Content planning isn’t just about editorial calendars and figuring out what kind of videos to upload to social media in the near future.

It’s several moving parts that comprise a holistic and complete understanding of your audience then using the insights gained to come up with topics that resonate with your audience and keep them captivated.

There are so many guides that focus on making a year-long content plan without addressing the roots of a solid content strategy: who is your audience? What are they seeking? What behaviors do they engage in that affect how they’d like their content delivered?

You can learn all about the constantly-changing world of content planning at Content Marketing Conference 2017 where content marketing luminaries will be speaking about how to create the kind of content that your audience really wants. When you give your audience what they want, you foster loyalty and drive conversions.

This results in satisfied customers who may refer others to your helpful content, and become more likely to be paying customers in turn.

To get to know the roots of best content planning practices, read up on this list to get more familiar with how to reach your content goals:

  • Are You Writing Too Much Content?: While there’s been a move towards more long-form content for SEO purposes and what some people are searching for (particularly in B2B marketing), your audience actually may not always be in the market for longer posts. Tools like Chartbeat and SumoMe can tell you how long people read through a long blog post before they totally drop off. Knowing the length your blog posts should be for your particular audience is crucial for effective content planning. There’s no one size that fits all.
  • How to Visually Map a Content Strategy: Making your content plan highly visual can be effective in figuring out what you create and how you’re going to implement it: if your readers don’t want to go through a wall of text, why would you build one?
  • The Rise of Bad Content Marketing Advice: Content marketing expert Rebecca Lieb weighs in on the same old cliches constantly told to marketers and brands about why they need content. Everyone has a different end goal with their content strategy and the cliches rely on each marketer trying to get the same results. When planning your content, the “why” is a major aspect of topics, delivery, and putting your plan into motion. Don’t fall into the bad content marketing practices trap!
  • How to Create and Schedule a Social Media Content Plan: Figuring out what to post and when is what most people think of when they hear “content planning”. How do you share that content in an effective manner? Social media. Putting it on autopilot with a program like Buffer is even better so you don’t have to take time out of your schedule to tweet or post in real time. Additionally, your whole social media strategy can actually be driven by just one or two tweets repeated several times.

 

Figuring out what days and months to post timely content or spreading out a drip campaign is merely one part one of effective content planning. By getting to know your audience as well as your own brand, you can figure out what your audience wants and how they want it delivered.

Only then are you able to create a full content plan to execute based on these insights gained by both qualitative and quantitative methods (such as direct engagement with your audience and keyword analysis.)

We hope to see you in Boston for the Content Marketing Conference this year! You’ll learn everything you need to know about effectively making a visual and editorial content plan and implementing it with confidence.