5 tips for better content planning

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As an online business owner, you know that content marketing and blogging  is one of the best tools you have. It drives traffic to your websites. It provides your audience / potential customer with the value and information they seek and builds trust.  It also helps you market your business, products or services, it builds and adds to your reputation. 

Bill Gates coined the Phrase “content is king” back in 1996, he’s not wrong. Good, strong content is essential for online marketing success. You can achieve better success if you take the time to plan your content.

What Is Content Planning?

Content planning is simply the process of taking a look at your editorial calendar and deciding what to write and where to publish it. Content planning involves a few primary criteria:

• When will you publish the content?
• Where will you publish it?
• What will you write about?
• What’s the purpose of the content?
• What are your keywords?
• How can you repurpose the content?

You’ll also want to consider how far ahead you want to plan your content for. Many online business owners take a tiered approach. They plan large content projects for the entire year, over on Arrow Blog I have a years worth of blog posts in the system. Another example would be to publish a report each month. In this scenario you would  look at your content on a quarterly or monthly basis to measure it’s effectiveness.

If you don’t plan your content or are struggling to plan it effectively, consider the following tips:

• Use a calendar that gives you a big picture and you can write on.

A paper desk calendar is a great planning tool. You can write your content ideas in pencil for easy modifications. Then, if you prefer electronic organization, you can transfer the paper plan to your Outlook or e-calendar.

• Plan how you’ll integrate your content into your overall online marketing strategy.

For example, you could decide that in March you’re going to publish ten articles on article directories. You’ll also want to make sure this content ties into any season or holiday.

• Ensure your content supports any new products or services.

Make sure your content has a purpose. It may be simply to drive traffic to your website. Or it may be to drive traffic to a sales page or increase your opt-ins. Begin with the end goal in mind.

• Leave room for change.

The best content plans leave room for inspiration. The greatest ideas often come out of the blue. If you’re a stickler for your plan and don’t allow room to add your content inspiration into the mix, then you’re missing out.

• Remember to take a look at how you can re-purpose your content.

It’s not only a great way to get the most return on investment, it can help fill content gaps.

When you plan your content, make sure you’re looking at both the macro and micro picture. Make sure you look ahead and take the entire year into consideration. At the same time, plan your content right down to the keywords and topics.

Planning your content for the entire year may take a day or two to accomplish but it’ll save a lot of time over the course of a year. Instead of wondering what topic you’re going to write about, you’ll have the answers all worked out.

Best of all, your content will fit with your other marketing efforts to create a comprehensive business growth plan.

What are your tips for content planning?

Sarah