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We all know that content is king when it comes to marketing in a digital atmosphere. Unfortunately, all too frequently we make simple mistakes along the way that prevent us from owning a successful strategy. What it all comes down to is content planning and how we’re going about it all wrong. These five tips will help you up your planning game and help you to produce your top content.
It’s great to feel on top of your game especially when traditionally marketing required that we plan years into the future to secure a campaign but spontaneity has taken over. It’s still important to have a long-term game plan but when it comes to social landscapes unpolished timely content is often favoured by the audience. When you take off your professional marketer hat and think about it as the end user it’s so obvious - you’re much more likely to engage with content that seems fresh.
The biggest reason we seem to forget this in our daily work habits comes down to convenience. It is a million times easier to fill a calendar a month out, schedule the content, and forget about it. If there’s one thing your audience doesn’t care about its simplicity for you - they just want great fresh content.
Do you even know who your followers and subscribers are? Are you paying attention to what content they respond and interact with or are you blasting them with content you think they might like?
When it comes to content planning one of the most important steps is looking at your history. What has worked in the past is a good indicator of what will work in the future and to the same extent what doesn’t work you should really stop doing. Don’t throw a plate of spaghetti at a wall and hope it sticks be strategic in the types of content that work for your audience and work to make it engaging so that each post is relevant to your audience and the reason they follow you.
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The number of times I’ve seen marketing teams plan their content with the sole intent to create content pains me to my very soul. To these teams I give one piece of advice: you’re wasting your time - reevaluate.
What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to generate awareness for your brand? Are you trying to make sales? In the end, it comes down to your goals and you should be working backward from there. Once you understand the big picture you can nail out what key performance indicators should look like and based on that start planning your content.
Now this point really ties in with ‘your audience doesn’t care’ and ‘what are you trying to accomplish’. Another telltale sign of failure I’ve seen comes down to “Instagram is so popular if we go on that we’re sure to be successful”. If you’ve been on a marketing team in the last 10 years I guarantee you’ve heard or possibly even suggested this and it is utterly wrong. Do your research and know where your audience spends their time and what they spend their time doing there. If you’re targeting an older generation of professionals Instagram likely isn’t your key to success. Narrowing down on the platforms you use will save time and be much more successful in speaking to your audience.
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If you’re focused on polishing your content until it’s bright and shiny whether it be a blog, a social post, or even a video you’re likely exhausting your resources. For example, the average amount of time a user spends looking at a Facebook post is mere seconds. Was it really worth having 5 people review it a week ahead of time to make sure it’s quality - not likely. Posts need to be frequent and they need to be eye-catching beyond this users won't even notice you were there. Of course, testing different types of content is important but spending hours upon hours examining the editing of a video likely won't result in more signups or sales.
Have questions about how you can plan your content better? Reach out - lets talk.