Content Marketing Plan – Tips and Considerations

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Content Marketing Plan-Tips and considerations

 

Every site is different than others so, to market the website and get maximum visibility, you need to devise a content marketing plan. It can’t be generic that one size fits all. It’s made by considering and analyzing the mission, goals, and audience for that particular business. For any website to be created, first you need to craft content strategy. And then to market the website you create a content marketing plan.

Always remember that expecting results overnight, will mislead you to conclude that you are failing, even when you aren’t in an actual sense. It requires promotion and time to reach a reasonable marketing database. For that you’ve to;

  • Carry out research on your audience, to see as to where they are actively engaging and using which channel. Determine as, which channel is the most popular in the people of the age group you are targeting? List these in priority and use them accordingly.
  • Attract and build a subscribed audience.
  • And improve SEO.

Creating Content Marketing Plan-Steps

There are no fixed rules to follow, for crafting a content marketing plan. Nor any rigid structure for identifying the audience and further-reaching them with your media and converting them. Some of the steps to follow are:-

  • Set the mission statement. (A purpose-driven statement)
  • Finalize the goals while keeping in mind your mission statement. ( It’s required for the shared purpose among the team)
  • Determine your audience. (Make audience personas).
  • Think of a unique brand story, you want to deliver to the audience. (What different than everybody else)
  • Make a plan to translate all the above points, into action.
  • Take measurements in the process, as to what is working and what’s not.

Considerations to make content marketing plan sustainable

The content marketing plan is a sustainable, and ongoing operation. So that every team member knows, what to do when creating content, on behalf of your business. For that;

  • Determine the tasks in steps, in order to make the process of content marketing plan clear.
  • Assign the task to the relevant members.
  • Appoint editors, to take care of the quality and brand standards.
  • Finalize the content format and media channels.
  • Find the content creators/contributors.
  • The availability of resources. (In house and externally).
  • Point out the industry trends, in the geographical location, you intend to target.

Analyze the industry trends and consumer trends, so that you get the insight and future trends of the industry. As a result, you will be able to craft a strategy that caters for personalization and create a connection with your audience. For sustainability, in a content marketing plan, you need to spell out as to what type of content to incorporate into the website. i.e. mix of aggregation, visual content to make it user-friendly and intuitive.

Content Creation Process

When crafting a content marketing plan, you need to spell out the content creation. Although, there is no set or precise way to create a content creation management process. But you may consider the following:-

  • Set content taxonomy.
  • Create a process flowchart.
  • Required team skills and resources.
  • Editorial guidelines.
  • Make a channel plan.
  • Tools and systems required for smooth functioning.

A process of Content Marketing Plan to generate content

Divide the content generation process into 7 stages:-

  • Plan
  • Strategy
  • Design
  • Build
  • Optimize
  • Launch
  • Analyze

Planning stage in Content Marketing Plan:

  • Determine the impression, as what you want to give to the target audience.
  • Design of site architecture/ structure.
  • Define, as which pages will be part of your main/secondary navigation?
  • Make an outline for the content to be written.
  • Identify and finalize what will be call-to-action.
  • Set the target date.
  • Calculate the budget for this project.
  • Decide as to what work to do in-house or what to outsource?

Strategy Stage in Content Marketing Plan:

  • Determine your goals as to what you want to achieve from these websites.
  • Define your brand and business message and value proposition.
  • Research the audience and build personas.
  • Analyze the competition and top competitor websites, to determine 3 topmost keywords for the massage and spa industry.

Design Stage Content Marketing Plan:

Consider the design in a way that is locatable by the search engines and engages the customers as well. For that;

  • Keep your goals upfront.
  • Your target audience/personas
  • Clean and easy to navigate by the users.
  • Content strategy
  • View-able on all digital devices.
  • Consideration for design choice:-
  • Good visual design: Take care of Logo, font(s), white space, theme, layout, and color.
  • Content: Have relevant content and answering all the questions of the reader.
  • Navigation: Keep the navigation simple and no cluttered.
  • Call-to-action: Exercise care in size, color and use actionable words.
  • Credibility: Clearly state your identity, contacts and utilize verified links only.
  • Mobile compatible: Make all the sites viewable on the smartphone as well.
  • Layout: Review and select the wire-frame of the layout.
  • Mockup: Review design prototype/mock-up.
  • Colors: Finalize the color scheme to match branding.
  • Visual: Gather all visual assets.

Build Stage in Content Marketing Plan:

Interactive Content

Have a different range of “Interactive content” so that different segments of the audience can customize it to their appealing desire. Any way,  deliver value and expect audience engagement, with the provision of interactive content.

  • Build the prospect profile with the assessment, polls that ask the audience to share an opinion and gather their feedback.
  • Carry out the knowledge test and quizzes to place them correctly at the right stage of a buyer’s journey.
  • Offer calculators to work out various expenses and generate a comparison, evaluate and make a knowledgeable decision.
  • Hold contests to create buzz and excitement while increasing engagement. For that incorporate videos of client visits and encourage customers to share the videos of their visits to hold contests and polls.
  • The images and videos so gathered from the visitors will be put into galleries, to add, even encourage the user-generated placement as well.
  • Finalize the content, written and visual.
  • While in staging make sure that the site is set up as no-index during development.
  • Review and play with the site at this stage and try to determine the overall flow and usability.

Optimize stage:

  • Make sure the site is multi-browser compatible.
  • 404 pages are user-friendly.
  • Run the site through a broken link checker.
  • Check for common errors like grammar and misspelling.
  • A website is shareable and users can easily subscribe to content.
  • Posts, photos, and other pages are sharable.
  • Analytics tools are up and running on the site.
  • Make the use of keywords meaningful and at the appropriate place in the site.
  • Keywords to align with the target audience.
  • Call-to-action has to be aligned with the topics covered in the site pages.
  • Check for the content hierarchy and organization.
  • Is the site structure intuitive and user-friendly?
  • Perform HTML validation test.
  • The site has to be optimized for mobile viewing.
  • Do the pages load quickly?

Launching your Website

Make a Communication Plan

Use social media proactively and keep the conversation fresh and interesting. Use social media to drive traffic to your blog and then blog drives the traffic to the landing page. Using Facebook is simple and cost-effective. Your communication plan should include:-

  1. Facebook
  2. Twitter
  3. Google+ business page.

Social Media Plan

Advertise your services with the help of social media. Set the appropriate goals and write these. Goals could be:-

  • Brand awareness
  • Develop loyal customers
  • Improve the sales
  • Increase ROI
  • Select the most important metrics.
  • Reach
  • Clicks
  • Engagement
  • Most performing Hashtag
  • User reaction to my content.
  • Use of organic and paid links appropriately

Analyzing/Measurement

Spell out in your Content Marketing plan the KPI’s and measures to include following;

  • Are all of your important pages indexed?
  • Confirm that robots.txt files are set up properly.
  • Resubmit your XML sitemap via Google and Bing. (webmaster tools)
  • Add a public HTML sitemap (if not done already)
  • Make sure your analytics tools are working properly.
  • Benchmark your metrics,
  • Number of visits/ visitors/ unique visitors.(Monthly average)
  • Bounce rate (monthly average)
  • Time on site. (monthly average)
  • Top-performing keywords. (In terms of rank, traffic and lead generation)
  • A number of inbound linking domains.
  • New leads/form submission. (per month)
  • The total amount of sales generated. (per month)
  • Pages indexed in total
  • The number of pages that receive traffic.
  • Analyze the following sources that will indicate what’s working and what is not working.
  • Incoming Links
  • Comments
  • Views
  • Online reach growth
  • Competitor behavior
  • Organic search result growth
  • Referral growth
  • Direct traffic
  • Social Reach
  • Most popular pages on my website.
  • Set the benchmarks for 1,3 and 6 months as follows:-
  • A number of visits/ visitors/unique visitors. ( Monthly Average)
  • Bounce Rate (monthly average)
  • Time on site. (Monthly average)
  • Top-performing keywords. (in term of rank, traffic and lead generation)
  • Inbound linking domains in number.
  • New leads/form submissions. (Per month)
  • Sales generated for the total amount.
  • Pages indexed just in number.
  • Pages that receive traffic.

To conclude; the content marketing plan is different from the content marketing campaign. A content marketing plan is made once in the lifetime of a project, after a lot of deliberation. The document so designed and created is used to refer to every step of the project life cycle. Some components of the project can be handled in house while some can be outsourced. In house arrangement always gives continuity and make it efficient to update.