plan has helped me to create timely content for each of my outreach channels: my blog, my email list, and my social media. It has also allowed me time to reach out to influencers and bloggers for external marketing opportunities: interviews, guest blog posts and Facebook Lives to name a few. It also allowed me space each week just for creation, rather than thinking about what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it and then creating it.
Of course, in suggesting that monthly is a great option, you may feel differently about how you perceive this for your business practices, and I welcome discussion in the comments below.
What to include in your content plan
I always work with 4 basic steps to my monthly plan for content and they look something like this.
Refer directly to your marketing plan for your aims this month – if you are using my planner look at the Timeline of delivery section. This will give you a clear indication of what you should be promoting and what your direct CTA goals are going to be. You will also have a clear guide on styling and messaging from your Marketing plan too.
Define your 4 pieces of Pillar Content (also called Macro Content) – Pillar content is the main piece of content that you will be producing each week. These are usually long-form or complex pieces. It could be a blog post on your website, or a video.
Use your Pillar Content to break down into Micro Content – Micro content is the shorter hits of social posts, or email newsletters that are going to promote your pillar content, and align to a relevant product or service you are campaigning for leads on. You will need to create ideas (not full posts) for each day you wish to post on your social media and send your email newsletters.
Fill out your Monthly Content Planner with your Pillar and Micro Content pieces using each week to focus on a singular aim (or story) your Pillar content and product/service alignment is pushing. This keeps your audience along for the ride because we know that the power of repetition in CTA is more effective than mentioning something just once. Now of course that is not to say you should be literally repeating yourself, but the topic, or theme is certainly worth repeating.
Remember, whilst we are looking for a clear guide to what we want to create this month, we are not necessarily creating the minutia of the content itself.
Once I have my planner finalised, I have something to refer to when it comes to creating and scheduling content on a weekly basis… no more staring at a blank screen and wondering what to say!
Content Marketing Managers Top Tip - How do I manage weekly content creation?
On a weekly basis I spend about 4-5 hours creating my content. This is my Pillar and my Micro Content.
In my Asana diary (which is very simple to use) I have created individual time blocks to produce and schedule my content. I usually spend time on a Monday/Tuesday creating my pillar content in between client work, and a Wednesday creating and scheduling my Micro Content (email and social media), again between client work, or at the end of the day.
If I know ahead of time that I am running up to a busy period, or I have a bunch of client tasks and calls then I work on all my content building on a Friday. Now this may sound like there would be gaps in my content, if I switch from earlier in the week to later in the week, but the reality is that with a content plan I am able to create and schedule a week or so in advance, so it means that despite my workload I can remain consistent in my business marketing output. This is incredibly important, because the moment I lack consistency, is the moment I miss an opportunity to reach new people with my content or attract a new lead. It is also the moment where a competitor might post something that keeps them ‘top of mind’ in my ideal client’s day, instead of me.
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