Content marketing planning can be a chore if you aren’t already frequently posting content to either your website or social media. But once you get a content plan started, you’ll be thankful you did! Check out the tips below to help you with your content plan:

1. Set marketing goals

Not only an important tip, but also an important place to start because if you launch straight into posting without planning, it is like ‘putting the cart before the horse’! Setting marketing goals is crucial for any business but also plays a part in content marketing planning. You may find our packages helpful for setting your marketing goals. Your marketing goals will give you a clear direction of how you want to set out your content, what value you want to gain from the content that you post as a business and how you will track and measure success. 

2. Who is your target audience?

Figuring out who your target audience is will help you ensure your content appeals to your audiences needs and wants. If you have created a marketing plan, then you may already know who your target audience is, if you’re unsure then check out our packages and book a chat with us. 

3. What are you competitors doing?

Another good place to start with your content marketing planning journey is research into what your competitors are doing. Now that it is so easy to see what our competitors are doing online, it can help us stay one step ahead and differentiate ourselves from what they are doing. Seeing what your competitors are posting online can also be a good place start if you stumped for content ideas because it can trigger another unique way of exploring the same topic. 

4. Create a content calendar

Creating a content calendar closely tied into your marketing goals is the best way to keep all your ideas and content plan in one place. Start by jotting content ideas down on a piece of paper or document and then plan your content out by dates – we recommend Asana or Meta Business Suite (if you are using Facebook or Instagram). You can then use your content calendar as a guide to what you might, or will, publish in the future, either way it will help you stay organised. Dates for assigned posts can be juggled in the calendar by dragging them around to suit, making this a flexible way of working. If you need help with this part of content marketing planning, have a look at our outsource marketing packages. 

5. Find out your keywords

Keywords are the phrases relating to your business that optimise your results in search engines, otherwise known as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). The keywords you use in either your website copy (blog posts) or social media copy tells search engines, like Google, what your content is about and determines where your information ranks in search results. This is a great content marketing strategy to have in mind when content planning. Note that if you want to be showing on page one of Google results, you need a ranking of around top 10 and under.

You can enter your targeted keywords into this free tool, along with your website domain (or specific page URL) and it will let you know which keywords your website (or page) is ranking in the top 100 results for. Make sure you enter the correct region because it defaults to the USA. 

• Bonus tip: you can use this tool to check out which keywords your competitors’ websites are ranking the strongest on and factor this insight into your content strategy.

If you’d like support with your content marketing plan or strategy, please get in touch. We would love to help you stay organised and watch your business grow.