5 Ways To Build a Robust Content Marketing Plan

There is always a lot happening in every organization that the need to communicate great stories in ways that matter for your employees and other stakeholders has never been stronger. Missing out on crucial pieces of information can reduce your brand's value and impact.

However, coming to grips with the various content pieces that enhances your organization’s standing is tricky. Here are a few pointers to help structure your content marketing plan and keep your organization’s brand refreshed.

Your audiences: If the plan is for the communication team to think ahead you will need to factor in the overall business landscape and frame a long term content calendar. This master content calendar helps with a  view on recurring business events and programs that expect communication and marketing interventions. To engage your leaders and resolve conflicts in the calendar a sub-set of this plan can highlight the key essentials that need their attention and time. Lastly, this plan can also serve as a useful guide to keep your employees posted on what is coming up and how they can contribute. For example, your company’s newsletter can be fed with regular content if your employees know what the specific themes for the editions coming up during the year.

Your stakeholders:  Apart from your leaders, managers and community volunteers, other stakeholders include employees in boundary spanning teams such as customer service, sales, marketing, business development, facilities and legal that engage and interface with both your internal and external partners. Getting them involved can help you put your plan into action. Content contributors – employees who have a passion for writing, who play a program management role or those who are well networked can also be tapped.

Your plan: Considering all that which takes place in an organization the content marketing plan can help make decision making simpler and easier for the communication team and for leaders. By reflecting on the programs and their importance leaders can prioritize and reshape the direction they want the business to take. Having a plan is great; operationalizing it is crucial. For the plan to succeed, you need all your stakeholders aligned on the goals and sharing feedback continually. Think of the frequency and timing of content on your channels while mapping it to themes across the year.

Your review:  Periodically assess your plan as you progress. Some parts of the plan will evolve over time and you may need to revisit the elements. During your regular review checkpoints keep stakeholders focused on the outcomes from the content marketing effort. How it is driving change, what does it do for the brand, which elements are working and which need to be reviewed.  Check if there are enough opportunities for internal and external communication to cross-feed and amplify your content impact.

Your pipeline: Keeping an eye on stories that will work for your business is as essential as having a content marketing plan. To have a pipeline means you need to invest in building relationships, creating platforms for employees to be themselves, write more often and inspire everyone around to contribute. You can consider building skills among employees that will reap the benefits in the future. Create templates that will make it easier for employees to contribute content. Also, have a way to recognize those who pitch in for your content feed.

Keeping your content marketing engine running will need you to focus on the current and yet draw from the future. Have other suggestions to improve your content marketing effort? Keen to hear from you.