The Importance of a marketing content planner [Scientific Programs blog post]

Content planners design a strategy for the creation of content, publication, and distribution. They also need to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of a strategy.

This kind of content informs the public on the products and services provided by the company. It also helps the viewers solve problems and meet their requirements.

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

1. Determine Your Goals

Benjamin Franklin's famous line "If you don't prepare, you're planning for failure" is true. Efficiency, structure and clear communication are required to transform a strategic plan into a highly efficient content marketing engine.

Setting goals is one of the most crucial steps to take in this process. Start with the high-level business goals or the SMART framework to make them more specific and attainable. This is also a great time to look over your the goals for content and make sure they still in line with the current strategy.

Understanding your goals will allow you monitor the performance of every piece of content. This will help you determine what is working and what needs improvement which will allow you to make necessary adjustments and improve overall performance. This will help you meet your overall goals and provide quality content to your customers.

2. Identify Your Audience

Knowing your audience can aid in creating content that is relevant, interesting and effective. The best way to do this is by conducting research and identifying the traits of your ideal customer personas. This can be done by using surveys, data analysis, and other methods of gathering data about your clients.

By analyzing the results of this research and the results of this research, you can determine the types of content that will be most effective for your business. This can include everything from blog posts and social media posts to webinars and podcasts. Once you've identified which formats will be most effective, it's time to start drafting your content plan.

A tool for planning content can assist you in tracking your marketing goals and ensure that the appropriate people are working on the correct projects. It can also improve productivity by helping teams concentrate on the most important things and avoid distractions. It's easy to start with a free Content Analysis Report from CopyPress today.

3. Find Your Ideal Platforms

It is crucial to tailor your content marketing b2b to the platform you prefer. Instagram users are seeking visually appealing content, whereas TikTok users love short, fashionable videos. Conducting some market research will help you discover your target audience and their preferred platforms.

A well-designed marketing content planner will outline all the steps needed to transform your ideas into an actual asset. It will provide you with a framework to achieve your goals and ensure everyone on your team is in agreement.

Content planning tools such as Monday and Kapost help you with this. They let you create tasks, assign them, collaborate and monitor their progress on a single dashboard. There are also more sophisticated tools, such as Wrike, that offer drop-down menus and provide a table with actionable items, a message board, and a general project timeline. Both of them offer an initial free version, as well as more comprehensive subscriptions if your team requires more advanced features.

4. Find Your Content Types

If you're a single influencer or part of an enterprise marketing team, a content planner helps you organize your ideas and ensures that everyone is on the same page. It's also a great way to manage content for longer time-based projects, such as annual or quarterly campaigns.

A well-designed content plan will help you identify the kinds of content that need to be created and how they should be executed. This includes determining what format your content should be in like blog posts, infographics, case studies, podcasts, or social media press releases. It must also include a timeline for when these pieces should be produced and published.

You should also be monitoring the results of your goals for content marketing like traffic and engagement. This will allow you to analyze your results and make needed adjustments. Using a program like Ahrefs can help you see what's working and what's not. It can also provide information about the performance of your competitors.

5. Find Your Content's Goals

If you've set clearly defined content objectives, your team can stay on track and ensure they're meeting their goals. A clear set of goals will help you reach your goals for content marketing whether it's to boost SEO traffic by updating blog posts or increase customer retention by organizing webinars.

A good content planner will help you define your objectives by creating an organized workflow and allowing for collaboration. It can also include tools like image-generation software and text-to-image instructions or social management applications to make the process easier.

A marketing content planner will help you to identify your metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and other important elements. This will let you assess the effectiveness of your content and respond accordingly to improve your marketing campaign. Bounce rate as well as website traffic and social media shares are examples of metrics that are quantifiable. These metrics must be tracked throughout the content's lifecycle, including production and publication.

6. Identify Your Resources

If you don't have the resources needed to implement your content strategy, it will be ineffective. While planning, make sure that you have enough money to accomplish all the tasks you've laid out. This could include team or salary payments as well as production costs for web space and materials, and paid marketing tactics.

Once you have a budget, you can begin assigning the responsibility for each task. You can assign different employees to do keyword research, copywriting, editing as well as design. Alternately, Sprout can be used to automate the process of scheduling your content marketing strategies across various platforms.

Sprout allows you to connect your social media accounts and schedule posts for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn company pages, as well as Google business to business content marketing Profiles, all on one platform. The scheduling tools of Sprout also have an image library to simplify the management of assets and cut down time when creating posts.

7. Find your Key Performance Indicators

If you're planning to invest a lot of time creating content, it's essential that your marketing efforts are rewarded. You can boost your performance by analyzing and tracking the most effective key performance indicators.

For instance, a popular KPI for content marketers is the number of returning customers. This is a metric used to assess how well your content is converting customers to you and to pinpoint areas for improvement in future campaigns.

In addition, it is crucial to decide on the type of content you'd like create based on your objectives and audience. This could include blog articles videos, infographics, or posts on social media. Once you have identified the various formats for your content, you should create a plan for each that includes frequency and distribution. This will ensure that the correct people are viewing your content at the right time.

8. Identify Your Methods for Tracking

A marketing content planner is a valuable tool for any business looking to improve their marketing efforts. It assists you in keeping track of your goals, audience, and resources, while allowing you to evaluate how effective your strategy is 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 consistently. It also lets you plan ahead for any holidays or events that may impact your audience's engagement.

A keyword content strategy is a powerful tool to optimize your SEO strategies. It will allow you to find the most relevant keywords for your content, which can improve your search engine ranking and visibility. It will also allow you to determine the effectiveness of your keyword content strategy over time.

9. Find Your Measurements

Regardless of whether you choose to organize your content according to keyword or theme your marketing strategy should be able to assist you in identifying the most important metrics for each piece. This will help you determine how successful your content has been in order that you can continuously improve it. A cloud-based marketing content planner, like Optimizely CMP, can also make it easier to manage collaboration between team members and generate reports that are useful for making future content planning decisions.