The Marketing Content Planner Awards: The Best, Worst, And Weirdest Th…

The Importance of a Marketing Content Planner

Content planners design a strategy for content creation, publication and distribution. They also are responsible for tracking and assessing strategy effectiveness.

This type of content informs viewers about the products and services provided by the company. It also helps the viewers solve issues and meet their requirements.

A marketing content planner can be a spreadsheet or third-party tool. The difference lies in how you use it.

1. Identify Your Goals

Benjamin Franklin's famous phrase "If you don't plan, you are planning for failure" is a true statement. The structure, efficiency of workflow and clear communication are essential to transform a visionary strategy into a successful content marketing engine.

Setting goals is among the most important steps in this process. You can either start with high-level goals for your business or use the SMART Framework to make them more specific. It's also a good opportunity to review your existing content goals to make sure they are still in the context of your current strategy.

Understanding your goals will enable you to monitor the performance of each piece of content. This will help you identify which elements are working and which needs improvement which will allow you to make necessary adjustments and improve overall performance. This will ensure that you reach your overall goals and provide quality content to your audiences.

2. Identify Your Audience

Knowing your audience can enable you to create content that is relevant, effective and engaging. The best method to accomplish this is to conduct research and identifying the traits of your ideal customer personas. This can be accomplished by surveys, data analysis, and other methods for gathering details about your customers.

You can then apply the results of your research to identify the kinds of content that will be most efficient for you and your company. This could range from blog posts and social media posts to podcasts and webinars. Once you've identified which formats work best, you can start creating your content strategy.

A tool for planning content can help you keep the track of your marketing goals and ensure that the appropriate people are working on the right projects. It can also improve productivity by helping teams concentrate on the most important things and keep them from distractions. CopyPress provides a free Content Analysis Report that you can use today.

3. Find Your Ideal Platforms

When creating digital content, it's important to adapt it to the ideal platform. Instagram users prefer visually appealing visuals, while TikTok users enjoy stylish short-form videos. You can discover the preferred platforms of your target audience through conducting market research.

A marketing content planner will help you plan all the steps required to convert your ideas and concepts into a finished product. It will give you the framework you need to meet your goals and ensure everyone on your team is on the same page.

A content planning tool like Monday and Kapost can help with this by allowing you to create tasks, assign them to others and collaborate, as well as monitor progress on a single dashboard. There are more advanced tools, such as Wrike, which offer drop-down menus, a table with actionable items such as a message board and a project-wide timeline. Both provide the free version, as well as more extensive subscriptions if your team requires more advanced features.

4. Identify Your Content Types

A content planner is a fantastic tool for any person, whether you're an influencer on your own or a team of marketers in a large company. It helps you stay organized and ensures that everyone is on the same level. It's an excellent tool for managing content for projects that have a longer lead time, such as annual or quarterly campaigns.

A good content planner will assist you in determining the kinds of content to create and the best way to create them. This includes determining what format your content should be presented in, such as blog posts, infographics podcasts, case studies, or social media press releases. It must also include a timeline to determine when these pieces need to be produced and published.

You should also keep track of the results of your goals for content marketing like traffic and engagement. This will help you evaluate your results and make the needed adjustments. Ahrefs is a great tool to help you determine what works and what content marketing doesn't. It can also provide insights on your competition's performance.

5. Find Your Content's Goals

If you've got clear objectives for your content your team will remain on track and make sure they're meeting their goals. Clare goals will help you meet your content marketing goals, whether it's to increase the number of visitors to your blog by updating posts or to increase retention of customers through the organization of webinars.

A good content planner can aid in defining your goals by creating an organized workflow and allowing collaboration. It can also include tools like image-generation software prompts to convert text into images and social management applications to streamline the process.

In addition to setting goals and establishing an expected workflow, a marketing content planner can also assist you in identifying your metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). This will let you assess the effectiveness of your content and react accordingly to improve your marketing strategy. Bounce rate, website traffic and social media shares are examples of metrics that can be measured. These metrics should be monitored throughout the content's lifecycle including production and publication.

6. Identify Your Resources

A well-thought-out content strategy is useless when you don't have the resources to implement it. When planning, ensure you have enough funds to accomplish the tasks you've outlined. This could include salary or team payments, production costs as well as web space and marketing strategies.

Once you have a budget, you can begin assigning the responsibilities for each task. For instance, you may want to assign keyword research editing, copywriting, and design to different members of your team. Alternatively, Sprout can be used to automate the process of scheduling your content across various platforms.

Sprout allows you to connect your social media accounts and schedule posts for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn company pages and Google Business Profiles, all on one platform. The scheduling tools offered by Sprout include an image library that can simplify asset management and save time during the creation process.

7. Determine your Key Performance Indicators

If you're going to spend many hours creating content, it's crucial that your marketing efforts yield results. You can improve your results by tracking and identifying the most effective key performance indicators.

For instance, a popular KPI for content marketers is the number of returning customers. This metric can be used to determine the effectiveness of your content at converting customers, and it can be used to determine areas for improvement in future campaigns.

It's also important to establish the type of content you'll create based on both your goals and target audience. This could be blogs, social media posts, articles or infographics, as well as videos. Once you've identified the various formats for your content strategy marketing, you should develop a strategy for each one that includes frequency and distribution. This will ensure that your content is being read by the right people at the best times.

8. Find out the tracking methods you are using

A marketing content planner is a useful tool for any business looking to improve their marketing efforts. It helps you keep the track of your goals, audience, and resources while allowing you to assess how effective your strategy has been over time.

A social media calendar can help you plan your content and ensure it is consistently released. You can also prepare for holidays and events that could affect your audience.

A keyword content plan is a great way to optimize your SEO tactics. It can help you determine the best keywords for your content, which will boost your search engine ranking and visibility. It can also help you measure the effectiveness of your keyword content strategy over time.

9. Determine Your Measurements

Whatever your preference, whether you opt to organize your content according to keyword or theme your marketing strategy should identify the most important metrics for each piece. This will allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of your content and continue to improve it. A cloud-based marketing planer, such as Optimizely CMP can also make it easier for team members to work together and create reports useful for future content making decisions.