Content planning is easily the most unenjoyable part of the entire content production and marketing process-just ask any digital marketer. Yet, it’s an essential component of content marketing that can’t be ignored if you want to 10x your content output.
Review Last Quarter’s Content Metrics
Analyzing your content this way will help you understand what kind of content your audience is looking for and what works best.
- You’ll also be able to identify what hasn’t taken off and has been a waste of your marketing budget.
Review Content Production Workflow
A content workflow is a series of tasks that you and your team must perform to ensure that each piece of content is perfectly crafted and created on time.
- Did your content production run smoothly? What parts of the workflow do you feel need improvement?
How often should I review my content production plan?
Monthly review is best for quarterly content plans
- Reviewing regularly is essential to running a successful content marketing campaign
- A monthly review gives enough time to get enough data to have a clear picture of how your content is performing
Quarterly Content Plan
Create a quarterly content plan that will help you 10x your content output-both qualitatively and quantitatively
- Content planning has many advantages, from speeding up the content creation process to improving content quality, you can engage your audience in new ways and maximize your marketing budget ROI.
Decide What Types of Content to Create
Different content types include: social media webinars, blog posts, infographics, podcasts, email newsletters and campaigns, user generated content, long form pieces, white papers, etc.
- A few factors will help you decide on the content types to focus on
- Target audience
- Sales funnel
- Competitors
Set Content Goals
Set goals for your content each and every quarter
- Goals include brand awareness, customer acquisition, sales, retention, and engagement levels
- Use last quarter’s content performance as a benchmark for your next quarter’s goals
- SMART goals make goals easy to track and measure
Review Your Content Budget
Set aside a healthy portion of your marketing budget for content marketing
- Most brands spend anywhere from $5,000 to over $50,000 on content marketing.
- Marketing budgets in general should be between 7-12 percent of your total revenue
Create a Content Promotional Plan
Understanding the platforms your audience frequents
- Outlining what types of campaigns you’ll run
- Defining your content promotion KPIs
- Creating a content promotion calendar
- Tracking the performance of your campaign will help you see how your marketing is going
Define Content Campaign Metrics
Defining your content campaign metrics will help ensure that every piece of content and every campaign is data-driven
- Your metrics should be tied to the content goals you set for the quarter
- Example: Page views
- Time on-page
- Bounce rate
- Social media shares and engagement
- SEO performance
- Newsletter signups and engagement
Evaluate Your Content’s Target Audience
To ensure you’re targeting the right audience, you need to conduct audience research and build personas representing your ideal customer.
- Demographics – physical attributes that members of your target audience have in common
- Psychographics – the general psychological makeup of the target audience
- Firmographics – descriptive attributes that make up a brand’s ideal customer profile (ICP).
- Using the data you obtain, you can then build profiles of your perfect customer.
