Creating content plans in a guided session from The Thinking Cap
Creating content plans in a guided session from The Thinking Cap
Content marketing is now at the heart of most businesses. It’s like spreading your seeds into various plant beds to see which ones take. The timing and conditions must be right for your seed – or prospective customer – to transform. Creating content plans is like planning and tracking which seeds grew best. Next year, your crops will flourish because you’ve taken the time to test what works.
When you understand the principles behind creating good social media content, and already know what your audience responds to, what’s next?
It can be hard to take all that information and make it useful to you. That’s where content plans come in – it’s the perfect way to organise your full content marketing efforts into a cohesive system.
Even when you have a good understanding of creating valuable content, including generating ideas and posting different types of media, it’s hard to manage without a content plan. You also have previous content you know you should be repurposing. But how do you go about creating content plans that generate customers for your business?
What to include in your content plans
When creating content plans, it’s looking at more than your social media posts. It includes your full sales funnel, such as any of the following already in place –
- blog posts
- case studies
- lead magnets
- how-to videos
- free downloads
- email newsletters
- product/personal branding photos
Customers are looking to be nurtured online and consumer behaviour has changed since the pandemic. Many people check out businesses social media profiles before Googling them, and so a good online presence and solid content marketing plan has never been more important.
If you’d like to know more about content plans, we have plenty of resources available to help you. Look at our guides on how to create effective social media calendars and creative content marketing ideas for 2022.
Guided sessions to create and maximise your yearly content plan
It’s difficult to sit down and spend time creating content plans, let alone doing them well – that’s why The Thinking Cap now offers guided sessions to run you through the process.
In the guided content plan sessions, you will come away with a FULL year’s worth of content ideas and a structure to make your plan work for you. Creating content plans means you’ll always have a reference point for you or your team – meaning no more staring into space waiting for inspiration to hit!
What’s included in the guided content planning sessions?
To create a successful content plan, you need to be aware of your businesses’ full content marketing presence and outline how it all works together. That way we can start using the full picture to inform our decisions.
First, we create content pillars that cover the whole range of your products/services. This means that you’ll have a consistent topical interest throughout your brand, no matter which area you’re promoting.
Then we make the distinction between your different products/services and their intended audiences. If that’s one clear sector, you will have one content plan. The bigger your company’s offering and audience, the more comprehensive you’ll need to be when creating content plans that are easy to follow. If you have recently changed the way you operate, you may need to spend longer on defining these aspects to suit your new audience.
Once you have the basics of your content plan and strategy outlined, the specific details will follow.
In the guided sessions for creating content plans, we –
- List out the different call to actions (CTAs) you need to get people to sign up/get in touch/begin their customer journey with you. This gives you a checklist to make sure you include a good range throughout your content.
- Create a short template that includes your contact information, such as your social media handle, your phone numbers and email addresses, and how people should get in touch from each platform. Having this to hand will save you so much time later down the line.
- Outline the relevant posting styles for you and how you will use them. Think about the platforms you are using and the best types of content for those, as well as how the audience engages.
- Set a clear brand message by using a consistent tone of voice. Have guidelines that explain which words to use and which to avoid, what tone to take, and other suggested phrases that show your personality and ethos.
- Write out all the customer problems you solve, what their main concerns are, and your frequently asked questions. This will give you a reminder to make sure your content is being helpful and answering these points.
- Look into your team’s different skill sets and explore how each team member can contribute to your content plan. That way it’s not all on one person and you’ll get the best results possible using people’s strengths.
When you write social media posts, it’s important to think about which graphics, videos, or supporting media goes alongside each one. As a big fan of using Canva to become your own social media graphic designer, we run through this on the guided sessions. You’ll learn how you can use Canva as a tool to design your own on-brand images and videos.
Testing and measuring your social media content results will help you to focus on what’s working – and scrap what’s not. The Thinking Cap can help you to evaluate this and look at your overall marketing performance.
Creating content plans to level up your marketing
You might feel like you need more understanding on how to use LinkedIn for promoting your business before creating content plans. If that’s the case, then the LINGO course is for you. After completing LINGO, many people have wanted to take their knowledge one step further, and strike whilst the iron is hot, by signing up for the guided content plan sessions.
If you’re ready to sign up for The Thinking Cap’s guided sessions and start creating content plans for your business, book a free 15-minute, no-obligation call with Lisa.
I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post.
If you’d like further help, let’s jump on a call and have a chat.
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