How to Keep Your Content Marketing on Track

If you're anything like me, your content marketing plan probably feels a little bit like a constantly evolving beast.

Sometimes it's hard to stay on track, and other times it seems like you're just spinning your wheels.

But never fear! In this post, I'm going to share some of my best tips for content marketing planning.

So, read on and get ready to take your content marketing strategy up a notch!

Establishing a Process Will Get You Ahead

It’s best to plan a content timeline a quarter in advance. By doing this, you are getting ahead but are also giving yourself time to optimize your strategy later on in the year.

Another important factor to plan is the frequency of publishing content. You may have heard that it’s best practice to post blogs weekly. This is only true if you have a goal to increase your website’s SEO through blog posts. If that isn’t one of your current goals, then don’t stress your team out by trying to crank out posts weekly. Instead, you can aim to post bi-weekly or monthly to stay relevant to your website visitors.

Steps to Include in Your Content Process

The key steps in your content process will be:

• Generating topic ideas
• Outlining content
• Writing posts or creating content (videos, eBooks, etc.)
• Editing content
• Publishing on website and social media accounts

Assign team members to the roles they will fulfill in your organization's process. Even if the same person is in charge of multiple steps, it’s important to distinguish who is doing what to avoid confusion in the long run.

Ensure that each role knows when they are expected to complete their task. Have your team members give you an estimate of how long it will take them to finish their assignment and plan your content deadlines accordingly.

Tips for an Effective Content Process

Here are some tips to ensure your content process goes as planned:

• Create an editorial calendar.

After you determine your publishing schedule and your deadlines, record them all in an editorial calendar that your whole team can access, like on Google Calendar or HubSpot Content Compass for example. This will keep everyone organized and on the same page.

• Spread authorship around.

This will prevent your regular content team from getting overwhelmed, especially if writing content isn’t their primary job. Need any ideas for extra authors? Read our post on building your content team.

• Plan to make content creation as easy as possible.

Everyone writes and interprets topics differently, so to ensure that your content is consistent you can provide your content team with blog post outlines so that they hit all of the necessary points without having to go back and forth multiple times.

Instead of having someone write a blog post for you, you can interview a professional in your industry or an advocate of your organization and use that dialogue as content. People may be more willing to contribute valuable content if they don’t have to formally write a post.

The key to having an effective content plan is staying consistent. By having an established process, you are having clear communication with your team and minimizing confusion which makes it easier to focus on hitting your content goals.

Want to jumpstart your content plan?

We've created a free workbook that guides you through each step of the content planning process.

And this 44-page guide gives you space to fill out your organization-specific details as you follow along.

Download it today!