Creating content can be a total minefield if you don’t have a content marketing plan in place. You’ll likely create content on the fly — realising you haven’t shared anything in a few weeks and your blog, social media pages, and newsletter are all growing dusty. This rush to get something — anything — out there leads to you publishing content on a whim.
We’ve all done it.
Heck, even I still do it from time to time. But your entire content marketing plan shouldn’t be made up of winging-it content. Instead, it should have a clear focus.
In this article, I’ll be sharing the three questions that hold the quickest and most simple way to create a winning content marketing plan without burning out your brain.
By answering the three questions of why, who and how, you can easily create a winning content plan.
How to easily create a winning content marketing plan
Content marketing leaders have a clear content marketing strategy that is aligned with their business objectives, and has full leadership buy-in. So, before we even start covering the questions you need to answer as part of your content marketing plan, we first need to lay the foundations for your strategy.
After all, there’s no point diving head first into content creation if you haven’t figured out what it is you should be talking about.
To do this, you need to be able to identify your content themes and turn this into an unfiltered list of content ideas. Once you’ve done these first two steps of the process, you’re ready to ask yourself those all-important questions.
Don’t worry, these steps don’t take long. Simply, set aside 90 minutes to 2-hours of your time, grab some paper and get ready to start scribbling down all of your content-related thoughts.
Choose your content themes
Before you create any content at all, you first need to have a broad understanding of your content themes.
The best place to start when choosing your content themes is to think about what it is that you do.
Are you a clothing shop specialising in sustainable fashion? Or maybe you run a well-being consultancy aimed at improving workplace well-being? Perhaps you own a local gym…
In each of these examples, what they do can inform their content themes.
For the clothing store, their themes may include: sustainability, slow fashion and personal styling.
The content themes for the well-being consultancy could be mental health, workplace well-being, and work-life balance.
Whereas the local gym might focus on gym updates, nutrition, and fitness.
Think about what you do and then choose 2 – 4 broad content themes. You should be able to break these themes down into more granular subtopics.
You get the idea, now it’s your turn.
Go ahead — write down the broad content themes for your business.
Brainstorm content ideas
Now you should have a strong sense of the content themes underlying your business.
The next step is where the magic happens!
Remember how I said you should be able to break your content themes into more granular subtopics?
Well, that’s what we’ll be doing here.
Take your content themes and write down all the potential content ideas relating to each of your themes.
Seriously, write down EVERYTHING that comes to mind. There’s no silly ideas at this stage. We’ll refine the list in the next stage so go wild, write down every possible idea.
Let’s use the gym as an example again and take their theme of “gym updates”.
The “gym updates” theme could be broken down into:
- Class timetables
- Personal trainer spotlight
- Client/Member highlight
- New equipment announcements
- Behind-the-scenes events/activity
- Open day announcements
- Available classes and services
- Membership offers and benefits
- Gym walkaround videos
- Day in the life of a PT video
- New services sneak peeks
Write a list of ideas for each content theme, then move onto the next step.
Ask yourself these three questions
Now, look at your content ideas and ask yourself three questions: why, who, and how.
These questions will make sure your content ideas are aligned with your goals, audience and brand. Any that don’t align can either be taken back to the drawing board or be scrapped.
Why – your SMART goal
Before you even put pen to paper, you need to understand why you are creating content.
Creating content for the sake of just creating content isn’t going to further your progress in any way, shape or form. Sure, the occasional off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment blog article, email or social media post might work wonders but if that’s your only strategy, it’s not the most reliable road to success.
Rather than crossing your fingers and hoping your content is a success, set some SMART goals.
These SMART goals will form the “why” behind your content. Your goal here might be to:
- Increase engagement
- Establish yourself as a thought leader
- Drive conversions
- Get more newsletter subscribers
- Educate readers
- Increase organic visibility
Or your goal might be something else.
Whatever your goal is, make sure it’s SMART. That means, your goal has to be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Timely
Once you’ve set your goal, hold this goal in mind when deciding on what content to create and how to formulate that content.
For example, if your goal is to increase organic visibility, spend time writing an SEO-led blog article that is relevant to your audience and any current needs, challenges, or interests they may be researching.
Who – your audience
The next question to ask yourself is “who am I creating content for?”
I want you to think of one specific person. Hold that person in your mind. And write for them. Don’t write for an entire board of executive directors. Don’t write for the 38 people on your dream client-list. Write for just one person.
So, how do you choose that one person?
Create a user persona! Get clear on your ideal audience so you can create content that speaks directly to them.
When defining your audience, think about their challenges, needs, interests and barriers to conversions.
To figure out who your audience is and what makes them tick, look in the following key places:
- Check demographics data in Google Analytics
- Scroll through your social media followers
- Nosy at your newsletter readers
- Speak to actual customers and clients
Once you’ve done your research, create user persona templates of each of your ideal audience members. Chances are your business and products/services will appeal to more than one person. So, create user personas to represent each of the different ideal audience types.
Then, when you’re writing content, choose one of those personas and write specifically for them. What would they want to gain from this content? What are they most interested in? What makes them hang onto your every word?
How – does it fit your content themes
By now, you should have a good idea of the why behind your content and the person you’re creating content for. The final question you need to ask before diving into the content creation process is “how does this content fit my content themes”.
Remember how I got you to plan out your content themes at the start of this post? Well, this is where those themes come into play! You now want to take your content ideas and double-check whether those ideas are a good fit for your brand.
Essentially, any content you create should align with your brand, your audience, or your goals.
Turn those ideas into content
Now that you’ve asked your why, who, and how questions, you’re ready to turn your ideas into killer content.
Take all those ideas you brainstormed earlier (remember them? I hope so!) and for each idea, ask yourself:
- Why am I creating this content?
- Who am I creating this content for?
- How does this content fit my content themes?
Based on the answers to these questions, you can start creating content that aligns perfectly with your goals, your audience, and your business priorities. If any ideas don’t fit, scrap them off the list or look at how you can realign them to better suit your biz.
When creating content, think about which content messaging and format will best meet the intention behind the post. Think about what your audience will connect with most and which content style works best for your chosen goal.
Repurpose content into other formats
Remember, you don’t have to stick to one platform! You can take your idea and shout about it across multiple marketing platforms.
Created an Instagram post that your followers loved? Then breathe life back into that content and repurpose it into other formats and across other platforms. You could repurpose organic social media posts as:
- Social media ads
- Blog articles
- Podcasts
- Guest posts
- Email marketing
- Webinar
- Course
Obviously, not every platform will suit every piece of content. Just because people loved your latest email talking about your new product launch, it doesn’t mean they want a course all about making their own products. Sure, some people might want that but are they the people you’re targeting? Use your common sense and repurpose content to the platforms that you know will drive results for your business.
And hey, if you do want to pivot your business and create a course targeting an adjacent audience, go for it — you’re a badass business owner who contains multitudes! You can be multi-hyphenated, you can grow and expand, and you for sure can pivot your business.
Anyway, I’m getting off track, but what I’m saying is this: repurpose your content. Don’t let great content get lost in the depth of the internet. Bring it back to life and reshare it with pride for even more people to see.
That’s it — you’ve created your content marketing plan
Voila – you’ve just overcome your writer’s block and written some powerful content for your audience. And it took, what, a few hours?
Now imagine what you could create if you time blocked one full day per month to work on your content marketing plan?
Remember, the three questions you need to ask yourself to create a killer content marketing plan are:
- Why am I creating this content?
- Who am I creating this content for?
- How does this content fit my content themes?
The whole process takes just 5-steps from start to end:
- Work out your content themes
- Brainstorm content ideas
- Ask those 3 valuable questions
- Turn your ideas into content
- Repurpose it to the high-heavens
And if you ever fancy a helping hand with figuring out your content marketing plan, nailing your themes, or coming up with sharp content ideas that will wow your audience, drop us a line. We love all things content and we want to help your business shine online!
