Content Marketing Made Simple

How To Create A Content Marketing Plan That Gets Results

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I only remember two things from my freshman Business Management class: the girl from South Beach who sat two desks over and the "K.I.S.S." mantra. For some reason, Keep It Simple, Stupid made a lasting impression on me and I have continued to use it as a guiding principle. But it has also given me an unforeseen marketing slogan that is one of the most important things you can learn about content marketing plans...

Keep It Scheduled, Silly.
To explain what I mean, let's look at a real world metaphor:

No matter how high the quality of your content, your efforts will be unsuccessful if you don't create sufficient quantity. It would be like having a brilliant billboard to advertise a store but putting the store and the billboard behind a thick forest. The billboard would probably have generated a lot of business but none of the passing traffic could see it.

That is, in essence, what you are doing if you create great content but don't follow a good content marketing plan.You need to understand when you should post content, set a schedule and follow it. Seriously, make this a priority and follow the schedule.

Understanding When to Post
This one is easy: post every day. Yes, you read that correctly. You need to post every single day, not just business days or Tuesdays when you have free time. But how can you possibly make the time to do that?

Create the content beforehand. Notice, I said "post" every day, not "write" every day. Set aside a few hours at the beginning of the week to plan what you will post in the next seven days and then go ahead and create the content and save it to your computer. When the appropriate time comes, get online and post the content that you have already created.  This also allows you to make sure there is a shared theme or connection between posts and a nice flow that will make it more enjoyable for the visitors.

Note: Your content marketing plan should include several tools, not just a blog or articles.

• Social Networking - Twitter and Facebook status updates are crucial to building your network and should be included a few times per week, at least.
• RSS Feeds - These feeds usually share content you've already posted and, if utilized correctly, they can provide easy access to your site and posts.
• User-generated content - Getting your followers, visitors, etc. to become involved in the creative process counts as content. You need to monitor this closely to ensure they are posting appropriate material but it can fill the creative void when you are short on time or ideas.

Set a Schedule
As I said above, you need to layout the specifics for each week at the beginning of that week but those schedules should be generated with an eye toward a larger, more general goal. Your content marketing plan should be working to help you establish an expert reputation in an area or handful of areas so you need big-picture goals to guide your weekly plans.

For example, a sports equipment store may decide in September that they want to push skiing supplies in the upcoming winter. They would set a schedule that looks something like this:

• First two weeks of October - Introduction of the new product line.
• Second two weeks - Preview of the skis.
• First two weeks of November - Preview of jackets and boots.
• Second two weeks - Sales and coupons for the skis, boots and jackets.

Then, at the beginning of each week, you should look at the macro-goals and plan your specific posts to promote them. This is also the time to plan big events, efforts and special promotions. 

Stick to It
To be honest, you may not see any results at the beginning. But content marketing plans usually work exponentially, meaning traffic begets more traffic. 

Because of the way search engines work, it will take time for you to see the rewards. Just remember that, when you follow your content marketing plan, you are greatly increasing your chances to be successful online. The traffic will come and your reputation will grow as a place where visitors can come for high-quality content that is posted on a regular basis.

All of these things help you gain new traffic and engage those visitors when they land on your site. The more you can engage them, the more often they will visit and the more likely they are to become a trusted, long-term customer or client.

After all, isn't that the point?