What you say and how you say it?

We know the phrase it isn’t what you know but what about what you say and how you say it? The latter I say applies to your marketing messaging and communications.

I asked on a recent LinkedIn poll around what my network wanted me to cover in a future lunch and learn, and content planning was a popular one. Eg what content to cover off, how, when, how often and so on.

Content Strategy and Planning

To develop and create a content plan should be part of your ongoing marketing plan and strategising. These two types of plans tie in together and creating a content plan as part of a marketing plan will yield better results and successes in your marketing activity.

How do you create a content plan?

The way I do mine, and the way I advocate to clients, is my thinking of the theme for the month eg marketing planning. Then I think of all the channels I can use to disseminate this message across eg blog, LinkedIn posts, networking speeches, newsletter and so on. This way ensures all the channels are used to maximise exposure of the messaging, it means I am organised, it means consistency and it avoids the wrong silo approach. I will talk about this later.

Better manage your time, by knowing what you are doing, when and also why. Create yourself a routine. And then create a content plan.

Find out more about this approach in a presentation I gave here

The benefits of a content plan

• Content planning ensures you maximise on copy you have written, or invested in someone else to do, and produced. And it ticks the box of drip feed marketing. Drip feed marketing is all about repeating your message. Content planning in addition helps you plan out your marketing with the goal to grow your leads and showcase yourself and your business online. Like it or not, social media is not going away and the likes of Facebook and LinkedIn are great ways to raise brand awareness for you and your business. Read more about the 7 touches of Marketing! – How a multi channel marketing approach really can work here.
• Plan your content and recycle and cover all the marketing channels. Don’t deal with marketing channel in isolation, it all works better together! When business approach their marketing and the marketing channels in silos is so wrong and so frustrating. See the bigger picture! Increase your number of touches to reach your audience, therefore increasing exposure and opportunities to engage and sell. Raise your profile and spread your message, to the right people across the right channels.
• Ensure your marketing messaging is consistent across all marketing, collateral and social media. And a content plan will help you do this.
• To ensure all services are marketed equally and to enable content to be written and recycled for blogs, website, minutes, social media posts, your monthly plan will contain, for each medium, a template outlining ideas and draft wording.
• A content plan will help you achieve consistency in your marketing. ?40% of small business owner respondents to a poll I carried out said the area theymost struggle in their business and its marketing, is with consistency sound familiar?
• Planning your content will help you manage resource and budget, and help you with regular sales. Especially over the Summer months.
• Remove the chaos and overwhelm, by having a plan and course of action.
• Build your marketing over time, slowly but surely.

Content is king as they say …

What to cover in a marketing plan

Get a content plan (noting themes rather than specific posts) covering topics like:

• market and industry news
• products and services
• company news
• awareness days
• staff news
• inspire, entertain, educate and promote
• 70/30 rule of content …

A content plan will help with your evergreen marketing by following a routine and style of content monthly, which you can then add to on an ad hoc basis.

Content planning – what else?

Other things you need to consider with your content planning is who should be in charge of your content? You the business owner or an outsourced marketer or both or ?

You also need to think about implementing your content and think about measuring your content for what is resonating and what is/isn’t working for you content wise?

And finally, think about recycling your content. This is fine to do by the way! Make sure re used content is topped and tailed differently for SEO purposes and so on.

Find out more here.

One client said – “This is just ace – exactly what I need. There is loads here that is spot on – and so clear and easy to use. Many thanks” Jo Dickie