It’s a crazy reality that 2020 is just around the corner! We have enjoyed helping you make your content planning visions come to life for 2019 and are excited to provide you with some tips for planning for the year ahead.

Why Plan Ahead?

There are many advantages to planning your content ahead of time. We know better than anyone that things get busy unexpectedly and having a plan, even if it’s simply a rough outline, helps to keep you on track.

Proactive content planning provides you with the opportunity to set a consistent vision for the year by looking at your content from start to finish and seeing how it connects and overlaps. Likewise, planning ahead gives you a chance to decide on different topics you would like to include in your content along with some preliminary research so that when it comes time to write, there’s no need to scramble for ideas and resources.

Finally, planning your content ahead allows you to determine who you will need to reach out to in order to further develop your content brainstorming into a reality. That may include an internal content or marketing team who is responsible for writing and execution, or it may call on the services of an outside party to ease the workload if you’re the one responsible for content.

Content Strategy Brainstorming Tips:

Here are some tips to ensure that your content strategy planning is effective and useful:

  • Consider your audience: Ask yourself who you are trying to reach with your content. This will help you determine what type of content will be the most effective. For example, if you’re trying to reach a younger audience, developing content for social media with visual cues may be a successful strategy. Alternatively, if you’re trying to reach an older demographic, you may want to consider affordable opportunities for printed content.
  • Outline a budget: Before you get started, it’s important to determine how much of your annual budget you can use for content strategy development. This will allow you to know your limits, and therefore play responsibly within them. There’s nothing worse than coming up with a great marketing plan only to find out there is no way you can financially accomplish it.
  • Be creative: We’re living in a time where consumers, clients, and individuals are constantly overloaded with content. This means that if you want your content to get noticed, it’s going to have to stand out. Spend some of your time planning your content by thinking about what makes your business or organization unique and how you can portray this to your audience. Similarly, think about creative ways to deliver your message to the desired audience. Some examples of this could include an infographic or video to switch things up for your viewer. Video content, in particular, is becoming more and more valuable to audiences.
  • Create Recyclable Material: When you’re thinking about content planning, consider how you can use the same topics and information and recycle them for different platforms. For example, if you write a blog article on a particular topic, consider short snippets of that content that could be developed for social media. Strategically thinking about how you can recycle and repurpose content saves you time later on and ensures that as many people as possible access your content through different platforms.
  • Assign Tasks: When you envision your content strategy, consider who will take on what tasks. Will you have someone in charge of writing while someone else is in charge of the logistics of posting? Perhaps someone else is in charge of visuals or including your content in a newsletter campaign. Thinking about how you divide up the tasks as you develop content will ensure that all of your bases are covered when it comes time to execute.

Need Help with Content Planning?

We know that content planning can seem overwhelming, that’s why we specialize in helping businesses and organizations develop engaging and effective content. If you need help with your content strategy development for the upcoming year, please contact us to discuss how we can come up with an effective plan for your business.

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