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Blog, website, social media channels: they all need to be regularly fed with content. But don't stress! A well-thought-out content marketing strategy starts with a solid content plan. This not only supports you in your daily routine but also helps you achieve your goals. With good planning, you can ensure one thing: your content reaches your target audience at the right time and place.
But first things first: In this guide, we show you why a content plan is so important, how you can set it up, and how good planning can even make collaboration happier! We also take you through our own content planning – for this, we use our content planning template. Ready? Let’s plan!
What is a Content Plan?
A content plan strategically records how you organise the creation, publication, and management of content. It should cover all phases of your content: from topic discovery to production to performance analysis. Only in this way can you ensure with a content plan that you effectively implement your content strategy. At the same time, it becomes the single source of truth for the entire team, keeping everyone informed about the current status.
What are the benefits of a Content Plan?
A content plan is more than just a calendar – it is your strategic compass that guides you through the content jungle. Here are some of the key benefits it offers:
- You stay consistent: With a content plan, you ensure that your content is published regularly, often following a specific pattern. This maintains the baseline engagement with your target audience.
- Your efficiency increases: A clear plan helps you use time and resources optimally. You know exactly what needs to be done and when, avoiding unnecessary stress.
- You keep your goal in sight: You can strategically plan your content to support your company and team goals and target your audience effectively.
- You work transparently: All team members have an overview of the status and responsibilities, which facilitates collaboration.
- You remain flexible: A good plan allows room for adjustments, so you can quickly respond to current trends or changes.
How to create a Content Plan?
To create your content plan, one thing is crucial: don't panic! It sounds more overwhelming than it is, promise. With a structured approach and the right tools, it becomes a breeze. Here is a step-by-step guide based on our awork template:
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Step 1: Develop a content strategy
Define your goals: What do you want to achieve with your content? Whether it's more brand awareness, leads, or conversions – set clear, measurable goals that guide you.
Analyse your target audience: Who are the people consuming your content? Dive deep into the world of your target audience and create personas that reflect their needs and interests.
Conduct a content audit: Check your existing content. What works well, what doesn't? Where do you have gaps? Use these insights to give your strategy direction.
Step 2: Plan content creation
Research trends and topics: What's hot right now? What topics is your target audience currently searching for? Use tools like Google Trends or social media insights to find topics that excite your audience. You should also pay attention to which SEO keywords might be important for you. There are tools like Sistrix or Semrush that can help you with this.
Plan the distribution: Where should your content land? Plan the publication so that it reaches your target audience exactly where they are.
Create an editorial plan: Set clear priorities and deadlines for already determined content pieces. This way, you keep track and always know what's next. Our editorial plan template will be a huge help here.
Maintain an ideas backlog: Keep your creative flashes of inspiration in a backlog. This way, you always have fresh ideas ready when you need them. At the same time, the backlog ensures that your editorial plan remains clear.
Step 3: Plan capacities
Assign resources: Who does what and when? Distribute tasks within the team and ensure that everyone has the necessary capacities. A detailed guide on how to plan capacities securely can be found in our article about capacity planning software.
Create briefing templates: Clear instructions are essential for good content. With specific briefing templates for different content formats, you provide your content creators with everything they need.
Step 4: Analyse and optimise content
Analyse performance: After the content plan comes the next content plan. Therefore, you should regularly check the performance after your content goes live. This way, you quickly identify further gaps and where your content needs to be optimised.
Gather feedback: Listen to your target audience and use their feedback to make your content even better. Also, if possible, get feedback from your internal teams.
With these steps, you are ready to create a content plan that is effective and enhances your enjoyment of work! Simply use our awork template to simplify the process. This way, you elevate your content strategy with an extra dose of work happiness to the next level. Because good planning is the key to happy collaboration.
[.b-important-block]Find out more about work happiness and how it ensures better, more efficient work.[.b-important-block]
[$tag]💜 Work Happiness[$tag]
Content Plan Example: How to successfully implement your Content Plan
This is your official invitation: We take you through our own content planning! For this, we use our content plan template in awork, as all important points for planning are already predefined here, and our editorial plan – the heart of the content plan – lives here.
Organising our content plan in awork becomes an absolute game-changer once we move into the active part of creation. We stay up-to-date on deadlines and priorities at all times and can also transparently show other teams what we are currently working on in the content team.
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Project Kick-off: Planning the strategy
At the start of each quarter, we initiate a new project using the content plan template. In the project's list view, we find the key tasks for our planning. We begin with the "Content Strategy" list and define our goals to be achieved by the end of the quarter.
Tip: We enter the goals into the checklist instead of the sub-tasks of the respective task to keep them visible even after they are achieved and checked off.
Assigning responsibilities and deadlines
"What everyone could do often remains undone." Knowing this, each task in our content plan is assigned a single responsible person. It doesn't matter if the entire team is involved in the end; what's important is that one person holds the responsibility.
To ensure the planning doesn't drag on indefinitely, we set a milestone "Editorial Plan Kick-off" by which the initial planning topics should be completed. We adjust the task deadlines accordingly and use the timeline view to keep the milestone in sight.
Preparing the editorial plan
After the content strategy, we focus on the core: our editorial plan! The awork template already includes an editorial plan template in the form of a list. Every content piece identified through our content audit and brainstorming, which we plan to publish in the coming quarter, is added to this list.
Tip: What should be prioritised in the editorial plan?
During content brainstorming, we create hypotheses to assess the likelihood of a content piece supporting our goals. If our goal is more traffic, we choose topics with high SEO relevance and significant search volume in our target audience. For brand awareness, we focus on larger projects like our Work Happiness Report.
Ideas that are relevant to our target audience but not a priority for achieving our goals are placed in the ideas backlog.
Planning capacities
Our planned content pieces indicate who is needed for creation. In the awork planner, we view team members' workloads and assign tasks accordingly. The workload automatically adjusts once someone is booked for a content piece.
Creating the editorial plan
Our editorial plan thrives on assigning status and important information to content pieces. We work in the Kanban view and categorise tasks into different statuses:
🔵 Next up
🟡 In Progress
🟣 In Review
🔴 In Implementation
🟢 Done
This categorisation is particularly helpful in the Kanban view. We filter by lists, collapse all lists except the editorial plan, and everything becomes neatly organised for perfect coordination in daily content management.
Assigning content properties
Each task is assigned properties such as content format, distribution channel, priority, and goal. These are assigned through custom fields in awork. We use tags sparingly and only for important matters to maintain clarity.
Concluding the content plan
At the end of the quarter, we analyse the success of the content plan. We review tasks in the "Done" status and move them to the "Performance Analysis" task for evaluation. This helps us identify successful content and decide where further optimisation is needed. These insights feed into the upcoming content plan to continuously improve our content strategy.
Conclusion
A solid content plan is the key to successful content marketing. It helps you strategically plan your content, work efficiently, and achieve your goals. Our guide has shown you how to create such a plan and the benefits it offers.
Particularly valuable is the editorial plan in our awork template. It serves as the heart of your planning by organising all important content pieces clearly and making progress transparent. With it, you can ensure that your content reaches the right place at the right time. And thanks to capacity planning in the awork planner, you can remain flexible if someone is unavailable. Through continuous analysis and optimisation, your strategy also remains dynamic and adaptable. Use these tools to take your content strategy to the next level and collaborate more happily.
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