The Importance of a Marketing Content Planner

Content planners are accountable for defining a vision for content creation publishing, distribution and publication. They also are accountable for evaluating and tracking the effectiveness of their strategy.

This type of content educates the audience about the company's products and services. It also helps the viewers resolve issues and meet their needs.

A marketing content planner could be a spreadsheet or third-party tool. The difference is in the way you use it.

1. Set Your Goals

The famous quote, usually credited to Benjamin Franklin although perhaps never said by him, is the truth: "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Structure, workflow efficiency and clear communication are essential to transform a strategic vision into a successful content marketing engine.

The process of identifying your goals is one of the most important steps in this process. Start with the high-level business goals or use the SMART framework to make them more specific and attainable. It's also a good time to review your current goals for content to ensure they're in line with your current strategy.

Understanding your goals will enable you to monitor the performance of each piece of content. This will allow you to determine which elements are working and which requires improvement and allow you to make necessary adjustments and improve overall performance. This will ultimately ensure that you're achieving your goals overall and delivering quality content to your audience.

2. Identify Your Audience

Knowing your audience will help you create content that's relevant, interesting and effective. The best method to accomplish this is through conducting research and identifying the traits of your ideal customer personas. This can be done by using surveys, data analysis and other methods to collect details about your customers.

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

A tool for planning content can help you keep on top of marketing goals and make sure that the right people work on the most relevant projects. It can also improve productivity by helping teams remain focused on what is content in marketing's important and staying clear of distractions. It's simple to start by downloading a no-cost Content Analysis Report from CopyPress today.

3. Find Your Ideal Platforms

When creating digital content, it's crucial to adapt it to the ideal platform. Instagram users want aesthetically pleasing visuals, while TikTok users enjoy stylish short-form videos. Conducting some market research can aid in identifying your target users and their preferred platforms.

A successful marketing content planner will account for all the steps required to convert your ideas into a completed asset. It will give you a framework to achieve your goals and make sure that everyone in your team is in agreement.

A content planning tool such as Monday and Kapost can assist with this by allowing you to create, assign tasks and collaborate with others, and monitor progress on a single dashboard. There are other more advanced tools, such as Wrike, which offer drop-down menus that include a table with actionable items such as a message board and an overall project timeline. Both come with a no-cost version, as well as more extensive subscriptions for teams that need more advanced capabilities.

4. Identify Your Content Types

Whether you're a solo influencer or a large marketing team, a content planner can help you keep track of your ideas and ensures everyone is on the same page. It's also a great way to manage content strategy marketing for long lead-time projects, like quarterly or annual campaigns.

A solid content strategy can assist you in determining the types of content that need to be created and how they should be executed. This includes determining the format your content should be in, such as blog posts, infographics podcasts, case studies, or social media press releases. This should include a timeline of the date these pieces will be created and published.

You should also keep track of the metrics that are relevant to your content marketing goals, such as engagement and traffic. This will let you examine your results and make changes. Ahrefs is a great tool to help you determine what is working and what is a content marketer isn't. It can also provide you with insight into the performance of your competitors.

5. Find Your Content's objectives

If you establish clear goals for your content, it will help your team stay on track to achieve their goals. It doesn't matter if it's increasing the number of visitors to your website by updating blog articles or improving customer retention by organizing webinars, having clear objectives will help you reach your goals in marketing content.

A good content planner can assist you in defining your goals by creating an organized workflow and allowing for collaboration. It can also include tools like image-generation software prompts for text-to-image and social management applications to simplify the process.

A marketing content planner will aid you in identifying your key performance indicators (KPIs), and other important elements. This will allow you to monitor the effectiveness of your content and respond to improve your campaign. Bounce rate, website traffic, and social media shares are all examples of measurable metrics. All of these metrics should be monitored throughout the time of your content's existence, including production, publication and distribution.

6. Identify Your Resources

A great content strategy is useless when you don't have the resources to make it happen. While planning, make sure that you have the budget to complete the tasks you've laid out. This could include team or salary payments production costs including web space, marketing strategies.

Once you've got the budget in place, you can begin assigning responsibilities to each task. For instance, you may be able 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 content marketing corporate pages and Google Business Profiles, all from a single dashboard. The tools used by Sprout to schedule posts include an image library that streamlines managing assets and reduces time during the creation process.

7. Find your Key Performance Indicators

It is crucial to make your marketing efforts worth it if you're spending many hours creating content. Finding and tracking the appropriate performance indicators will help you measure the effectiveness of your content and improve your results over time.

For instance, a typical KPI for content marketers is the number of return customers. This metric can be used to determine if your content can convert customers into customers and to identify areas to improve your future campaigns.

Additionally, it's crucial to determine the type of content marketing tools you want to develop based on your goals and your target audience. This could include blog posts, videos, infographics or posts on social media. After you've identified these various formats of content, you need to develop a strategy that includes the frequency and distribution methods for each. This will ensure that the correct people are seeing your content at the appropriate time.

8. Find Your Tracking Methods

A marketing content planner is a valuable tool for any business seeking to improve their marketing efforts. It helps you keep in mind your marketing goals, your audience, and your resources, while also allowing you the ability to evaluate your strategy's effectiveness over time.

A social media content calendar can help you determine when your posts are scheduled to go live, which helps ensure that your content is published regularly. It also lets you prepare for occasions or holidays that could affect the engagement of your followers.

A keyword content plan is a great method of optimizing your SEO tactics. It will help you find the most relevant keywords for your content and improve your search engine rankings and visibility. It can also help you determine the effectiveness of your content strategy based on keywords over time.

9. Determine Your Measurements

Your marketing strategy should help you identify which metrics are most relevant for each piece, regardless of whether you structure your content by the theme or keywords. This will allow you to assess the effectiveness of your content so that you can keep improving it. A cloud-based marketing content planner, such as Optimizely CMP, can also make it easier to manage collaboration among team members and create reports that are useful for making future decisions regarding content planning.