A Retrospective How People Talked About Marketing Content Planner 20 Years Ago
The Importance of a Marketing Content Planner
Content planners develop a strategy for content creation, publication and distribution. They also have to evaluate and monitor the effectiveness of a strategy.
This type of content educates the audience about the company's products and services. It also helps the audience solve issues and meet their requirements.
A marketing content planner is a spreadsheet or it can be a third-party software. The difference lies in how you make use of it.
1. Determine Your Goals
The famous quote, frequently attributable to Benjamin Franklin although perhaps never spoken by him, holds the truth: "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail." To go from a strategic view to an effective content marketing engine requires a structured workflow, efficiencies in workflow and clear communication.
Setting goals is one of the most important steps to take in this process. You can either start with the most basic goals for your business, or you can make use of the SMART Framework to make them more specific. It's also a good opportunity to look over your current content goals to make sure they're still in the context of your current strategy.
Being aware of your goals will aid in monitoring how each piece of content performs. This will allow you to determine what is working and what can be improved, allowing you to make the necessary adjustments and improve your overall performance. This will ultimately ensure that you're meeting your goals and providing quality content to your viewers.
2. Identify Your Audience
Knowing your audience will enable you to create content that is relevant, effective and engaging. This can be accomplished through conducting research to discover the characteristics of your ideal customer personas. This can be done by using surveys, data analysis and other methods to collect data about your clients.
By analyzing the results of this research and the results of this research, you can determine the types of content that will be most effective for your business. This could include everything from blog posts to podcasts, social media posts, and webinars. Once you've determined which formats are most effective you can begin drafting your content strategy.
A tool for planning content can assist you in tracking your marketing goals and make sure that the appropriate people are working on the appropriate projects. It can also improve productivity by helping teams focus on what's most important and avoid distractions. CopyPress offers a free Content Analysis Report that you can download right now.
3. Identify Your Ideal Platforms
When creating digital content, it's important to adapt it to your ideal platform. Instagram users are seeking visually appealing content, while TikTok users enjoy short, fashionable videos. You can determine the platforms that your audience prefers by conducting some market research.
A marketing content planner will help you plan all the steps necessary to convert your ideas and concepts into a completed product. It will provide a framework to help you meet your objectives and ensure that everyone on your team is on the same page.
A content planning tool like Monday and Kapost can aid in this by allowing you to design tasks, assign them to others, collaborate and keep track of progress on one dashboard. There are also more sophisticated tools like Wrike that offer drop-down menus and provide overall project timelines, a table of actionable items and a message board. marketing content strategy of them offer the free version as well as more comprehensive subscriptions in case your team requires more advanced features.
4. Identify Your Content Types
A content planner is a great tool for anyone, no matter if you're an influencer on your own or a team of marketers in a large enterprise. It helps you stay organized and ensures that everyone is on the same place. It's also a great way to manage content for longer time-based projects, such as annual or quarterly campaigns.
A good content planner will help you identify which kinds of content to create and how to execute them. This includes determining what format your content should be presented in like blog posts, infographics, case studies, podcasts, or social media press releases. It should also include a timetable for when these pieces should be published and produced.
You should also monitor metrics related to your objectives for content marketing like traffic and engagement. This will enable you to examine your results and make adjustments. Ahrefs is a fantastic tool to help you determine what works and what doesn't. It can also give you insight into the performance of your competitors.
5. Find Your Content's objectives
If you set clear goals for your content this can 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 improve customer retention by organizing webinars.
A good content planner will help you define your objectives by laying out an organized workflow and allowing for collaboration. It could also include tools like image-generation software prompts for text-to-image, and social management apps to simplify the process.
In addition to setting goals and establishing an expected workflow, a content planner can help you identify your metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). This will allow you to assess the effectiveness of your content and adjust in a way that will improve your marketing campaign. Some examples of quantifiable metrics include bounce rate websites, traffic to websites and social media shares and newsletter signups. These metrics should be monitored throughout the content's lifecycle, including production and publication.
6. Identify Your Resources
If you don't have the resources to implement your content strategy, it's ineffective. When planning, make sure you have enough money to accomplish the tasks you've outlined. This can include team or salary payments production costs, web space and marketing tactics.
Once you have a budget, you can assign the responsibilities for each task. For instance, you could want to assign keyword research editing, copywriting, and design to different members of your team. Alternatively, Sprout can be used to automate the process of scheduling your content across various platforms.
You can connect your social media accounts using the Sprout tool and schedule posts for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn company pages and Google Business Profiles all from one dashboard. The scheduling tools of Sprout also have an image library to simplify asset management and save time when creating posts.
7. Find your Key Performance Indicators
It's important to ensure that your marketing efforts are worth it if you're spending many hours creating content. You can boost your performance by tracking and identifying the right key performance metrics.
For instance, the number of returning customers is a common KPI used by content marketers. This metric can be used to determine how well your content converts customers and to pinpoint areas to improve your future campaigns.
In addition, it is crucial to decide on the type of content you want to create based on your goals and your target audience. This could be posts on social media, blog articles, infographics, or videos. Once you've identified the various formats for your content and formats, you must develop a strategy for each one that includes frequency and distribution. This will ensure that your content is being seen by the most relevant people at the appropriate times.
8. Identify Your Methods of Tracking
A marketing content plan can be a valuable tool for any company looking to improve their marketing efforts. It can help you keep the track of your goals, audience and resources while allowing you to see how efficient your strategy has been over time.
A calendar for social media will aid you in planning your content and ensure it is regularly released. You can also plan ahead for holidays or events that could affect your followers.
A keyword content plan is an excellent method of optimizing your SEO strategies. It will help you find the best keywords for your content and improve your visibility and search engine rankings. It will also help you measure the effectiveness of your keyword content strategy over time.
9. Identify Your Measurements
Your marketing plan should help you identify which metrics are most important for each piece, regardless of whether you arrange your content based on theme or keyword. This will allow you to determine the success of your content and keep improving it. A cloud-based marketing content planner, like Optimizely CMP can aid in managing collaboration among team members and create reports that can be useful in making future content planning decisions.