Business owners know content plays a part helping them achieve their marketing and business success.
But when it comes to being super-duper sure if it’s a content strategy they create first or their content plan many aren’t 100% sure.
What they do instead is adopt a let’s see how this content performs today type of approach.
For many this approach doesn’t work and leaves them wondering where they went wrong.
In this blog, let’s chat about the most common mistake business owners make when it comes to creating their content strategy and content plan and how to get clear on the difference between your content strategy and content plan so you can feel more confident in creating and sharing content your audience wants and helps you achieve the results you’re after.
Let’s dive in.
What’s your first step to creating your results driven content strategy and content plan?
Many business owners dive straight into getting content out there.
Yeah! I’m doing this marketing malarkey.
Feels good to be out there!
But without knowing the goals and objectives for your business before hand can land you in a whole heap of trouble.
Why?
Because you don’t know what it is you want your content to help you achieve.
Your content needs to have a purpose.
So if you’re not clear, you may want to settle down with a cuppa and a plate of biscuits, do your business plan BEFORE you consider creating your content strategy or content plan.
Focus on your business plan first
Some questions to help you with your business planning are:
What are your business goals and objectives?
- How much money do you want to earn? By when?
- How many of ‘X’ product or service do you want to sell? By when?
- What new products/services do you want to introduce? When?
- What products/services do you want to promote? When?
Get more ideas to create your results driven business plan
Your content strategy and Content Plan
Now we’ve shone a light on the importance of your business plan, we can give our attention to your content strategy and content plan.
What’s your content strategy?
Your content strategy is what you want your content to achieve for you.
What do you want your content to do for your business?
Some businesses identify what they don’t want their content to achieve for them.
Content strategy examples
It might be that you want your content to help you grow your email list by a certain amount;
You might want to convert a certain percentage of your email list to clients,
Increase leads from a certain social media platform or
To offer a new lead magnet to promote a new product or service.
What’s your content plan?
Your content plan is your map helping you to reach those objectives and goals.
It outlines the topics you’re going to create content for and the types of content you’re going to create.
Content plan examples
A few content plan examples:
- Write and publish 35 blogs this year around 10 of my keywords
- Create a new lead magnet every quarter to promote ‘X’ product or service and share it on selected social media platforms
- Re-write my nurture emails to improve my conversation rate from 2% to 5%
What comes first then?
Your content strategy is done before your content plan.
Content Strategy v Content Plan: A simple way to explain the difference
It’s not always easy to get your head around the difference between a content strategy and a content plan.
Let’s explain it like this:
Your content strategy = A specific outcome you want your content to achieve
Your content plan = What content you’re going to create, when you’re going to share it and where you’re putting it.
How to make good use of your content strategy and content plan
It takes you time to focus on getting clear on your business goals and objectives so you can create your results driven content strategy and content plan.
Does that mean once you’ve got these in place you’re guaranteed amaze balls results?
No.
Would be great if it did wouldn’t it? 😊
You need to measure your results and progress.
Questions to help you measure your results using your business plan, content strategy and content plan.
Here are some questions to help you.
- What were your business goals and objectives?
- Did your content strategy and content plan help or hinder you?
- What did you achieve?
- What’s working?
- What isn’t?
- What can you keep?
- What can you ditch?
- What can you tweak?
- What can you start doing differently?
- Who can help you identify where you can improve?
Want to know more about how to make your marketing and content more fantabulous?
Here’s some more blogs for you:
How to create your 12 months marketing plan to support your business objectives and goals
How to create endless content ideas when you offer one product or service
Is a content plan a good idea to help you promote your business?
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