Content planning guide for newcomers (with specific, easy to understand case studies)

Have you ever looked at websites, emails, blog posts or social channels of other brands and wondered: how can they do that?

Everything may seem magical, but brands are full of departments in the content marketing department. They don't just accidentally "pick up" some pictures on the internet and email them to you. There is a ton of work to do from planning to detailing content, not as simple as the quiet appearance you often see.

As a creator and content manager for many years I can afford to learn, acquire & own unique knowledge about the content. At the same time, I also deeply sympathize with those who are struggling to find direction and answers. The truth is it's not that hard, but you have to start understanding simple things first.

My goal is to share with you the basics, so you can refer to and start up this knowledge whenever you feel confident.

When we talk about this, I will talk about the idea of ​​viewing your business as an ecosystem that exists every day with lots of connected parts instead of the clutter of unrelated items.

You may be familiar with seeing your business on a macro level, but when it comes to content, everything is micro and all of these "small" content will contribute to a larger ecosystem than business. your karma.

When an ecosystem works well, all your content will be connected at the same time: Your content will be consistent across all channels: webiste, social, email, advertising, ...

It is your understanding of every part of the business that will help you build a complete and cohesive plan.

And the last thing, remember that when it comes to content, simplicity is the core, it is more effective than any complex thinking, overkill for the plan. Remember, the best part about the content is that it is flexible and adjustable at any time.

Now get ready for the next part.

Step 1: Please answer 4 questions

First: What is your goal?

It is good that each content plan follows its own goals, this helps you better orient and develop the content, not to be deviated from the beginning. Here are some common types of goals you can refer to:

• Increase website traffic
• Collect customer data
• Sales goal
• Sign up increase
• Increase followers on social media channels

Second: Who is your target audience?

Once you understand the goals you need to accomplish, the next thing you need to determine is that you are trying to "reach" someone.

Identifying your target audience and understanding what the customer wants will help you to be more relevant to your content plan.

You can consult insights about the target customer group you are targeting on online newspapers and of course they are always free, what you need is to take some time to consult the information only.

3: Does your existing resources support you well enough?

Before building a content plan, you need to consider who will be responsible for implementing it.

Please allocate the position of each person, they must have enough time and skills to implement and manage the content project. You need to consider whether you have enough budget for creating content (image, design, copy, ...)

Your understanding of your true competencies before making content is very important. You can express your ideas in photoshop and synthesize them into "content".

Possible things in your plan

Once you know your goals, your target customers, your support resources, talk about what is really possible in your plan.

Below are the 6 channels I want to start to help you answer this question (There are many paths you can explore in the content field and below are just the basic channels you should start.)

• Website
• Email
• Social Media
• Blog
• Pr / Influencer
• Advertising

Ask yourself: Do you have the resources to take care of all those channels? Do you need ALL of them? The surprising answer is NO.

You do not need to be present on all marketing channels.

In fact, hugging too many channels often leads to failure. Remember that all your ideas (whether they have content or not) are considered a marathon, not a race. Ideas start sparking and have to be invested little by little so you don't need to spend too much money or resources on all channels as soon as it starts.

You should take the time to review your goals and resources before deciding where you want to invest the time, effort and resources that need to be appropriately allocated to successfully implement the plan.

Below are a few examples of what I mean:

If you sell your products on e-commerce channels and know your customers use Instagram regularly, you will want to allocate your time and resources to content development and the use of support tools. support to facilitate sales through instagram.

Maybe you don't need your favorite webiste, a 24/7 online Twitter team or a few dripping email marketing campaigns. Perhaps all you need is a simple website template, a great photo-support tool like Olaptic to help you sell your product on Instagram.

Step 2: Use goals to guide the plan

Now that you have the channels to build your content, take a step back and review your goals.

Let's say you're a clothing company and your goal is to drive product sales. Since these are important goals for your business, you need to consider them carefully when putting them into plan.

The great thing about content plans is that they are flexible and can change monthly, quarterly.

This gives you the opportunity to accomplish different goals and test them with other things.

For example: Let's say your goal for your clothing company in January is to promote the spring product line & increase sales for the classic jacket line.

Based on these micro goals you can start your content goal so it can exist across all channels.

To give you an idea of ​​what I have to say, let's take a look at six important marketing channels to see in detail how:

• Webiste: The homepage has a banner promoting the Spring Collection, a line of vintage coats is shown in the "spotlight" section below the banner (any advertising features that will remarketing with your online store).

Frequency: Maintain for 1-3 months, change photos after a few weeks, or completely refresh as needed.

• Email: Email all those who have subscribed to an Gif attachment with some products in the new BST, send them a 10% discount coupon for vintage coats to a link with a post showing how to mix the page Dress in the spring with classy classy coats.

Frequency: Each time 1 email, 3 different emails you send within 1 week or 1 email / week for 3 weeks.

• Social Media: Suppose you are on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Run an ad for spring products. You can upload 3 photos on Instagram with spring product lines or classic jackets. Then create a "Spring vibes" board on Pinterest with a combination of spring collection, vintage blouse and other inspirational images.

Frequency: Facebook: 1 ad, Instagram: 3 days / content, Pin: Refresh weekly or build a new ranking 1 times / week.

• Blog: As I mentioned above, you can build your content with a tutorial on how to mix outfits with vintage coats in the fall, working with some influential people to write similar content. "6 great activities in the fall possible with classic costumes."

Frequency: Ideally still an article a week, but I encourage you to write more if possible.

• PR / Influencer: Work with influential people in the industry so they can wear the product in your spring collection and vintage jacket, then let them post it on instagram. Follow up on their "daily" topics with all the products you want to promote.

Frequency: 1post / day and many posts / week

• advertisement: As I mentioned, you can run Facebook ad ads for new BSTs to attract potential customers.

Frequency: I recommend running ads for a few days or a maximum of 1 week on a high budget, then stop the ad so you have time to analyze data and optimize the campaign.

Just take your macro goal (sell the product) and apply it at the micro level (promote a specific type of product, at a given time, in a given place), you should be able to see your content plan in place.

If you can do it regularly for 1-12 months (monthly, quarterly, etc.), you'll start to see content that is truly a guide for your entire marketing plan and a guide to help you achieve your business goals.

Step 3: Find out what you need

Okay, now let's review the gfi you have for content planning so far

You already know:

1. Business purpose
2. Detail goal
3. Current resources
4. Specific goals will constitute a more specific content package
5. The frequency with which you will be performing

Regardless of your answer, I'll cover the basics below to assist you in implementing your content plan across channels while ensuring that everything is perfectly aligned.

Channel 1: Webiste

Think back to the first micro-level goals and think about how you can use your website to help anchor AND achieve those goals.

If your business is a large coral reef, then your website is coral and fish, seaweed and aquatic species as the content of aquatic life channels.

In other words, your website should inform the content of your other channels.

Here are some basic ideas for you to take advantage of your website and accomplish the goals:

• Home features
• Feature highlights (Displayed under banner, spotlight position to recommend featured content).
• New tabs on the page to navigate content (product catalog)
• Landingpage points to the new BST or specific product line you want to target

Now you've got some content hints to get closer to your goal, but to accomplish all of this you'll need a resource to support.

Let's go back to the example of the bouncing clothing business, assuming we started doing it, maybe you would need:

• Copywriter to write the title
• Producer to produce images
• Designer to design images
• Developer to code and optimize the interface

I know that every company has different resources and situations, so you don't need to do everything that we mention. But if you're a newcomer, you need to rethink the above factors and refine it to perform.

Channel 2: Email

You need to determine the specific content, frequency and number of emails to be sent in your plan.

For the upcoming companies

If you are a startup, make sure you have all the necessary information such as: Introduction, incentives, support, customer service, ...

If you need email extensions, then Just Good Copy is a great tool that can help you find the right email structure for each type.

For "premium" email campaigns

In case you need to set up an advanced email system to support upcoming email marketing plans, Mailchip is a good choice.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Weekly information: Consistent, interlinked content to help you achieve your goals

Special offer: Discounts, free samples, contests, ...

Feature introduction: Use content and focus on products or features to support the main goal.

Campaigns or programs: Send information to customers about program content with specific time frames.

Link to blog posts: Use blog content to attract engagement, sales or signups, etc.

3rd channel: Social Media

A lot of companies use Social Media as a main channel. But they do not understand which platform really brings potential customers.

To choose the right channel, you must really understand your customers' habits and insights, but there are some things you need to remember:

• Link: Links to webiste or other channels
• Bio: The necessary information on your channel
• Assets: Other relevant identities such as avatars, covers, etc.
• Backlog: Fill in the content before customers visit your channel
• Content Calendar: Ensure content can be delivered on schedule
• Ads: Use advertising to increase communication for your webiste and other channels.

For Social Media channels, you need to pay attention to the following to maintain content on your channels:

• Content schedule: I often use Google Sheet to plan detailed plans for content plans. If you need assistance with this, please leave a comment below, I will answer your questions.
• Photographer: You can take pictures yourself, but I recommend leaving it to a professional. This person will help you create visual concepts that match your goal month by month, quarterly, etc.
• Copywriter: Again, you can do this on your own, but it is always best to get professional help. This person will help you with content ideas to support your micro goals, as well as daily content calendar (monthly, etc.).
• Community Management: This person will be responsible for posting content and interacting with customers. Think of this role as customer support with additional rewards.
• Analyst: This is sometimes the same person as the community manager, but you'll need someone to analyze data from all the content you're posting, so you can learn and optimize for the content calendar in the future. .

During my career, I have held many different roles, so I know the specific tasks that each person needs to perform. So don't be afraid to leave the question below, I will answer your questions.

Channel 4: Blog

Today, most businesses have their own blog, but this is mainly because it offers many benefits:

Optimizing on search engines: Supporting implementation of SEO, SEM

Highly specialized: Helping brands express their views, expertise or branding to improve partnerships.

Growth: Indirectly increase sales opportunities or collect customer information.

If you decide you have the resources to invest in building content for your blog, you'll want to get started soon (Having content that is not only good for indexing a new website, but when your goals change, you may want a bank of specific articles to incorporate into future content plans.).

Once again, let's return to the example of the original clothing brand

Assuming our goal for the year is to (1) product sales, (2) promote awareness of our personal stylist services and (3) show up at more relevant events; You think about the types of content on blogs that help you accomplish those goals.

Here are some ways we suggest to help you do better:

(1) Product sales Implement a series of favorite interfaces for the week with a frequency of 1-2 times / week.

(2) Increasing awareness of personal stylist services: we can create a periodic blog series called Ask our stylist, where we answer questions about customer styles

(3) Be present at more relevant events: It could be music festivals. We can create a whole range of festival styles, our festive playlists or work with influencers on their festive styles.

Not only will you create blog content as a way to index your site (make sure to use some relevant keywords in the post), but you'll have tons of content at your disposal to use on your site. website, in email, on social networks, in advertising and more!

Channel 5: PR / Influencer

Imagine if your brand were a person, who would he be friends with?

This is a good question to help you identify the influencers or brands you want to collaborate with. These types of relationships are important for several reasons:

• Exposure: When working with influencers, you will reach their audience, this will help your brand / product spread to more potential customers.
• Existing resources: think of this as a way for you to rearrange yourself with people or brands similar to you and / or can help you appear in a certain way.
• Content: by working with brands or other influencers, you will essentially get a bunch of new content to appeal to your customers.

Now I'm NOT a PR expert, but here are some basic ideas that can help you:

• Influencer campaigns: As I mentioned throughout this article, cooperation with an influencer can be simplified or extremely complex. Try taking over Instagram, exchanging products / posts or paid positions.
• Blog post location: work with a brand similar to yours to exchange content, make a guest blog post or pay placement.
• Contests / giveaways: utilize the network of influencers by hosting a contest or giving your product, etc.

Advertising is not about directing people to a certain place to perform a certain action (for example, buying, signing up, etc.), but also important tools for other purposes.

By running many small advertising campaigns on different content channels, you can find out what people like (and who likes it), what they don't like, what they want to say, what they have. questions, etc.

To decide when and how to use your ad, first review your goals, resources and budget. Next, find the best pieces of content for those goals. Finally, run multiple small-budget advertising campaigns on different content channels to see where you're getting traction, find out, then optimize.

Here are some examples of content ads that you can implement in your campaign:

• Advertise on Facebook
• Advertise on Instagram
• Twitter ad
• Advertising Pinterest
• Advertising display
• Video ad
  If you are unsure or feel you need more help, leave a comment below, I will try to assist you.

Step 4: Implement the content plan

All you need is in your hands, please review and do it again. However, you need to rewrite it all in one Google sheet file for easy tracking.

Each tab can be a different channel, starting with the important goals on the first tab, then the individual tabs for all other content channels.

summary

If you have additional questions, or you feel you need further guidance, leave a comment below, hoping to assist you.

Source: https://blog.markgrowth.com

My blog focuses on sharing practical experiences when rolling directly on the content front. Hope can help you understand and make good use of the content type.