[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s a freelance writer and business owner, you know that amazing content is one of the best tools to help you stand out above your competition. It drives traffic to your website resulting in more qualified leads for your business. It also helps you market your business, products, and services.
Content planning is essential for online marketing success for both your business and for your clients. You can achieve greater success if you take the time to plan your content wisely.
What Is Content Planning?
Content planning is the process of creating a content strategy and roadmap that outlines how you will create, publish and promote your content. This includes determining what type of content you will produce, who your target audience is and what goals you hope to achieve with your content marketing efforts.
There are a few key factors to consider when planning content.
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Key Factors When Planning Content
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.6″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Open Sans|300|||||||” custom_margin=”-38px|||||” global_colors_info=”{}”]Here are some key factors that you’ll want to consider when planning out your content.
When will you publish the content?
When publishing content, you’ll want to establish a frequency for writing and sharing the content to your audience. This could be daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.
How will you share your content?
Your chosen platform(s) should be based on where your target audience hangs out online.
What are your goals for the content?
Some common goals for content marketing include generating leads, growing an email list, increasing web traffic or improving customer engagement.
Where will you publish the content?
You’ll need to decide which website or blog platform you will use to publish your content. If you don’t have a website, now is the time to create one. WordPress and Tumblr are popular choices for publishing content online.
Who will write the content?
If you plan to write all of the content yourself, great! If not, you’ll need to determine who will be responsible for creating the content. This could be a team member, another freelance writer or even a guest contributor.
What is your budget for the content?
Your budget will determine how much you can spend on things like hiring writers, designers or paying for marketing services.
How often will you publish new content?
This will be determined by your goals and audience. If you’re looking to generate leads, you may want to publish new content more often than if you’re trying to increase web traffic.
Who is your target audience?
You’ll need to determine who you’re writing for and what type of content they’re interested in reading. Consider their demographics, interests, pain points and needs when planning your content strategy.
What type of content will you publish?
There are many different types of content you can publish, such as blog posts, e-books, infographics, videos, etc. Consider what type of content will be most beneficial for your target audience and goals.
What will you write about?
This is where keyword research comes in handy. You’ll want to consider what topics and keywords your target audience is searching for online. Use this research to come up with ideas for blog posts, e-books, infographics and other types of content.
What are your keywords?
Your keywords should be included in your content to help improve your SEO. Use keyword research tools like Google, RankIQ, Ubersuggest, and more.
What’s the Call-to-Action (CTA)?
Your CTA should be included at the end of your content to prompt the reader to take action. This could be signing up for your email list, downloading an e-book or visiting your website.
How can you repurpose the content?
Content repurposing is a great way to get the most out of your content. Once you’ve created a piece of content, consider how you can repurpose it into other formats, such as an infographic or video.
Who is your target audience?
You’ll need to determine who you’re writing for and what type of content they’re interested in reading. Consider their demographics, interests, pain points, and needs when planning your content strategy.
What’s the purpose of the content?
Before you start writing, it’s important to determine the purpose of the content. Is it to inform, educate or entertain? Is it for building your prospect list? Once you know the purpose, you can better tailor the content to your target audience.
7 Tips for Planning Your Content
1. Define Your Goal
Before you start planning your content, it’s important that you take the time to define your goals. What do you hope to achieve with your content? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Generate leads or sales? Once you know your goal, you can create content that is designed to help you achieve it.
2. Know Your Target Audience
It’s also important that you take the time to understand who your target audience is. What are their needs and wants? What are their pain points? What type of content will they find valuable? When you know your target audience, you can create content that appeals to them.
3. Create a Content Calendar
Creating a content calendar is a great way to plan and organize your content. This will help ensure that you publish quality content on a regular basis. It will also help you stay on track and avoid missing deadlines. A content calendar should include the following information:
· Topics
· Headlines
· Publish date
· Author
· Word count
· Status (draft, editing, etc.)
4. Determine the Type of Content You Will Create
There are a variety of content types that you can create, including blog posts, articles, eBooks, infographics and more. It’s important to mix things up to keep your audience engaged. Try to create a variety of content types and experiment to see what works best for your business.
5. Promote Your Content
Once you’ve created your content, it’s important to promote it. There are a number of ways to promote your content, including social media, email marketing, paid advertising and more. Experiment with different promotion strategies to see what works best for your business.
6. Measure Your Results
It’s also important to measure your results so that you can determine what is working and what isn’t. There are a number of metrics you can track, including pageviews, unique visitors, time on site, bounce rate and more. Use Google Analytics or another similar tool to track your results.
7. Regularly Review and Update Your Plan
Finally, it’s important to regularly review and update your plan. As your business grows and changes, your content strategy should also change. Review your goals on a regular basis and make sure that your content is still aligned with those goals.
Creating a content strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. By following these tips, you can create a plan that will help you achieve your business goals.
Long Term Planning Goals
Planning your content for the entire year may take a day or two to accomplish but it’ll save you tons of time down the road. Instead of wondering what you’re going to write on, 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.
By following these tips, you can create a content strategy that will help you achieve your business goals.
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