The maximum effectiveness of the campaign depends on the content. What is better, the traditional approach with the preparation of all the content for the month ahead or experiments during the week?
One of the directions of the work of our agency is the creation of a content plan, and our specialists are ready to carry out even the most difficult task.
Why do you need a content plan for social networks? – Digital Agency London
You can not just take and give something a masterpiece! To come up with quality posts with enviable consistency, you have to spend time and explore the topic from all sides.
A clear plan will give you time and give you fresh ideas: you will see which topics can be divided into component parts, and which ones can be viewed from a different angle.
Also, you do not overdo it with advertising posts and do not forget to congratulate subscribers on the holiday. And the content plan is useful if you have contractors: copywriters, designers, etc. You can optimize their work and do not sit in the pool if the artist Vitaly suddenly goes on vacation
Difficulties in creating a content plan
Articles are in the interests of users – this is the task that is considered to be the most difficult in the work of the content manager, namely to generate the topics of articles that will interest the reader and collect traffic: likes, reposts, comments. Also, these topics should be a lot to alternate headings and release posts every day, every two days.
If you have ever had to collect a content plan, for sure you have felt all the delights of standard recommendations in this matter. The most popular are:
- read topics on thematic forums, pick up questions from there
- view topics in thematic social networks;
- view competitor sites and pick up topics of popular articles;
- read the comments under the thematic articles and extract from there the problems of the readers;
- enter keywords into a search engine and copy search tips from there;
- ask friends who work in this area what they would like to read about;
- watch questions at the sites on the principle of “question-answer”;
- follow Google Alerts alerts and trends in Google Trends;
- create questionnaires in social networks to collect topics.
At first glance, these paths are enough to create a content plan for a long time, and there should be no problem. But on the other side, the realities of content managers are different: they kill a lot of time for routine actions, gathering topics in Excel into bits, occasionally diluting with trends, interviews, popular digests. They create a portrait of the audience, try to understand its tastes, interests … A terrible cycle.
You can break the vicious circle with the help of a special service that pulls out all the thematic questions that people have ever asked from search engines. What is it and how to work with it, we analyze further.
What is a content plan?
Everything is very simple here. A content plan is a list of possible topics for a blog for a certain period of time. It can be from a couple of weeks to half a year or more.
Why do you need a content plan?
At first, when you start blogging, it’s extremely easy to find topics for writing articles. But when you blog for more than half a year, problems start to arise with it.
The content plan is suitable for a new blog, and for a blog with experience.
The work begins with a study: we analyze the specifics and audience of the brand, how close this or that topic is to it, whether the entertainment content is suitable, how much product content can be published, so as not to overload users with it.
Content plan for the month
Most brands operate according to the classic monthly content plan. At the first stage is created the rubricator and on its basis, a plan is developed with themes and products.
You can add situational content to planned publications and adjust it if an unforeseen event occurred or the audience did not like some topics. Such a strategy does not require frequent updating of information, rather its constant addition.
Having in front of you a plan of publications for the month ahead, you can very effectively manage both your own time and the work of the team, distributing tasks among the performers. Planning in advance allows you to involve the whole team at once, and not just a few SMM-managers.
Work on the plan will affect the consistency of the content.
Your audience will know what to expect from the brand, how often new content is published and what topics it is dedicated to. The publication schedule will give maximum engagement without downtime. This principle is followed by our client Ararat.
This is a large international company, so the main product and information content are prepared for 3 months. Agreed at all levels of the company themes are sent further to other markets. Ararat’s global strategy is designed for all countries of the brand’s presence, therefore it is difficult to use situational content, and relevant topics will be different for all countries.
Then individual teams from other countries translate general content into their own language and create local content that is relevant specifically for their markets, publish memes.
Plan your future events and activities: the launch of a new product on the market, annual conferences, cultural events. And dilute with company news, promotions, reactions to resonant events.
Experts advise while making a plan for the month to consider the questions:
1. What events and launches are scheduled for this month?
2. What are the content targets for this month?
3. What publications can you plan in advance and for which you need to leave a place?
4. What kind of experiments with topics you want to spend?
Content plan for the week
The newsjacking method – linking your ideas to the most discussed news, will be effective as long as people are in context.
This is the best method if the audience of the brand is ready for experiments. You can plan content for the week ahead and vary it greatly, always managing to respond to current topics and deliver the same products through trends and the latest news.
