Free Template: How to Create a Content Plan For Your Business
Companies big and small miss out on the opportunity to create better, more timely and more impactful content simply because they don’t plan ahead. No matter what stage your business is at, if you’ve been working week-to-week or even day-by-day, now is the time to start putting the power of content planning into action!
A content plan allows you to be strategic about the content you create by visualizing not just what you’ll create but when and why. If you’ve ever been caught scrambling to line up content for a launch or stressing about what to post about, a content plan might just be your new best friend.
Who Needs a Content Plan?
Do you really need a content plan for your business? That depends! If you want to create content for its own sake, you might just be able to get away with working on the fly. However, you do need a content plan if your goals are to:
Drive your business objectives
Create high-quality content that people actually find useful and enjoy
Engage, nurture and move your audience down the marketing funnel
Reap the rewards of SEO
Use your resources efficiently
Always have content to support what’s happening in your business
Coordinate your marketing efforts across multiple channels
Reduce anxiety, pressure and overwhelm
By planning ahead, you can avoid making compromises on quality and rushing to write copy or create visual assets at the last minute. Most importantly, you can ensure that the content you create actually has a purpose.
What To Include in Your Content Plan
At the very least, your content plan should include a deadline, the topic for your post, a strategy or theme that the post is tied to, and the channel you’ll publish it on. From there you can add whatever information you find useful for your workflow and business goals.
As you build out your content plan, consider the purpose behind what you’re creating. Hint: it’s not a pretty document that you would have gotten an A for at school but will never actually use… What you’re creating is a useful tool, so make sure whatever comes out of the process is useful to you.
Are you supporting upcoming launches or important dates? Are you planning content to address the needs of all of your audience segments over time? Does your content effectively showcase different aspects of your business, including your brand messages and your products/services? Can you repurpose content across multiple channels such as your blog, email and social media?
The beauty of a content plan is that you can see how all of your content efforts fit together, before you go spend time and money creating anything. Instead of winding up with a random assortment of topics based on what seemed most relevant on a given week, you can be strategic and create the content that your business actually needs most.
Content Plan Template
There are many tools out there that can help you manage your content plan, but we’re firm believers that the best tool is the one you’ll actually use. A content plan is a living, breathing thing that should be referenced and updated constantly. To that end, we’ve created two simple content plan templates in Google Sheets that you can use to get started.
One version is a Basic Content Plan that gives you an easy-to-use starting point with minimal prep time. You don’t need to shoot for the stars with your content plan to get real value out of it! If you’re ready to take things a step further, our Advanced Content Plan gives you everything you need to use content strategically to grow your business.
Still not quite sure where to start? Having a content strategy could be one of the most powerful tools you implement for your business. Get in touch to learn more.
Marielle Reussink
Founder of The Emms, Marketing Professional, Entrepreneur & Advisor to Start-ups