The Importance of a Marketing Content Planner
Content planners develop a strategy for publishing, creation, and distribution. They also need to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of a plan.
This type of content informs the public on the products and services provided by the company. It also helps the audience in solving problems and meet their needs.
A marketing content planner is a spreadsheet or it can be a third-party application. The difference lies in how you use it.
1. Identify Your Goals
Benjamin Franklin's famous quote "If you don't plan, you are planning for failure" is a true statement. Getting from a strategic vision to an efficient content marketing engine requires structure, workflow efficiencies and clear communication.
One of the most crucial steps to take in this process is determining your goals. Start with the high-level business goals or the SMART framework to make them more specific and achievable. marketing software online is also a great time to look over your existing content goals and make sure they still are in line with the current strategy.
Understanding your goals will help you to monitor the performance of each piece of content. This will help you determine what is working and what can be improved, allowing you make the necessary adjustments and improve your overall performance. This will ensure that you achieve your goals, and deliver quality content to your users.
2. Identify Your Audience
It is crucial to know who your audience is to develop content that is relevant, informative and effective. The best method to accomplish this is to conduct research and identifying the characteristics of your ideal customer personas. This can be accomplished by using surveys, data analyses and other methods to collect details about your customers.
You can then apply the results of your research to identify the content types that will be the most effective for you and your company. 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 start creating your content plan.
A tool for planning content can help you keep track of your marketing goals and ensure that the appropriate people are working on the right projects. It can also increase productivity by allowing teams to focus on the most important things and avoid distractions. It's easy to get started with a free Content Analysis Report from CopyPress today.
3. Choose Your Ideal Platforms
When creating digital content, it's important to tailor it to your preferred platform. Instagram users prefer visually appealing images, whereas TikTok users enjoy stylish short-form videos. Conducting some market research will help you identify your ideal users and their preferred platforms.
A marketing content planner can help you to plan all the steps required to convert your ideas and concepts into a final product. It will provide a framework to help you achieve your objectives and ensure that everyone in your team is on the same team.
Content planning tools like Monday and Kapost can help you with this. They allow you to create tasks and assign them to others, collaborate and monitor their progress on a single dashboard. Alternatively, there are more advanced tools like Wrike which allow for drop-down menu functionality and provide a general timeline of the project, an actionable table and a message board. Both come with a no-cost version and more comprehensive subscriptions for teams that need more advanced capabilities.
4. Find Your Content Types
A content planner is a fantastic tool for anyone, no matter if you're an influencer working alone or with a team of marketing professionals in a large company. It helps to keep you organized and ensures everyone is on the same place. It's an excellent tool for managing content for projects with more time to lead for projects like annual or quarterly campaigns.
A good content planner can assist you in determining the kinds of content you should create and how to execute them. This includes determining the format of your content, like blogposts, infographics or podcasts or case studies, or social media releases. This should include a schedule of when these pieces are expected to be produced and published.
You should also keep track of the metrics that relate to your goals for content marketing like engagement and traffic. This will allow you to analyze your results and make needed adjustments. Using a program like Ahrefs will help you understand what's working and what's not. It can also provide insights into your competitors' performance.
5. Determine the goals of your content
If you have clear objectives for your content this will help your team stay on track to achieve their goals. If it's increasing traffic to SEO by updating blog articles or increasing customer retention by organizing webinars, having clear objectives will help you reach your content marketing goals.
A good content planner can help you define your goals by laying out the workflow in a way that is organized and allows collaboration. It can also include tools such as image-generation software, prompts to convert text into images and social management software to make the process easier.
Apart from setting goals and establishing an expected workflow, a marketing content planner can help you identify your key performance indicators (KPIs). This will let you assess the effectiveness of your content and adjust in a way that will improve your marketing strategy. Some examples of measurable metrics include bounce rate websites, traffic to websites and social media shares and newsletter signups. These metrics should be tracked throughout the duration of your content's lifecycle, including production, publication, and distribution.
6. Identify Your Resources
If you don't have the resources needed to implement your content strategy, it's ineffective. During planning, make sure that you have enough money to complete all of the tasks you've outlined. This could include team or salary payments and production costs for the web space and materials, and paid marketing strategies.
Once you've got the budget in place, you can begin assigning tasks to different people. For instance, you could want to assign keyword research editing, copywriting, and design to different members of your team. Alternatively, you can also employ a tool like Sprout to make it easier of scheduling content across multiple platforms and channels.
Sprout lets you connect your social media accounts and schedule posts for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn corporate pages, as well as Google Business Profiles, all from a single dashboard. Sprout's tools for scheduling include an image library that streamlines asset management and saves time in the creation process.
7. Identify your Key Performance Indicators
If you're planning to invest a lot of time creating content, it's important that your marketing efforts pay off. You can improve your results by analyzing and identifying the most effective key performance indicators.
For instance, a typical KPI for content marketers is the number of return customers. This is a metric used to determine if your content can convert customers into customers and to pinpoint areas to improve your future campaigns.
It's also important to determine the kind of content you'll produce based on both your goals and the audience you intend to reach. This could include blog articles videos, infographics, or posts on social media. Once you've identified these different content formats, it's important to create a plan that includes the frequency and distribution method for each. This will ensure that the correct people are viewing your content at the right time.
8. Find Your Methods for Tracking
A marketing content planner is an essential tool for any business looking to improve their marketing efforts. It helps you keep track of your marketing goals as well as your audience and your resources, while providing you with the ability to assess your strategy's effectiveness over time.
A calendar for social media will aid you in planning your content and ensure it is consistently released. It also lets you plan ahead for any occasions or holidays that could affect the engagement of your followers.
A keyword content strategy is a powerful tool to improve your SEO strategies. It will help you identify the most relevant keywords for your content and increase your search engine rankings and visibility. It will also help you determine the effectiveness of your content strategy based on keywords over time.
9. Find Your Measurements
No matter if you decide to organize your content by keyword or theme your marketing strategy should be able to identify the most important metrics for each piece. This will help you determine how successful your content has been, so that you can continually improve it. A cloud-based marketing planer, such as Optimizely CMP can help team members to collaborate and create reports useful for future content decision-making.