It’s that time of year again! The tundra is unfreezing (if you live in a cold place), the air is getting warmer, each day is longer than the day before, and businesses are starting to implement their (hopefully quarterly) content plans.

If you use content as a pillar of your marketing strategy, strategic content planning will support consistent publishing. But, as we can all attest, it is often difficult to sit down, consistently, and create.

That’s why we’ve put together this checklist to simplify your content planning and help you create effective content that attracts leads! This is our tactic for helping clients plan coherent, effective content that clarifies their value proposition and serves multiple audiences.

This one-time effort can produce a dynamic content plan that benefits your enterprise all year long.

The Benefits of a Dynamic Content Plan

One of the most significant benefits of planning your content strategy in advance is that it allows you to produce more targeted communication. When you have a clear plan for what kinds of content you want to produce, you can ensure that each piece is specifically designed to appeal to your target audience — and the specific needs of your business. The alternative – and what too many of us do – is to produce content on a whim, which lets us check a box but is usually much less effective.

Additionally, planning your content strategy in advance can help you all year long. It reduces decision fatigue. Without a plan for the kinds of content you want to produce, it’s easy to run out of ideas or have your content become stale or repetitive. Or to procrastinate and not publish at all. In contrast, a clear plan in place from the beginning makes it much easier to post on schedule — and to keep your content fresh and exciting over time.

A Methodology for a Dynamic Content Plan

Set Your Objectives

Before planning content, it’s important to establish objectives for your content and what goals it should help you accomplish.

Align your content plan with your primary business goals. This is a step businesses often need to represence. The beginning of the year is a reset period for most organizations and usually involves high-level planning. Ideally, you include how you will communicate with customers in this planning process. You probably want your content to help drive the organization’s strategic priorities for the year, such as:

• • driving sales of your top products or services

• • rolling out new products or services

• • issuing new releases or updates to products or services

• • serving different or additional audiences

• • encouraging repeat business or upselling existing customers

• • attracting more or different types of people to your team

Align With Your Team & Partners

If you have a team or partners who need to be involved in the content-planning and strategy process, make sure everyone is in the planning meeting. Ensure that each person knows their responsibilities concerning the plan (for example, writing, editing, schedule tracking, publishing, and examining analytics). This will help ensure you execute all parts of the content plan at the correct times.

Research Your Audience

Once you know the objectives of your content plan, it’s time to think deeply about your target audience and what topics will interest them or serve them best.

Do you have a product or service that requires you to educate your audience before they are qualified to buy it (for example, SaaS businesses)? Do you operate in a crowded market and need to strongly differentiate your business from competitors? Or is thought leadership the best approach to help you stand out? Are you an expert or innovator in an emerging field? You probably have a story to tell! Who needs to hear that story? And what will you want them to do after they have heard it.

Brainstorm Topics

Now that you have the basics of your plan in place, it’s time to brainstorm ideas for what kinds of content you want to produce and how often. I will have to write a whole blog post on this topic. However, for now, let me link to this excellent article from Marketing Insider Group. Note the list of “8 Ways to Brainstorm and Manage A Year’s Worth of Content” for a great list of keyword research resources and writing prompts to help you tap into the topics your audiences will love.

Write the Headlines

I love this one! Once you have a good idea of the topics you want to include and decide how you might approach them, draft all the headlines. A good headline gives the reader a clear picture of the topic and what they can expect to learn. A strong headline also informs the eventual writer where to start, if that isn’t you, and will help them to stay organized and on-topic.

Create a Schedule & Set Deadlines

For your dynamic content plan to be successful, it’s essential to create a schedule and decide when each piece will be published. Include a timeline with all the steps in the publishing process and deadlines for each piece’s completion. Make clear on the content calendar who on your team is responsible for action at each step of the process.

Plan for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Finally, don’t forget that when the writing begins, you’ll also need to optimize your content for SEO and promote it on social media to get the most out of each piece. In the content planning process, take the time to identify likely keywords for each piece of content. Keywords also help you view your focal points for the whole year and enable you to hit all the key messages that drive people to your business.

Allocate Resources

Once you have your plan in place and know the timeline for publishing, it’s time to make sure you have the resources to make it happen. This will include elements like the budget, staffing, tools, and technology needed to create content and develop products or services necessary for content marketing.

A crisp, clear content plan also allows many different writers to communicate for your brand and maintain a consistent brand voice.

Or…Call in the Writing Professionals

With this checklist, you could be well on your way to creating a dynamic content plan for the new year! Follow these steps and you will find it much easier to keep your communications team organized. You’ll also have a trove of content that serves your many different audiences, all year long. 

However, most firms that hire us do so not because they can’t do what we do! Many of them can. Instead, they work with us to get consistent volume, and consistent quality — on-demand, and on-brand.

Content marketing is one of the most cost-effective and democratic tools available to social enterprises and small businesses.

Try it on for size – or call in the professionals. We will happily create high-quality, original, branded content for your company or organization. Our diverse team of writers brings all kinds of perspectives to the work. And we love to tell the compelling stories that help communicate the value of mission-focused brands. Reach us here!

Whichever way you go, Good luck