The Ultimate Guide to Content Planning

Content planning is the roadmap you create for making a content marketing strategy to succeed. The roadmap is not only about building castles in the air, you need to be quick to make an immediate plan to create and promote the content correctly.

We spend most of our time writing and binding all pieces of content together. Something we are really proud of. If you think easy, then let us tell you that creating content while maintaining all content marketing strategies is not a cakewalk. That’s why, many times writers get frustrated while working on multiple areas at once.

A content plan is the one, savior- making a step forward toward the competitive world of content marketing without a content marketing plan can be a damp squib.

In an ever-evolving era of digital marketing, we all have heard various content marketing stories and we try a few of them. All feel like they were gardening without gloves, instead of using the right tools. Beware of this kind of trap! Before jumping to the end, you need to know what’s going on and how you can get there. Keep your eyes open and pay attention to this article about the ultimate guide to content planning. Let’s get started:

What is Content Planning?

A content marketing plan is a guide that shows a path to which strategy you need, what you desire to accomplish, where to apply, and how to do it. This blueprint includes what would be your goals, where to start, what kind of content you need to create, the reason behind it, who you will be targeting, how to structure the content, and what platforms you will choose to publish and promote your content.

It is a complete outline of what you need to achieve success with your content marketing strategy by highlighting your plans and goals. Furthermore, it drafts how a company will distribute and promote its content, as well as its deadlines and key personnel.

Why Do You Need a Content Marketing Plan?

Without a plan, all strategies will fall apart! So, here we will make it very clear that giving the same importance to content marketing plan as content marketing strategy. Many digital marketing experts and moreover, many writers claim that both are the same, but in reality, it is not.

In simple words, it is the border we do after finishing the drawing to highlight the all factors we print. It is the black border that defines everything that is in your content marketing strategy. Depending on the strategy, we create a content plan that includes creating types of content and promoting it on different platforms.

Creating fully structured and clearly executed content gives your target audience a better user experience. By providing the right and relevant content, you can make your customer journey more interesting and enjoyable. With this planning, you can intrigue your customers into the journey of how your business is drastically growing.

With proper content planning, when you generate high-quality and relevant content, that answers the questions of what people are looking for, satisfies people’s desires, and provides a proper solution to problems- as a result, your content will get a better rank on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). If your content is about what people want to see, then Google will definitely recommend your content in their search results.

Google and its algorithm always prefer the content of the website that is consistent and has proper planning. So, if you want to be a part of the game or are willing to win the game of content marketing, then start to conduct a content marketing plan.

Top 3 Benefits of Content Marketing Planning

Creating a content marketing plan has numerous benefits, and in this article, we will discuss the top three benefits of content marketing planning.

1. Helps to Stay Organized and Focused:

A content marketing plan is a document that outlines the strategy, goals, and action plan for creating and promoting content. It helps you to stay organized and focused on your goals. With a content marketing plan in hand, you can easily track the progress of your content marketing efforts, identify areas that need improvement, and make necessary adjustments. It also helps you to avoid wasting time and resources on activities that are not aligned with your goals.

Moreover, a content marketing plan provides a clear direction to the entire team. It helps everyone to understand their roles and responsibilities, and how their efforts contribute to the overall success of the content marketing strategy. This ensures that all team members are working towards the same goal and that there is no confusion or duplication of efforts.

2. Increases Efficiency and Consistency:

Another significant benefit of content marketing planning is that it increases the efficiency and consistency of your content marketing efforts. With a clear plan in place, you can create and publish content more efficiently. You can create content in advance, schedule it for publishing, and promote it on various platforms according to the plan. This not only saves time but also ensures that you have a consistent flow of content that meets the needs of your target audience.

Furthermore, a content marketing plan helps you to create a consistent brand voice and message. By defining your brand’s tone, style, and messaging, you can ensure that all your content is aligned with your brand’s identity. This consistency helps to build trust and credibility with your audience, which is essential for a successful content marketing strategy.

3. Improves ROI and Drives Results:

Creating a content marketing plan is not just about creating and publishing content. It’s about creating content that drives results and contributes to the overall success of your business. With a content marketing plan, you can define your goals and create content that aligns with those goals. This ensures that your content is not just a random collection of articles, but a strategic tool that drives results.

Moreover, a content marketing plan helps you to measure the ROI (Return on Investment) of your content marketing efforts. By tracking the performance of your content, you can identify what works and what doesn’t, and make necessary adjustments. This ensures that you are investing your time and resources in activities that generate the best results.

Creating a content marketing plan is an essential step in building a successful content marketing strategy. It helps you to stay organized and focused, increases efficiency and consistency, improves ROI, and drives results. If you want to succeed in content marketing, start creating a content marketing plan today!

Major Difference Between Content Marketing Strategy and Content Marketing Planning

There is a huge difference between content marketing strategy and content marketing planning. Now we are going to discuss content planning vs content marketing strategy which are mentioned below:

Content marketing strategy is all about why and what is going on behind the marketing and content marketing plan is how to do it. The main thing in content planning, based on the proper outline, you need to build a content marketing strategy.

Content marketing strategy is the vision of what kind of content you want, where you put it, what your goals are for it, and how your audience will connect with your business. A content marketing plan is more action-oriented which means you need to be ready to convert your vision into reality with actionable processes and steps.

Content marketing strategy includes content objectives and goals like brand awareness, brand voice, vision statement, brand messaging, and more. A content marketing plan is all about research and actionable tactics including keyword research, selecting content type, building content calendars, topic selection, content distribution plans, and content promotion.

With a content marketing plan, a content marketing strategy is just a flash of brilliance, and on the opposite side, without a strategy, there is no meaning in building a plan.

Elements of a Content Marketing Plan

As we have already discussed the relationship between the content marketing strategy and content plan, now it is time to highlight the elements of content marketing plans which are mentioned below:

1. Content Marketing Strategy:

It is a vision or some desire a brand dreams about for achieving some goals and objectives.

2. Content Structure/Format:

First thing first, you need to decide what kind of content your target audience wants to see and what ways you want to display it to your target audience.

3. Content Workflow:

You must have clarity in your content marketing plan to process content creation, revision, production, and promotion successfully.

4. Content Distribution and Promotion Plan:

A content distribution and promotional plan is all about which type of content you want to produce and which platforms you will choose to promote your brand.

5. Associated Costs:

Your content plan should estimate the expenses or payments associated with each piece of content, whether they involve hiring a designer or investing in premium tools.

How to Create a Content Plan

Before you put all your efforts into creating content marketing, you need to calm yourself down. There are many things you need to do to create a content plan including content creation, distribution, promotion, and engagement. Let’s focus on how to create a solid content plan:

1. Create the Right SEO Content Marketing Strategy:

Having a solid SEO content strategy is crucial for creating a content plan because it helps you to identify the topics and keywords that your target audience is searching for. By conducting keyword research, you can determine which keywords have high search volume and low competition, and then use them in your content to increase the chances of ranking higher on search engine result pages (SERPs).

A content plan that is based on a solid SEO content strategy ensures that your content is optimized for search engines, which in turn drives more traffic to your website. Without a solid SEO content strategy, your content may not reach its full potential and may not be seen by your target audience.

Moreover, a solid SEO content strategy can help you create content that is valuable and relevant to your target audience. By understanding their search intent and preferences, you can create content that addresses their needs and interests. This not only improves the user experience but also increases the chances of them engaging with your content and taking the desired action.

2. Select Content Topics Wisely:

How many content creators think creating content on trending topics helps them to gain more followers, brand awareness, traffic, and more. This is a huge misunderstanding! You need to know that most of the traffic or views come from ads and moreover, competition is here. For that reason, we suggest focusing on Google keyword research instead- even if you are creating content for social media platforms.

According to recent data, many marketers say that most people search for similar things across various platforms, and Google keyword planner is one of the most popular keyword research tools that offer accurate data for their users. By analyzing keywords, you can find the topics your target audience is searching for.

However, SERP analysis is one of the best ways to research keywords. But first, you need to know what SERP analysis is. In simple words, it is the method of analyzing and researching on first top-five ranking websites for keywords and getting chances to rank your website for those keywords on the top of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). SERP analysis helps you to get to know users’ intent better behind the search queries on search engines like Google, Bing, and more. To select the best topics, you need to understand user intent, keyword difficulty, and business goals first.

3. Prioritize the Topics :

In order to prioritize the topics, the topic cluster is one of the great ways to achieve a structured alignment. In simple words, the topic cluster is a bunch of relatable content that collectively follows a particular subject area.

Why should you include topic clusters in your content planning list? Here it is:

Topic clusters are an essential component of your content planning list. They provide a framework for organizing and optimizing your content strategy. Here are the top three reasons why you should include topic clusters in your content planning:

1. Improved SEO:

Topic clusters help improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) by creating a more structured and interconnected content strategy. By grouping related content into clusters, you can signal to search engines that your website is authoritative and relevant on a particular topic. This can boost your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive more organic traffic to your site.

2. Better User Experience:

Topic clusters also provide a better user experience by helping visitors easily navigate and find relevant content on your site. By grouping related content together, you can create a more cohesive and informative experience for your audience. This can improve user engagement metrics like time on site, bounce rate, and pageviews.

3. Increased Efficiency:

Finally, topic clusters can help you streamline your content creation process and increase efficiency. By planning out your content in advance and grouping related topics together, you can identify content gaps and opportunities more easily. This can help you create more targeted and effective content that resonates with your audience and drives better business results.

4. Organize Your Content with Content Calendar:

Now most digital marketers prefer to use content calendars in order to stay organized. A content calendar is a schedule for what, when, and where content will be published. It is a very easy process. You need to know that your content calendar will need to have the following points to make your content marketing plan successful:

• Topic name
• Content type
• Publish date
• Platform name where you want to publish the content
• Author name
• Due date
• Status
• Link to the files

You need to know that each content calendar looks different because every content type has some specific requirements.

5. Have an Editorial Checklist:

It is helpful for content creators to use editorial checklists as a tool for checking their work and for content reviewers to be reminded of what concepts need to be considered when making comments on it. With the help of an editorial checklist, content creators can analyze their works and what they are missing out on and reviewers can provide feedback based on an editorial checklist.

6. Create a Plan for Promotional Program:

After what, how, and where to publish content, now it is time to create an outline for a promotional plan and link building is one of the best ways to promote content on various platforms.

Unless you know the right process, link-building won’t be easy.

Why would any website with experience, expertise, attentiveness, and trustworthiness be ready to link your website to its content? What is it on your website that makes the link? How to create link-worthy content?

To create link-worthy content, you need to follow the tactics which are mentioned below:

1. Try to Create Evergreen Content:

Instead of making news content, try to produce Evergreen content in order to get more users’ attention. Choosing an evergreen topic can be very relevant and useful for a long time because the demands of evergreen content never change.

2. Arrange Podcast:

A podcast is a very effective way to get links to other people or websites. When you invite anyone for an interview, they always link your website with their profile to get more user’s attention.

3. Analyse Your Competitor’s Backlink Strategy:

It is easy to start with your competitors’ websites- what is their strategy to gain backlinks?

7. Content Distribution and Repurposing:

Content creation doesn’t mean only creating content, it is more than creating content. After publishing the content, promotion is one of the most effective ways to get the audience’s attention toward your brand and products. Content distribution is one of the ways of promotion. If you want to get better user engagement, you can also repurpose the content in your newsletter.

8. Measure and Analyse the Results:

You should set up a regular reporting system to track and analyze these metrics. This will help you to identify what is working and what needs improvement in your content marketing strategy. Based on these insights, you can adjust your plan accordingly and optimize your content to achieve better results.

It is also important to identify the tools and resources you will need to measure and analyze your results. For example, you may need analytics software, social media monitoring tools, and lead generation tools to track your progress and make data-driven decisions. By measuring and analyzing your results, you can continually improve your content marketing plan and ensure that you are achieving your goals.

Conclusion:

Before starting to write content, having a content marketing plan is very crucial. Without a content marketing plan, you will never see your content marketing strategy succeed.

We hope this article on the ultimate guide to content planning will help you to understand it better. If you think you can’t do a content marketing plan by yourself, we are here to help you. As a leading digital marketing company, we offer digital marketing services to help out with this kind of situation. If you like to read our article, keep your eye on our blog page.