Five Reasons Why You Should Plan Your Content
“Content is King” so said Bill Gates in 1996. He went on to say that “I expect much of the real money will be made on the internet just as it was in broadcasting.”
So, Bill’s done alright with it, but what about the rest of us?
You probably know that content is indeed King, but do you plan it out strategically or do you have a rather haphazard approach? And if you DO plan your content (woo hoo — high five 🥳️!), do you know what you’re trying to plan and why?
What Is Content?
First things first, ‘your content’ is not just your social media.
Your content will cover anything that you publish out there online AND offline, although most people (including our Bill) think of it as online content.
In your Content Marketing Strategy, you might be considering blogs, podcasts, video, social media, email, your lead magnets (eBooks, infographics etc) and interviews, as well as any physical printed content that you produce, such as a book.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I’m a planning girl at heart. And planning your content is key if you want it to be an effective part of your marketing strategy.
There are many reasons why you need to plan your content, but here are my top five:
1. Planning your content keeps you on track with your marketing and business goals.
In order: your business goals drive your marketing goals. They in turn drive your marketing strategy and marketing plan. Your marketing strategy may ‘simply’ say that you want to use content marketing as a way to reach your intended audience. So next, then, will come your content strategy (what are you going to publish, where and why) and then your content plan.
This is what it looks like visually:
2. Planning your content ties your content in with whatever it is that you’re promoting. Launching a new coaching programme? Then publish a bunch of content around that coaching subject area and include a link to your lead magnet or registration page. That’s why it’s important to understand your business goals first.
3. Your content will showcase your expertise in a steady and sustained way, rather than throwing everything out there all at once (which is exhausting for you, and not so enjoyable for your audience).
4. Planning your content keeps your audience engaged and interested. If you’ve planned your content to cover a wide variety of subjects in your specialist area, then you will always have something interesting to say to your audience and, more importantly, they will have always have something interesting to read / watch / listen to. That build up that all-important know, like and trust factor which we all need for our businesses.
5. Want some more potential clients and customers (i.e. ‘traffic’) coming to your website? Planning your content helps enormously with SEO, particularly the written word. As long as you have carried out some search engine research and publish according to what your audience are searching for, then this will help you build up your organic (i.e. free) website traffic. OK, so blogs are perfect for this, but don’t forget about the titles to your videos, podcasts etc. Consider that anything written will be a traffic magnet…or people magnet if you like!
I hope that’s been of help.
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I teach all aspects of marketing to coaches, consultants, course creators and B2B professional service providers (not to mention those hard working crafters) — so that they can go on to be recognised as a leader in their field and enjoy both financial freedom and the freedom to spend time with their family and on the things that they love doing.
I offer real world, practical and fun tuition pulled from my 31 years experience as a professional marketer both in the corporate world with ‘household name’ clients and through helping my clients in the small business world build six and seven figure businesses.
