Having the time to create a content marketing plan and strategy might seem daunting at first, but finally starting the creative process in scheduling your content for your campaign will be a win-win situation for you and your audience — you get to provide more valuable content for your readers.
All that the audience wants is valuable and relevant content from the brands they trust, on a consistent basis. With the right content marketing plan, you and your brand can build that relationship your audience craves for dearly. Firstly know who you are creating content for, when the content should be posted and how valuable it is to your audience. With that said, let’s take a deeper look at 10 steps in building a content marketing plan in 2024 and beyond.
10 Steps in Building a Content Marketing Plan
If a business wants to attract and convert leads, it needs content. If you want your content and marketing campaigns to be as effective as possible, then you should follow these steps and get started:
1. Goals and Key Performance Indicators
Setting content marketing goals and KPIs should be the first thing you do when you start a new project. They will help you figure out what information you need to reach your goals. Without a doubt, the goals you set now will affect the choices you make about your content plan that follows.
For each goal, you’ll need at least one KPI to see how well you’re doing. You could use social media KPIs to track goals like reach, engagement, sales, and customer royalty.
2. Figure out who you want to reach [Target Audience]
The next thing you need to do is figure out which groups of people are most important to the success of your plan. Buyer profiles that your company creates are often a good way to describe your target audience. You’ll fit content topics to each character when you have more than one to think about.
There are some tools you can make use of to make an engaging poll that will help you learn more about your audience and connect with them. Once you have a good idea of what they will say, think of creative ways to share that information in a way that makes sense to both them and your business.
3. Audit Existing Content
Look over the information you already have to get a good idea of where you are and where you want to go. To get a sense of what you’re releasing, start by making a list of all the material you already have.
It helps you find material that you forgot exists. It also gives you insights into some topics, sharing channels, types of content, and also their performance. Once you’re done with this paperwork, you can look for trends to include in your content plan.
4. Figure out which content channels will work
Start your content marketing plan with the ways of getting your content out there that are already working. To learn more, look at the data of your website to find out where the referrals are coming from.
How do people find your blog? Do they click on the links in your email or on the posts you make on social media? Did they know about you from other sources? Pay attention to the methods that work best.
5. The kind of content that works better
Of course, not all types of content are the same, and you need to think about all of them when you’re making your approach. Making content costs more or less depends on the type. When planning your content, keep in mind that some forms will work better on certain online sites.
Blog posts, pictures, movies, maps, podcasts, and user-generated content are the most popular types of content. Depending on your marketing funnel stage and the people you want to reach, the content you use can change throughout the year.
The material types you choose will depend on your team and viewers. To find out what your audience wants to see more of, use online poll forms. Write down these ideas in your plan for content marketing.
6. Put out your content the right way:
How you share your content will have a big effect on how easy it is to read, how engaged people are with it, and your KPIs. Which result is best for your content will depend on how rich it is, how many multimedia features it has, and how you want it to look on each device.
One thing you would notice on our website is its mobile useability and friendliness. If you want your content to look great on all devices and be available to everyone, you need to share it in a flexible format that brings it to life, has engaging features, and has easy-to-use navigation and search menus.
A LinkedIn newsletter is a tool that lets LinkedIn users send a number of stories directly to the people who follow them on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn newsletters don’t get enough attention. Why? Well, our guess is that it is underrated for those who don’t know its power. If you launch a new newsletter, you can let all of your followers know at once. This gives you quick access to thousands of users — all at once.
You must, however, be able to use the LinkedIn Creator hub.
7. It’s time to promote your content out to the world:
You need to let people know about your content, and you should do this through your own outlets. Newsletters, email campaigns, and posts on social media are all great ways to get people to read your new content and let your fans know about it. This keeps your audience interested and helps you get more fans and build relationships with them.
Anyone who writes can also share their work on Medium, an online publication site. Anyone who wants to share their thoughts, stories, or ideas on a wide range of topics can use it. They can directly repost their work or make new, original tales or assets.
Google will also give unique Medium posts a lot of weight. Sending gifts of huge traffic, if you know what we mean.
Medium lets you repost old blog posts, and if you use their “import” tool, they’ll even add a rel=canonical link. You can also use Medium to get more people to read your full blog posts on your own site.
There are also other platforms out there that would help you achieve your goals in reaching larger audience.
8. Measure & Analyze:
Use data and analytics tools like Google Analytics or Microsoft Clarity to keep track of how well your content is doing. If you keep track of how well your content is doing, you can see what’s working and what’s not, and you can see if you are on track to meet the goals and aims you set in the earlier step.
9. Optimize your campaign:
You can use the data and analytics to learn more about how your campaign is doing so you can make changes and make your plan better over time.
Picking the right campaign goal and KPI is the first step in optimizing a campaign. Campaign goals that are good help businesses and marketers reach their bigger goals. For instance, the marketing team might make sure that a digital ad campaign brings more people to the company’s website so that the overall goal of spreading the word about the brand is met [brand awareness].
After deciding on a campaign goal, the next step is to choose the measures that will show how well the campaign did. If a campaign’s goal is to get more appropriate visitors to its site, it might track total site views and click-through rate (CTR). If the goal is to increase conversions, it might track total conversions, conversion rate, total leads generated, and clicks through to advertising landing pages.
You can make changes and improve your content as needed to get better results if you keep an eye on your work.
10. Do it again and again:
You should always be making content, and you should do a full analysis after each effort. But the action isn’t over—you have to sdo a rinse and repeat procedure. To keep people interested and help your audience grow, you should always be making, sharing, and pushing good material.
Conclusion
Content marketing plans can work really well, especially in business-to-business (B2B) settings, where people usually do a lot of research before they buy something. Content can bring in new customers and help people who are still observing your products and services finally make a decision to your favour.
You know the steps, so it’s time to learn how to make a content marketing plan. It starts with writing down your content marketing plan before you put it into action. Use a good plan that spells out your steps and keeps your team on track to get the most out of it.
