Are you ready to crown content King in 2021?

December 21, 2020

Whether you are launching a new service, re-branding an existing product or looking to drive more business – you will need a plan of action to do so.

Many businesses are guilty of creating content on an ad hoc, reactive basis – as and when it is needed or, possibly worse, as a tick box exercise to just ‘get one blog up a month’.

But that’s where content planning can help; getting the right message out to the right audience at the right time.

And with many companies looking to up their game in 2021 as a result of the ongoing challenges associated with the pandemic, Amy Bull, creative content manager at Peterborough-based Media Matters PR and digital marketing agency has some advice when it comes to planning your content.

“Before you start planning, it’s important to have a marketing strategy in place. Every good content plan should be aligned with the wider business and marketing objectives, with every piece of activity working towards a common goal.

“Even if your marketing strategy hasn’t been perfected, include what you want to achieve, your target audiences, your brand proposition and key performance indicators, it’s a good start and will support your content planning.

“By keeping a few steps in mind, you will have a great start towards a content plan that offers real value to your audience – and which contributes to your wider marketing goals.”

Five fab secrets to good content planning: 

1. With a strategy in place, when you start to map out your content make sure you have your overarching objectives in mind. Think about how you want your content to contribute to these objectives, will it help to support increased brand awareness? Will it help to move people from considering your product or service, to becoming a customer? Or, will content contribute throughout your prospects’ and customers’ journey?
2. Whatever you want your content to achieve, set some key performance indicators (KPIs), to help determine if your content is really doing the job you want it to.
3. The key to great content is understanding what people want to read, watch or listen to. Your focus should be on what value you are going to offer through the content. To establish this, build buyer personas of your target customers and assess what their goals and challenges are. Once you have outlined these, think about how your content can help them achieve these goals or overcome challenges.
4. Research what people are talking about on social media, use keyword planning tools to see what people are looking for in search engines and use tools like Google Analytics.
5. Think carefully about where your content will sit. For your website, consider the user experience and ensure that if you want to that your content to be found by a customer, then it is. There is no point ‘burying’ important information in an area of your website that isn’t easily accessible.

 

Amy added: “By keeping these steps in mind, you will have a great start towards a content plan that offers real value to your audience – and which contributes to your wider marketing goals.”