What are the steps for content planning in digital marketing?

Steps for content planning is how your company decides what content to create and when to share it. It focuses on creating processes and workflows.

A content plan can help with several content marketing challenges, such as:

• Ensuring unique and relevant content: Planning together with your team brings more ideas and ensures the content is engaging.
• Managing resources effectively: With better workflows, your team can be more productive.
• Optimizing engagement: A content plan allows you to focus on each piece of content, making sure it gets the attention it needs for high engagement.
• Staying on schedule: Using a content calendar helps y
• our team stay on top of timelines, tasks, and projects.

The saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, highlights the importance of planning. While Franklin may not have actually said it, the message remains true.

According to the Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends Report by CMI and MarketingProfs, only 8% of respondents rated their content creation process as “Excellent,” and only 28% said it was “Very Good.” Many organizations struggle with inefficiencies and bottlenecks, usually due to poor or no planning, which disrupts their strategies

What is Content Strategy?

Content strategy can be defined in many ways, but I like this definition from Distilled: “A content strategy is the high-level vision that guides future content development to deliver against a specific business objective.”

The key words here are “vision” and “objective.” A strategy provides a guiding framework that considers every part of your content operation. It must always aim towards a clear goal, usually related to increasing revenue.

Your content strategy should include:

• Research: Understand your industry and competition.
• Goals: Define what you want to achieve.
• Messaging and Themes: Decide on the key messages and topics to focus on.
• Audience: Focus on your ideal buyer, their needs, motivations, and challenges.

On the technical side, content strategy involves the creation, publication, and management of your content. You need to oversee each piece of content from the initial idea to its final distribution.

What Does Steps for content Planning Involve?

When planning content, you need to decide what you will create and how you will create it. Here are some things to consider:

• Alignment with Strategy: Do your topics match the themes and messaging of your strategy?
• Audience Relevance: Is each piece of content something your target audience will find relevant and helpful?
• Content Type: Does the format of your content suit your audience’s preferences? For example, do they prefer videos over long articles?
• Seasonal Factors: Does your industry have seasonal or promotional periods? How will these impact your plans?
• Competitive Research: What opportunities have you found by studying your competitors? For example, does your audience value data-driven whitepapers that are currently lacking in the market?
• Content Repurposing: Do you have a plan to repurpose content? Can you break an eBook into individual posts or turn data into an infographic and interactive video?

Elements of Content Planning

To develop a strong content plan, you need to address several key components:

• Production and Workflow Documentation: Ensure all team members follow the same processes and efficient workflows to avoid roadblocks.
• Content Calendar: Use a central content marketing platform for visible scheduling, easy updates, and communication.
• Onboarding and Training: Create a smooth and repeatable setup process to minimize friction.
• Promotion and Distribution: Identify the best channels to reach your target audience.
• Transparency and Communication: Foster instant collaboration among team members to ensure smooth teamwork.
• Measurement and Optimization: Track metrics and access analytics to measure performance and improve your strategy.

Steps for content Planning: Building a Bridge from Strategy to Execution

Moving from a strategic vision (Point A) to a successful content marketing engine (Point B) is a journey many companies struggle with. Having a detailed plan helps keep everyone on track and avoids missteps.

Content planning helps address many common challenges in content marketing:

• Keeping Content Powerful and Unique: Collaborative planning activates all the creative voices on your team and uses data to see what resonates most with your audience.
• Leveraging Resources: Efficient workflows reduce the resources needed. Better organization and prioritization are key benefits of content planning.
• Identifying Buyer Pain Points: This involves research and personal development, but applying this knowledge effectively requires a good plan.
• Creating and Adhering to a Schedule: An interactive editorial calendar that everyone can access helps prevent scheduling issues, especially in larger teams.
• Maintaining Engagement: Avoid the “finish and forget” phenomenon. Improved content planning ensures each piece of content gets the follow-up it deserves, leading to better engagement.
• Measuring Effectiveness: Measuring content marketing success is challenging. Tracking results, consulting metrics, and making adjustments are crucial parts of content planning.
• Fending Off Competition: Being more organized and efficient gives you an edge over competitors. Many businesses struggle with content planning, so excelling in this area provides a significant advantage.

Content Planning for Success

“In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement it like hell.”
— Jack Welch

Jack Welch’s quote sums it up well: choose a direction for your strategy and then focus intensely on implementation. The “general direction” of your marketing strategy comes from your company’s vision. The hard work of implementing it involves solid content planning.

In content marketing, there is a complex ecosystem. Your content strategy and content plan are crucial parts that must work together. You can’t achieve your content marketing goals without both being aligned.

For example, if your content strategy includes key messaging that highlights a unique product feature, your content plan should outline specific topics, formats, and distribution channels to showcase this advantage