The Steps to Creating an Effective Content Plan
With effective digital marketing, there are many ways to form a genuine connection with your target audience. Whether you’re looking to engage with a meaningful social media post or inform using written content on your website, you can take advantage of all that digital marketing for your business has to offer. Before getting started, we always suggest taking time to conduct research and create a comprehensive plan. Especially when the goal is to create a wide variety of engaging evergreen content.
To help you get started on the right path and navigate the world that is content creation and marketing, let’s walk through the steps to creating an effective content plan!
Set Goals
Identifying your focus and what you plan to achieve should always be your first step, no matter the endeavour! As you begin your content creation journey, it’s important to first set goals - both long and short-term.
Your goals may look like one of the following:
Provide readers with access to accurate information
Help to grow your brand, business or online presence
Boost sales and increase ROI
Build a booming online community
No matter how small or large your goals may be, everyone has to start somewhere!
Assess Current Content
Before you can begin to generate new content, you need to first assess the current situation. Take a look at the blogs on your website, review your Instagram feed and see which webpages are ranking on Google.
Take notes on what currently exists, how it can be improved and what’s missing. This will help to provide you with a starting point when creating your content marketing strategy.
Identify Your Audience
Identifying your target audience is one step that should never be overlooked.
The key to creating effective content that will both inform and engage, is to determine exactly who it will be catered towards. For instance, how a female in her early 20’s connects with a piece of content may look completely different than a man in his late 50’s.
By identifying exactly who your business or brand is trying to reach online, you can effectively create content that will provide them with the information that they are looking for.
Determine the Type of Content
We truly love how different one piece of content can look from the next. While blogs remain an extremely effective way to connect with and inform your target audience online, there are many other options available to you - especially in 2022!
Our favourite kinds of content include:
Blogs
Videos
Photos
Graphics
Infographics
Live videos
Webpages
Downloadable resources
Audiobooks or podcasts
How will you connect with your online audience?
Research, Research, Research
Now that you have a better understanding of who your audience is, what your current content strategy is missing and the different kinds of approaches that you can take to content creation, it’s time to really strategize.
Through research, you can determine what kind of information your target audience is looking for online. This can be found through keyword research and even finding out what questions they are typing into search engines.
Using this information, you can start to really bring your content plan to life with a variety of topic ideas and specific areas of interest.
Set Timelines
By setting timelines and creating a comprehensive content schedule, you can achieve accountability and set yourself up for success all at once! By creating a schedule, you can help to ensure that there is more than enough time for each piece of content to be created. Especially when it comes to more visual pieces of content such as photos, videos and downloadable resources.
Some businesses may choose to post content daily, while others find that a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly posting schedule best suits their needs. It really depends on your goals, budget and bandwidth.
Connecting the Dots
When selecting topics, you may find it helpful to create posts that flow from one to another seamlessly. Not only will this provide you with the opportunity to better inform your audience on more complex topics that require a follow-up post, but it can also help aid in your SEO efforts with internal linking from one post or page to another.
Build Your Brand with My Wolf Design
Did you find the information in this article helpful? Browse the other posts in our blog to keep learning and truly bring your online presence to life!
For more information or help getting started online, connect with our team of experts at My Wolf Design today. We can assist you with many helpful services, geared to help your business or brand thrive online.
