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Once you’ve developed your web content strategy, it’s time to plan your web content.
Content strategy and content planning are separate but closely related parts of web content marketing.
In this article, we’ll share 11 tips to help build your content plan.
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Your content marketing strategy is your overall plan for creating, managing, and distributing content to your target audience.
It’s the big-picture approach that outlines the larger questions of why (the goals), who (the target audience), and what (the overall message).
From there, content planning takes over to decide where, when, and how.
The earliest steps of content planning require you to know your goals and be familiar with your overall web content strategy to make the best-informed approach to what kind of content you will create and where and how you will share it.
As part of the overall content marketing strategy, you should know your target audience and their needs.
Any content you create, regardless of format, should strive to address what your audience is looking for.
If you’ve developed marketing personas for your web audience, now is a good time to consult them and consider all you know about them before you create messaging.
This might include demographics, interests, traits, search intent, goals, challenges, and problems they might need to solve.
Unless you are starting from absolute scratch, odds are that you already have some existing content.
A content inventory or audit is a helpful step in content planning. By analyzing content topics and formats you’ve already tried, you can:
Just as you might check your pantry before planning your grocery list for the week, tracking and analyzing your existing content is a good way to determine what you have, what you need, and what else you’d like to include before you start web content planning.
With your strategy, audience, and content audit results in mind, it’s time to determine what types of content you will incorporate into your plan. Will you write blog articles, create an email newsletter, create how-to videos, or produce a podcast?
Get as specific as you can. Make a list of what content you will be creating. For each format, think of:
If you don’t know all the answers yet, you can just write down any outstanding questions.
Do keyword research to understand what terms your audience is actively searching for online. Identify your keywords so you can tailor your content to attract your audience and provide helpful and relevant content.
Before you create any content, identify and define your brand voice. Ensure it reflects who you are and your brand values. Your brand voice should also reflect the audience you want to connect with.
Your brand voice is key to attracting and engaging your target audience, so you want all your web content to clearly and consistently incorporate it.
Develop simple and clear brand voice guidelines to help your content team create on-brand messaging. Your content audit can be helpful here. If you find a few pieces that successfully capture the voice, share them as examples for your team.
A content calendar is a content marketer’s best friend. With all the different content types, channels and posting schedules, it’s essential to have a place to keep track of what is being created, when and where it is being published, and who is doing it.
Whether you have a large team or are a one-person show, an editorial calendar is essential.
Other things you can track on your content calendar include goals, target audience, topics, keywords, links and the project's status. You can create your own calendar or download a template online.
A good content calendar helps you keep track of what you publish and when, and it also helps you ensure that you post consistently.
Where a content calendar helps organize the output of the web content team, a clear outline or content brief helps to ensure new content is meeting its goals and staying consistent with the brand. A brief or outline can also reduce rounds of edits by providing clear communication from the start and getting everyone on the same page.
A content brief outlines a project's purpose, goals, audience, and message so the content creator has a clear idea of where to start and how to prioritize the message. It should also include relevant information, such as whether AI content is allowed, what links to include and what sources to incorporate.
The content brief always includes a deadline (to help keep that content calendar on track!). It should also include the project’s call to action and what step in the customer journey it is meant to meet.
After all the planning work is done, it’s time to create the content and queue it up for publication via the content calendar. Before anything gets lined up for posting, ensure the content has been edited and quality-checked to ensure it aligns with the content brief, addresses audience needs, uses brand voice and is clear, readable, accurate, and engaging.
This is a great opportunity to incorporate a grammar checker and AI checker to catch any spelling mistakes or instances of AI writing that need further review.
After all the planning, hard work and creativity that goes into your content, remember to promote it on social media. Repurpose and reformat content you have created and strategically share it through your social media accounts to reach a wider audience and direct traffic to your website.
Consider your goals, priorities, and the respective metrics that will help you evaluate their success. Whether it’s website traffic, social media engagement, or how many leads you generate through downloadable content, you can measure the results. Then, you can evaluate them to maintain what’s working and adjust what isn’t.
Planning your web content doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Remember, the aim of putting a plan in place is to make your life easier by outlining, scheduling, and tracking all the hard work you already do.
A good web content plan makes the creation, management and evaluation of that work much easier in the end.
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Then, get tips on how to take your content marketing to the next level:
