How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business – Part 8: Content Production Plan

Learn how to create an effective content strategy for your business with this free video course. Part 8 of 12.

This is Part 8 of our free How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business video course.

This lesson covers creating a content production plan specifying the strategy and the schedule your business will use to create and publish its content.

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Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:

Video Transcript

Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.

This is module 8.

In the previous lesson, we looked at creating a content plan so we can start implementing our content strategy.

In this lesson, we’ll look at creating and implementing a content production plan.

This is the part of the content plan that determines how we’ll create and produce all the content in our business.

So in this lesson, we’ll cover what a content production plan is, why your business needs it, and how to create one for your business.

So, what is a content production plan?

A content production plan is a document that outlines the strategy and schedule your business will use to create and publish its content.

It includes your content production goals and objectives, information about your target audience, the types of content you will produce, the distribution channels that you will use, and the KPIs or key performance indicators that will be used to measure the success of your content production efforts.

Ok. Now that we know what a content production plan is, why does your business need one?

Your business needs one because it helps your business to:

Align its content efforts with its overall marketing and business goals.

It also ensures the creation of relevant, valuable, and engaging content for your target audience.

It helps you allocate resources and budget more efficiently towards content creation.

Helps you track content performance over time.

Helps you to identify and fill gaps in your content offerings.

And it helps you stay consistent and on-brand with your messaging.

So in short, a content production plan is a detailed plan that outlines the specific actions and resources that your business will use to create and publish content.

So now that we have a basic understanding of what a content production plan is and why your business needs it, let’s look at how to create one.

I’ve outlined here the main steps to creating a content production plan.

I’m only going to touch briefly on these points here, because many of these steps have already been covered in the Content Plan lesson in module 7.

If you need help, I’ve also written a detailed tutorial covering these steps, just visit the link on the screen.

So to create a content production plan, we need to…

Review our content plan and make sure that we have a clear understanding of our audience, goals, topics, and distribution channels.

We also have to assign roles and responsibilities, which means deciding who will be responsible for each aspect of the content creation process, like who will do the research, writing, editing, design, etc.

We also need a calendar or a scheduling tool to plan out when each piece of content will be created, reviewed, and published.

Another important step is to create a detailed workflow outlining the specific steps that will be taken for each piece of content. This should include research, writing, editing, design, and distribution. We’ll cover this in the next slide.

Also, outline the process for creating each type of content. Identify the tools, resources, and steps required to create different types of content, such as blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, etc.

And, finally, review and optimize. Review the content production plan regularly and make adjustments when needed. Use the metrics defined in your content plan to measure the success of your content and to make changes that will help to improve your results over time.

In terms of defining our workflow, we want to outline the processes for creating, reviewing, editing, and publishing content for each different type of content that we will create.

Obviously creating an article for a blog requires a different process than creating a video, so when we outline the workflow for each content type, we need to define things like:

• The steps involved
• Who is responsible for doing each step and what each step involves doing
• How and when should a process move to the next step
• What formats, guidelines, and procedures need to be followed to ensure that consistent standards are maintained
• How and when to deliver each step, and so on.

For more information about outlining and documenting workflow processes visit the links on the screen.

Another thing to keep in mind when creating your content production plan is to include different methods like content repurposing.

Content repurposing is the process of taking existing content and adapting it for use on different platforms or in different formats.

This can include things like turning a blog post into a video, or republishing an article on a different website or creating an infographic from a research report, and many other forms, such as the examples listed here.

Repurposing content helps you get the most out of the content you have already created, maximizing your resources, and helping you reach new audiences.

The link on this screen has more information about repurposing content.

Coming up with ideas for your content can be a challenging part of the content creation process. But with the right sources, resources, and methods, you can generate a steady stream of ideas to keep your content fresh and engaging.

I recommend visiting ContentManagementCourse.com and signing up for my free and comprehensive email course on how to keep coming up with endless new content ideas for your website articles, blog posts, and newsletters.

So, in summary…

A content production plan specifies the strategy and schedule for creating and publishing your content, and it typically includes the goals and objectives for your content, information about your target audience, the content types that you will create, your distribution channels, and the KPIs that will be used to measure the success of your content production efforts.

Follow the steps discussed in this lesson to create and implement a content production plan for your business and if you need help or want to see an example of a content production plan, check out the tutorials listed on the screen.

Also, make sure to sign up for the free content ideas creation email course so you’ll never run out of content ideas.

So, that’s all for this lesson.

In the next lesson, we’ll look at creating a content promotion plan for your business.

Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.

• Go to Lesson 9.
• Return to the video course outline.

Tutorials

See the following lessons and tutorials for more information  about the topics covered in this video lesson:

• • Content Production
  • Content Planning
  • Content Workflow
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Content Research
  • Content Distribution
  • Content Team
  • Content Metrics
  • Content Tracking
  • Content Measurement Plan
  • Content Repurposing
  • Free Content Ideas Course

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Image: Robin Higgins. Music Bensound.

How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business – Part 7: Content Plan

Learn how to create an effective content strategy for your business with this free video course. Part 7 of 12.

This is Part 7 of our free How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business video course.

This lesson covers creating a content plan – what a content plan is, why your business needs one, and how to create a content plan for your business.

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Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:

Video Transcript

Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.

This is module 7.

In the previous lesson, we looked at doing a content audit, which is taking an inventory of all of our existing content.

In this lesson, we’ll look at how to create a content plan so we can start implementing our content strategy in our business.

So, this is where we take all of the information we’ve been compiling about our audience, setting content goals, choosing content types, and doing a content audit, and we put it all together into a cohesive and actionable plan.

In this lesson, we are going to cover what a content plan is, why your business needs one, and how to create a content plan that will deliver your business results.

So, what is a content plan?

A content plan is a document that specifies what content your business will create to target your audience at all stages of their buyer journey, and how this content will be created, distributed, and managed.

A content plan also outlines…

• who is responsible for creating the content,
• what the purpose of the content is, and
• how the content impacts your content strategy

The difference between a content plan and a content strategy, is that a content strategy is the overarching plan for creating, publishing, and managing content that aligns with the goals and objectives of your organization.

A content strategy defines the goals for the content, the audience it will target, and the overall tone and style of the content.

A content plan, on the other hand, is the tactical plan for executing your content strategy.

A content plan outlines the specific pieces of content that will be created, the channels through which they will be distributed, and the schedule for publishing and promoting your content. It also includes tasks and responsibilities for creating, editing, and publishing your content.

So, in short, a content strategy tells us the why and what, and a content plan tells us the how and when.

Now, why does your business need a content plan?

Your business needs a content plan to ensure that the right systems and workflow processes are put in place to create the right content, for the right audience, at the right time, using the right distribution channels, to help your business achieve its strategic goals.

So essentially, the goal of the content plan is to deliver the goals of the content strategy.

Now that we have a basic understanding of what a content plan is and why our business needs one, let’s look at how to create a content plan.

Here I’ve outlined 12 steps to creating a content plan and I’m just going to touch on these briefly in this lesson because I’ve written a comprehensive tutorial that covers all of these steps in detail and you can go through each of these at your own pace by visiting the link on the screen.

So in Step 1, we ask the question “what do we want our content to achieve?” Are we looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive sales? We covered this step in module 4 of this course.

We also covered Step 3 which content types to focus on in module 5, so if you need help in those areas, just go back and review those modules.

So let’s take a brief look, then, at Steps 2, 4, and 5, which is setting the frequency, topics, and distribution of our content.

And these are the questions that we need to ask

• How often should we be publishing new content?” This will tell us the frequency.
• What content should we be writing or talking about?” This will tell us the topics to write about, and
• How should we be getting our content out into the world?” This will tell us the distribution methods.

So let’s look at frequency first.

It’s important to find a sustainable balance between producing enough content to keep your audience engaged, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or low quality.

It also depends on the type of business you’re in. For example, if you run a news website, you’ll probably need to publish multiple articles a day to keep up with the latest developments. On the other hand, if you’re running a personal blog or a small business, you might only have the capacity to publish once or twice a week or a few times a month.

So, it’s important to consider our audience, our resources, and our goals when determining the frequency of our content. In general, it’s a good idea to find a frequency that we can sustain over the long term. Consistency is key when it comes to content marketing, so it’s better to publish on a regular schedule rather than trying to push out as much content as possible and then burn out.

Next up, are the topics you should be writing or talking about. Again, this will depend on your goals and audience.

If you’re running a business, you’ll want to focus on topics that are relevant to your products or services. For example, if you sell outdoor gear, you might want to write about hiking, camping, and other outdoor activities.

It’s also a good idea to consider what your audience is interested in. You can use social media polls, surveys, and other tools to get a sense of what your followers want to see more of.

Finally, there’s distribution. There are many options to choose from when it comes to getting your content out, including social media, email newsletters, press releases, guest blogging on other websites, and so on.

So it’s important to find the right mix of distribution channels for your business or personal brand. For example, if you’re targeting a younger audience, you might want to focus on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. And if you’re targeting a more professional audience, you may want to target channels like LinkedIn.

Another important area of distribution is understanding that there are different types of distribution channels, like owned media, paid media, and earned media.

Owned media is content that you create, own, and have full and complete control over. Like blog posts and articles that you write and publish on your website.

Paid media is where you pay to promote your content. Like taking ads on Google and social media.

And then there’s earned media, which is content that someone else creates, and you don’t pay for it but it benefits your business. Like when someone posts a great review about your business.

You can read more about these distribution channels by visiting the link on the screen.

Our content plan needs to align with our content strategy, so if our content strategy includes paid media, this brings up the next step, which is how to allocate our resources.

So the two main areas we need to focus on here are financial and personnel resources.

Financial resources mostly come down to the budget allocated to create and distribute content and to invest in the right tools.

So, if our content strategy specifies using paid media to distribute our content and there’s no budget for paid media, we’re going to have a problem.

We either have to try and find the budget, or rework our content strategy and content plan to focus more on owned media like blog posts and articles.

Which brings up the issue of personnel resources.

So, what kind of content team can your business afford to put together?

Creating and promoting content involves many different skills and responsibilities.

Whatever talent you have available to create and promote content is going to have a tremendous impact on your content plan.

For example, I run a number of websites on my own and I also work with a team in my full-time job, and both of these have pros and cons.

Working with a content team, for example, requires having really effective communication.

So, to implement a content plan effectively with a team means that we need to establish a central point of contact. This can be a content manager or a designated member of the team.

We also need to set up regular meetings or check-ins with all relevant teams and stakeholders and establish clear guidelines and processes for creating and approving content.

We’ll cover some parts of this step in this lesson, like setting up a content calendar. But in the next lesson, we’ll talk about editorial guidelines and workflow processes for reviewing and approving content.

It’s also very important to choose the right tools to ensure that everyone has access to the latest version of the content plan.

So, this would be like a document management system and also setting up team communication channels so everyone can communicate effectively, especially if your team comprises of people working remotely.

This can be done using tools like Slack and email, plus tools for live meetings, conference calls, and online presentations, like Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Skype, etc.

And we also need to choose our content management tools. These include Project Management Software like for example, Monday.com, or Asana, Jira, or Trello, and a Content Management System like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla.

Once again, the tools you choose will depend on your budget, your needs, and how you’ve designed your workflow processes.

If you need more information about these tools, visit the links on the screen.

After choosing the tools your team will use to collaborate, communicate, and manage your content, the next step is to set up a content publishing schedule to organize and schedule your content creation and promotion activities.

Typically, this will be a tool that lets you set up and manage a content calendar or an editorial calendar.

Now, these terms are often used interchangeably, but an editorial calendar generally outlines each step of the process, while a content calendar usually covers one aspect, such as when posts are published or shared to social media.

If you’re just starting out, you can use a spreadsheet to track your content publishing schedule, but if keeping track of things starts to become too hard, you might want to use a calendar tool.

Some project management tools and content management systems also include scheduling features, so whichever method you choose, just make sure that everyone in your team can access the tool and that they know how to use it.

For a detailed tutorial on how to set up a content scheduling calendar, visit the link shown on the screen.

Now, we’re almost done setting up our content plan.

We just need to work out how to assign tasks and set deadlines for everyone who is involved in creating and promoting our content.

And here are some things to keep in mind.

First, we want to provide clear and detailed descriptions of the task and ensure that everyone on the team understands the expected outcomes.

So include any necessary resources or instructions.

Also, we want to take each team member’s skills and workload into consideration and make sure that we assign the task to the right person.

It’s also important to set realistic deadlines by learning to estimate accurately how long tasks will take to complete and how complex they are.

We also want to clearly communicate tasks and deadlines to assigned team members.

To do this, we can use team meetings, email, or a project management tool to follow up with team members and make sure they understand the task and have what they need to complete it.

And we also want to check in with our team members periodically to keep track of their progress, offer assistance and support, provide additional resources, and answer any questions they may have.

Finally, it’s important to create guidelines for assigning tasks to members that include all the points we’ve just discussed and add these guidelines to your workflow documentation.

The next step in creating your content plan is to include ways to measure content performance and content ROI, so you can see which parts of the plan are working and which areas will need improvement.

With content performance, we want to set up metrics to measure and analyze our content’s performance in areas like engagement, traffic, lead generation, conversions, bounce rates, and so.

We also want to set up ways to track revenue generated from our content and compare this to the costs of creating and promoting our content to work out our return on investment.

The links on the slide will take you to tutorials on how to set up content metrics, content tracking and a content measurement plan, and lists of tools you can use to measure your content performance.

Now the last step in creating our content plan is to schedule a periodic review of the plan itself to make sure that everything set out in the plan is progressing along, that all strategic goals are being met, and to figure out how to improve things if the goals are not being met.

So, in summary, a content plan tells us how and when to execute our content strategy.

Follow the steps we’ve covered in this lesson to create and implement a content plan for your business, and if you need help in any of these areas refer to the tutorials listed on the screen.

So, that’s all for this lesson.

In the next lesson, we’ll look at how to break our content plan into a content production plan, a content promotion plan, and a content management plan, so we can create, promote and manage our content more effectively.

Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.

• Go to Lesson 8.
• Return to the video course outline.

Tutorials

See the following lessons and tutorials for more information  about the topics covered in this video lesson:

• • Content Planning
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Content Research
  • Content Distribution
  • Content Team
  • Content Metrics
  • Content Tracking
  • Content Measurement Plan

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Image: Robin Higgins. Music Bensound.

How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business – Part 6: Content Audit

Learn how to create an effective content strategy for your business with this free video course. Part 6 of 12.

This is Part 6 of our free How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business video course.

This lesson discusses effective ways and tools to do a content audit to identify the types of content your business is currently producing, assess the performance of your existing content, and identify gaps and opportunities in your current content offerings.

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Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:

Video Transcript

Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.

This is Module 6.

In the previous lesson, we looked at the types of content we’ll need to produce to meet our audience’s needs and the goals we have set.

In this lesson, we’ll look at doing a content audit, which is taking an inventory of our existing content to see how it’s performing and to identify any gaps or opportunities that we may be missing.

Up to this point, the focus has been to get our thinking organized so we know who we are going to be creating content for, what types of content we’ll be creating, and what we want to achieve with our content.

Now, it’s time to take stock of where we are currently at, so we can plan where to go from here.

So.. how do we go about identifying the types of content that our business is currently producing?

The best way is by doing a content audit.

So in this lesson, we are going to look at what a content audit is and why your business needs one.

And we’ll also look at how to perform a content audit and tools that will help make this easier and faster.

So, what is a content audit?

A content audit is the process of systematically analyzing and evaluating our existing content’s performance and effectiveness.

It involves identifying and cataloging all of our content, evaluating its quality and relevance, and determining which content should be kept, updated, consolidated, or removed.

The goal of a content audit is to ensure that our content is aligned with our business goals and objectives and is providing value to our target audience.

So, why does your business need to perform a content audit? What are the benefits?

Well, there are a number of reasons for performing a content audit.

The first reason is to make sure that the content is aligned with your business goals.

By evaluating the relevance and effectiveness of your existing content, we can then identify areas that need to improve to better support the goals of the business.

Another reason is to improve user experience.

A content audit can help to identify content that is confusing, outdated, or irrelevant to users, which can negatively impact their experience.

By removing or updating this content, we can improve the overall experience of our visitors.

Another benefit is that it helps to identify gaps in our content and inform our future content strategy and planning activities.

A content audit also helps to improve SEO: By identifying and removing duplicate or low-quality content, we can improve our content’s search engine rankings and visibility.

And a content audit also provides insights to help evaluate our content performance in terms of engagement and conversions, and identify which content is resonating with our audience and which content isn’t.

So those are some of the reasons for performing a content audit.

Now, how do we actually perform one?

Well, the first step is to set some goals.

So, here are some general goals we’ll want to set.

First, we’ll want to start by identifying the purpose and the main objectives of the audit.

This could be to improve the user experience, increase conversions, or to align our content with the overall goals of our business.

Once we have identified the main objectives of our content audit, the next step is to define the specific goals and steps that will help us achieve those objectives.

For example, if our goal is to improve user experience, a specific goal could be to reduce the bounce rate on our website.

We’ll also want to set measurable targets to track our progress and evaluate the success of our audit.

For example, if our goal is to reduce the bounce rate on our website, then we’ll want to set a target percentage to achieve.

It’s also important to establish a timeline and set a deadline for achieving our goals.

It’s easy to get lost in all the little details and become overwhelmed once we start, so defining a time frame will help us to stay focused and motivated throughout the audit process.

We’ll also want to review and revise our results once the content audit is completed and evaluate whether the goals were met.

If they weren’t, we’ll need to revise our goals and identify any areas that need improvement.

Once we have set goals for our content audit, the next step is to perform an inventory of our existing content.

The aim of the content inventory is to basically take stock of all of our existing content … so, that means making a list of all of our blog posts and articles, videos, podcasts, social media posts, email newsletters, infographics, and any other types of content that we are currently outputting.

There are a number of tools that can help make this process easier and faster, and I’ve listed these in the URL shown on the screen.

After gathering and making an inventory of all our content, the next step is to organize and categorize it.

You can use a spreadsheet to document everything. You can create this spreadsheet from scratch or use a template.

There are content audit templates that you can download and I’ve added links to useful content audit templates in the slide.

In our spreadsheet, we simply create a column for every new category of data that we want to analyze, add each new content item from our inventory into a new row, and then just go across and fill in the information.

The table on the slide lists some of the items that you may want to include in your spreadsheet to categorize content-related, SEO, and performance elements.

And how you choose to organize and categorize your content and how much detail you want to record about each item is completely up to you.

At a minimum, you’ll want to list your content URLs, and add various useful categories, some metadata, and important metrics to track.

It’s also a good idea to categorize the content into different types. For example, written content, video content, social media posts, etc.

Also, if you review your content calendar – which we’ll talk about in another lesson, it will help you identify the types of content that your business is currently producing and planning to create in the near future.

After categorizing our content, we can then start to analyze our data.

Analyzing our content gives us a better understanding of the types of content our business is currently producing.

So we can begin by asking questions like:

• Which topics or themes are we mostly focused on writing about?
• Which content types are we mostly focused on creating?
• How often are we producing this type of content?
• What is the purpose of the content (is it to educate, entertain, generate leads, etc.)?
• Who is its intended audience?
• Which stage of the buyer journey is this content aimed at?
• Which types of content perform the best?
• Which types of content are most popular with our audience?
• Are there any obvious gaps in the content that stand out, which we should be addressing and taking advantage of?

Do this for your web content, your social media channels, your email marketing, etc.

As you analyze your content, you can also record notes about each item to help your team decide what to do with it later on.

For example, you can mark items as having

• Missing content. So, are there any topics that the content hasn’t covered which would be of interest to the audience?
• Underperforming content. Looking at the numbers, are there any items that aren’t performing as well as they should?
• Outdated content. Can the information be refined (or updated or reworked) to remain optimized and relevant to our audience?
• Hit Content. This is content that’s performing well, and its metrics and results are meeting or exceeding all targets and expectations. So it can be left alone, as it’s already doing well.

A really useful tip is to use color coding where assigning colors to different categories in your analysis, then highlight the rows with these colors as you work through the spreadsheet.

So, for example, you can highlight items with missing content in a light red color, underperforming content in yellow, or outdated content in blue, and hit content in green.

This way, anyone looking at the spreadsheet will quickly be able to tell which items need attention and filter these for actioning later.

You can also use tools like Google Analytics and social media analytics tools to gather data on how your content is performing.

After analyzing the content, the next step is to classify it.

This step is important if you plan to rank content by priorities or include a timeline for your audit.

So, the goals that we defined earlier will help to prioritize what needs to be executed first.

For example, you may want to prioritize content from 1 to 5, and then define what happens to content assigned to each of these levels.

So, we would first classify all items as 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.

Then, let’s say that all items ranked 1 are top-converting content and should be given top-priority treatment.

So, we analyze all priority treatment items, that is all items marked 1, further to find ways to do things like

Improve the content, for example, make sections clearer or more detailed, add supporting media like explainer videos, downloadable reports, etc.

Or improve search ranking through different SEO methods, for example, internal linking, more helpful content, etc.

Or improve traffic through social media, email newsletters, paid ads, content repurposing, etc.

So using this process, we can then specify that all items with a score lower than 3 should be transferred to a separate spreadsheet, analyzed in more detail, and assigned different highlight colors to determine whether the content should be updated, rewritten, or trashed.

Now. depending on how much content there is, you may also want to schedule it using a content production tool or your editorial calendar.

And the last step of the content audit process is to take action.

Here we evaluate our content and note what’s working and what isn’t.

Are you seeing desired results from your content like increased website traffic, leads, etc.? If not, what can be improved?

Look for opportunities for improvement and document your findings in your content strategy.

Ultimately, the objective of the content audit is to help you decide whether to keep, discard, refine, or develop content after analyzing each content item that you have inventoried.

So with each item of content, we would use our analysis data and notes to decide if we are going to keep or trash the item.

If we decide to trash the item, there are some things to consider, like whether the item has any kind of traffic or SEO value.

If so, we may want to redirect visitors to another content item before trashing it.

And if we decide to keep the item, does it need to be refined with a quick fix, a longer update, or even a complete rewrite?

Also, the audit may reveal missing gaps and opportunities to develop new content, repurpose existing content, like turning an article into a video or even consolidate a number of articles or blog posts on a similar topic into one authoritative long-form article or guide.

For more information on how to make the most from each of these options, please visit the tutorial listed on the screen.

Let me give you just a couple more tips before we move on…

After performing a content audit, list 5-10 immediate action steps and start getting to work on those right away.

Also, keep in mind that some actions that require little effort can deliver big results (like improving page structure or adding internal links to other content on your site), while other actions need a lot of effort but could deliver poor results (like spending weeks creating a downloadable guide or an eBook).

It’s also important to keep things manageable. As you can imagine, a content audit can turn into a huge and overwhelming task, especially if your business has already published lots of existing content already.

Ideally, performing a complete and thorough audit of your content is best. However, it’s completely up to you to decide which content you will audit, how you will do it, and what goals you are trying to achieve.

So for example if time is a limiting factor, you can break things down into smaller goals and audit only content that falls within a certain period of time (e.g. the previous 6-12 months), or content that meets only certain metrics (like your 50 most popular articles ranked by traffic or conversions), or audit only your website’s blog posts, etc.

Finally, after performing an initial content audit, you will want to schedule regular content reviews (e.g. perform an annual review), as this will continue delivering valuable insights on ways to improve not just your content strategy, but your website and your business too.

Now, let’s talk briefly about taking our content audit further.

A content audit doesn’t have to be limited only to content on your website.

You can also perform audits in areas like…

Offsite content assets. So if you’ve published content on external sites like infographics or slide decks, it’s a good idea to include as much data as you can gather on any external content pieces to help you assess how effective your content marketing efforts are.

There’s also other marketing channels you can look at. As mentioned earlier, you are not restricted only to your web content, you can also look at your social media channels, email marketing, and so on.

For example, if you run email marketing campaigns, is the content in your autoresponders up-to-date? Are there messages with higher open rates than others? Many email services provide analytics and reports that can help you improve the performance of your emails.

You can also audit your social shares. If your site displays share counters on pages, you can measure social shares by looking at the post itself, or by entering the URL of the page or post into various online services. This should provide plenty of actionable data about areas where your competition is outperforming your site.

Also, think about approaching sites that are linking to your competitors with a better piece of content or a guest post idea on the same topic and see if you can persuade them to link to your site instead.

And finally, you can also audit your competitor’s websites. You can use many of the same tools that you used to analyze your own site to perform competitive analysis on your competitors’ sites.

This can help to improve your content performance, especially in areas like SEO or driving more traffic to your site.

While you won’t be able to access certain metrics about their website (such as bounce rate, average time on page, and conversion rate), there are things you can track, like who is ranking higher for the keywords you are targeting, number of backlinks, etc.

So in summary,

If your business has existing content, performing a content audit is key to an effective content strategy.

Taking stock of what we have helps us know how we are doing and where we are going.

A content audit can benefit your business in many ways. It helps to align your content with your goals, improve user experience, identify missing gaps and new opportunities, make better data-driven decisions, and improve your content strategy’s overall performance and results.

And depending on how much content you have, a content audit can be a major task, so use tools to help you. Keep it manageable, but take action. Don’t just let the information sit in a spreadsheet.

After performing an initial content audit, schedule regular content reviews to make sure that there’s continuous improvement and better results in your business and your website.

And finally, remember that you can perform content audits in other areas of your business too, such as external content, other marketing channels, social shares, even audit your competition!

For more detailed information about what we’ve covered in this video, visit the tutorials and lessons listed on your screen.

So that’s all for this lesson.

In the next lesson, we’ll look at how to start implementing our content strategy by creating a content plan for our business.

Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.

• Go to Lesson 7.
• Return to the video course outline.

Tutorials

See the following lessons and tutorials for more information  about the topics covered in this video lesson:

• • Content Audit
  • SEO Tools
  • Content Reviews

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Image: Robin Higgins. Music Bensound.

How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business – Part 5 Content Types

Learn how to create an effective content strategy for your business with this free video course. Part 5 of 12.

This is Part 5 of our free How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business video course.

This lesson covers deciding which content types and formats will best help your business reach its goals.

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Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:

Video Transcript

Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.

This is module 5.

In the previous lesson, we looked at setting goals for our content.

In this lesson, we’ll look at the different types of content that we’ll include in our content strategy.

You can read about each of these content types, including the challenges of creating each of these types, recommended best practices, and links to useful tutorials, tools, and other helpful resources by visiting the URL on your screen.

I’ve listed them here, but I won’t go into each specific type in this lesson.

Content formats include not only common formats like text, images, video, and audio but also interactive formats, virtual and augmented reality, and live streaming.

What I do want to cover in this lesson are the key things to consider when making decisions about which content types you will use.

So, the first thing to consider is your target audience’s needs.

There are many different kinds of business models and what type of business you’re in will affect which types of content you should create to keep your audience engaged.

For example, if we look at these side-by-side charts of content types for B2B and B2C businesses, we can see that while both types of businesses use articles and videos, with B2B businesses, there’s more emphasis on using content types like webinars, case studies, and whitepapers, whereas B2C businesses focus more on using infographics, charts, and long articles.

So what kind of business are you in? What type of audience will you be creating content for?

You can read about which content types work best for different business models by visiting the link on the screen.

The next area is knowing what types of content our audience wants to consume, do they prefer their information delivered in the form of blog posts, webinars, case studies, eBooks, etc.?

As we will see in the next lesson, knowing which types of content we will need to create for different stages of our audience’s buying journey is also important.

Resources are the other important area to consider when choosing content types.

These resources mostly have to do with our budget and what kind of team we have available to work on our content.

For example, if our content strategy requires the regular production of high-quality videos, then we obviously need to make sure that we have the budget to cover this and access to people with video production skills, plus the tools to create and edit video content, and so on.

That’s one of the challenges we talked about in module 2.

An important part of creating our content strategy, then, is working with budgets and knowing what percentage of our total marketing budget will be allocated to areas like content production and marketing activities.

So, to summarize what we have covered in this lesson…

To create an effective content strategy, we not only need to understand our target audience and set content goals, we also need to familiarize ourselves with different content types and formats,

We need to know what kind of business we are in, as different business models need different content types.

We need to understand our audience’s content preferences and which content types work best for different stages of the buyer journey,

We need to assess our resources in terms of the budget and team we have to work with, and then we have to decide which content types we’ll create to meet our audience’s needs within our available resources.

For more information about all of these areas, see the tutorials and lessons listed on the screen.

In the next lesson, we’ll look at doing a content audit, which is taking an inventory of our existing content to see how it’s performing and identify any gaps or opportunities that we may be missing out on.

Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.

• Go to Lesson 6.
• Return to the video course outline.

Tutorials

See the following lessons and tutorials for more information  about the topics covered in this video lesson:

• • Content Types
  • Content Types for Different Business Models

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Image: Robin Higgins. Music Bensound.

How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business -Part 4: Content Goals

Learn how to create an effective content strategy for your business with this free video course. Part 4 of 12.

This is Part 4 of our free How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business video course.

This lesson covers how to use your target audience information to set SMART goals for your content, plus defining your business goals, aligning your content strategy with your business goals, and determining what you want to achieve with your content (e.g. drive traffic, generate leads, build brand awareness, etc.).

***

Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:

Video Transcript

Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.

This is module 4.

In the previous lesson, we looked at understanding our target audience.

In this lesson, we’ll look at setting content goals for our content strategy.

Setting content goals involves identifying what we want to achieve with our content, and then developing specific, measurable, and actionable targets to help us achieve these objectives.

Here are the general steps to follow when setting content goals:

First, identify our target audience. Understanding their demographics, interests, and pain points will inform the types of content that we should be creating.

Next, define our business objectives. We need to determine how our content will support our overall business objectives, such as driving website traffic, increasing conversions, building brand awareness, and so on.

Next, establish specific, measurable, and actionable goals: For each objective we set, we’ll need to create specific, measurable, and actionable goals that align with our objective. For example, “Increase website traffic by 30% within the next six months.”

Also, we need to prioritize our goals based on importance and feasibility. This will help us focus our resources on the content that creates the most impact.

We also need to regularly review and adjust our goals, because the digital landscape is always changing, and so what worked well before may not work as well now.

So, we need to make sure that our goals are current and feasible.

Another important area is to measure and analyze our content’s performance. Here, we can use analytics tools to track performance and measure the success of our content against our goals. This will then help us identify areas for improvement and allow us to make data-driven decisions instead of guessing.

By following these steps, we can set clear and measurable content goals that will align with our business objectives and that will help us achieve our desired outcomes.

So, let’s explore each of these areas now in a little more detail.

The first step is to identify our target audience.

We’ve already covered this in module 3, so if you need help identifying your target audience, just go back and review that module.

The next step is to identify our business objectives.

Before we can identify our business objectives, however, we should have a clear idea of our business vision, mission, and core values.

If you need help with any of these areas, then visit the URL on this screen for an in-depth tutorial.

The next step is to establish specific, measurable, and actionable goals. For each objective or goal that we specify, we need to create specific, measurable, and actionable goals that will align with our objectives.

For example, our goal might be to increase website traffic by 30% within the next six months.

We can use SMART goals to set specific, measurable, and actionable goals to help us achieve this objective.

At this point, we will also want to define the metrics that we will use to measure our results.

If you need help or more information on content metrics, visit the URL on the screen.

The next step is to prioritize our goals based on importance and feasibility.

This will help focus our resources on the content that will create the most impact.

When prioritizing content goals, it’s important to consider both the importance and the feasibility of each goal.

Importance refers to how closely the goal aligns with our overall objectives, while feasibility takes into account the resources, time, and any other constraints that can impact our ability to achieve the goal.

One way to prioritize content goals is to use a method like the Eisenhower Matrix, which separates goals into four categories based on their importance and feasibility:

So…

Important and feasible are goals that should be prioritized and tackled first, as they will have the greatest impact and can be completed with the resources that we have available.

For example, creating product announcement blog posts when new products are released or existing products are updated would likely fall into this category.

The next category is important but not feasible. These goals are important, but can’t be completed given current constraints, so we might need to put these on hold or reevaluate them later to determine if they can be made more feasible.

An example of a goal that might fall in this category is producing a high-budget video ad campaign when we’ve only been given a very low budget to create our content.

Not important but feasible goals are not critical to our objectives, but could still be achieved within our available resources.

These goals can be completed if time allows but should be given lower priority than more important goals.

For example, translating website pages into another language that isn’t critical for our target audience would probably fall into this category.

And the last category is not important and not feasible, If goals are neither important nor feasible, then just drop them. They are not important and they are not feasible.

When using a method like the Eisenhower Matrix, it’s important to list all of our goals, then evaluate each one, add them into one of these four categories, and make a decision based on the category we’ve selected.

The next step is to continually review and adjust our goals.

As mentioned earlier, the digital landscape is always changing, so what worked well before may not work as well now.

The last step is to track our goals and measure and analyze our content performance using analytics tools. This will help us identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions.

So, to summarize what we have covered in this lesson, setting content goals involves steps like:

• Identifying our target audience
• Defining our business objectives
• Establishing SMART goals
• Prioritizing our goals according to importance and feasibility
• Regularly reviewing and adjusting our goals to make sure they remain aligned with our objectives, and
• Measuring and analyzing our content performance against the goals that we have set.

For more information about each of these areas, see the tutorials and lessons that are listed on the screen.

That’s all for this lesson.

In the next lesson, we’ll look at the different types of content to include in our content strategy.

Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.

• Go to Lesson 5.
• Return to the video course outline.

Tutorials

See the following lessons and tutorials for more information  about the topics covered in this video lesson:

• • Target Audience
  • Digital Business Basics
  • How To Create A Content Strategy
  • Content Metrics
  • Content Tracking

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Image: Robin Higgins. Music Bensound.

How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business – Part 3: Target Audience

Learn how to create an effective content strategy for your business with this free video course. Part 3 of 12.

This is Part 3 of our free How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business video course.

This lesson looks at ways and methods to identify the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience, create user personas for your business, and understand the buyer’s journey and what types of content will be most relevant and valuable to your audience at each different stage of their journey.

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Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:

Video Transcript

Hello and welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.

So far, we’ve looked at what a content strategy is, why your business needs one, and the benefits and importance of having a clear and defined content strategy in module 1.

We then looked at the main challenges of managing content effectively and what we need to put in place before we can develop an effective content strategy. That was module 2.

This is module 3, and this lesson is all about identifying and understanding our target audience.

Understanding our target audience is essential to develop an effective content strategy that will help our business succeed.

By identifying key characteristics of our target audience such as demographics, their interests, and their pain points, we can then create content that will speak directly to their needs, desires, and motivations.

So, how do we identify our target audience?

First, let’s look at what we are trying to understand about our audience.

Demographics relates to a market or a sector of the population.

Understanding our audience’s demographics lets us tailor our content strategy and content to better meet the specific needs of our customers.

Demographics relates to attributes like age, gender, income, education, occupation, geographical location, maybe even their family structure or lifestyle, if that’s important, and psychographics.

Psychographics is similar to demographics, but it deals with attributes that are harder to observe, such as mental and emotional characteristics and motives, whereas demographics are more visible and easier to determine.

So, things like your audience’s values, beliefs, and attitudes are psychographic attributes, whereas age, income, and occupation are demographics.

Now, the next set of information that we want to identify relates to our target audience’s interests and hobbies.

Understanding our target audience’s interests and hobbies can help us create messaging and advertising content that will fit their preferences and resonate with our audience, keep them engaged longer with our business or website, and create a more personalized approach that will help to increase our chances of attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.

To identify the interests and hobbies of our audience, we need to know things like:

What do they like to do in their free time?

What are they interested in learning more about?

Here are some examples of questions we can ask to uncover these answers:

• “What are some of your favorite hobbies or activities outside of work?”
• “What are some of the books, movies, or TV shows you enjoy?”
• “What are some of the websites or blogs you like to visit?”
• “What kind of music do you like to listen to?”
• “What kind of events or activities do you like to attend?”
• “What kind of sports or fitness activities are you interested in?”
• “What kind of hobbies or activities do you enjoy with your family?”
• “What are some of your favorite travel destinations or dream vacation spots?”
• “What are some of the volunteer or community activities you’re involved in?”
• “What are some of the causes or social issues that you care about?”

Another area we want to identify about our target audience are their pain points.

Their challenges, problems, and frustrations.

So what problems are they trying to solve?

And how can your product or service help to address these pain points?

Understanding our audience’s pain points lets us tailor our content to address their specific needs, desires, and concerns.

Now, how do we gather data about our target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points?

If you visit the page listed on this slide, you will find more detailed information about each of these sources and links to tools and resources that you can use to gather this data.

Another way to identify your target audience is to create user personas for your business.

A user persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer.

User personas provide a detailed and specific picture of who your target audience is, what their needs and goals are, and how they think and behave.

You create a user persona from the data and research gathered about your target audience.

And these allow you to address your ideal customer when creating your content.

And there are a number of free user persona online generators that you can use to create user personas.

Visit the URL on the screen for a list of free tools.

The other important area that will help you identify your target audience and their needs, is understanding your customer’s buyer journey.

The buyer journey is the process that a potential customer goes through before making a purchase.

The stages of the buyer journey are typically divided into Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Retention.

In the awareness stage, your potential customer becomes aware of a problem or need that they have.

In the consideration stage, our potential customer is actively searching for a solution to meet their needs and is considering their options.

In the decision stage, potential customers have made a decision to solve their problem, and they are now looking for the best solution, and they are ready to make a purchase.

In the retention stage, the customer has already purchased the product or service and is now using it.

Since they have already purchased, this stage is not typically considered to be part of the customer’s purchasing journey but your content strategy still needs to accommodate this audience group in terms of retaining them and building customer loyalty.

Visit the URL on the screen for more details on understanding your customer’s buyer journey, the types of content you can create for each different stage of their journey, and useful tools and resources that will help you save time.

So, to summarize what we have covered in this lesson, let’s look at the action steps that we need to take to identify our target audience.

One, gather data about their demographics, interests, and pain points. There are various methods you can use to do this,

Two, create user personas. There are free online user persona generator tools that you can use, and

And three, understand the customer’s buyer journey and the best content types to help them at each stage.

For detailed tutorials covering each of these areas and links to tools and resources, just visit the URLs shown on your screen.

In the next lesson, we’ll look at setting content goals to create an effective content strategy.

Thank you for watching this video and I’ll see you in the next lesson.

• Go to Lesson 4.
• Return to the video course outline.

Tutorials

See the following lessons and tutorials for more information  about the topics covered in this video lesson:

• How To Create A Content Strategy
• Target Audience
• Customer Surveys
• Buyer Journey
• Content Types

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Image: Robin Higgins. Music Bensound.

How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business – Part 1: Content Challenges

Learn how to create an effective content strategy for your business with this free video course. Part 2 of 12.

This is Part 2 of our free How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business video course.

This lesson covers what you need to know and do before you can create an effective content strategy for your business.

You will also learn about the challenges of managing content effectively and what you need to put in place first.

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Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:

Video Transcript

Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.

This is module 2.

In module 1, we introduced you to the course and looked at what a content strategy is, why your business needs one, and the benefits and importance of having a clear content strategy.

In this lesson, we are going to look at what you need to know and do before you can create a content strategy for your business.

We’ll also look at the challenges of managing content effectively, and what we need to put in place before we can develop a content strategy.

Now, there are obvious and not-so-obvious challenges to managing content effectively.

So, let’s look at some of the obvious challenges first.

These include things like:

Having too much content. The more content you have, the more content you have to manage. Without good content management systems, it’s hard to keep your content organized and easy to find, and important information can end up getting lost or overlooked.

It’s also harder to coordinate your content when you have multiple people or teams contributing to it.

Also, having outdated, inaccurate, or obsolete information can be confusing for users and harm your credibility.

Another challenge is adapting to new technologies and platforms. Your business needs to keep up with new technologies, systems, and tools to stay current and manage its content effectively.

Keeping sensitive or confidential content secure and protected from unauthorized access or leaks is another challenge.

And so is tracking and measuring content performance, which is essential for making informed decisions.

Keeping content integrated and aligned with other systems and processes within your organization is also challenging, but important to optimize efficiency and avoid confusion or duplication of effort.

And budget and resources constraints is a challenge for all businesses, especially small businesses.

Now, the not-so-obvious challenges of managing your content effectively don’t become apparent until you actually start trying to manage your content effectively.

Then you discover that effective content management is a Catch-22 situation.

If you are not familiar with this expression, think about the dilemma that most people face when they first try to get a job.

You’ve probably heard people complain that no one will give you a job if you don’t have experience, but how can you get experience if no one will give you a job?

That’s an example of a Catch-22 situation.

Similarly, when it comes to managing your content effectively, you discover that “You can’t plan, produce, promote, and manage your content effectively until you have put in place the right systems and processes to plan, produce, promote, and manage your content effectively.”

But then you are faced with the challenge of do you put content management systems in place first and then start to create and promote your content, or do you start creating and promoting your content first and then worry about putting systems in place later?

As we will see, this has a significant and direct impact on our content strategy.

So, let me explain what I mean.

Your content strategy is part of your content management system, so if we start creating and promoting content before developing our content strategy and putting systems in place to manage our content effectively, then what’s the point of having a content strategy?

Let’s go back to our definition of a Content Strategy from module 1.

A content strategy is…

A plan for creating, publishing, and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to achieve specific business goals and objectives.

A content strategy also helps you:

• Define who your target audience is and understand their needs and interests
• Create the right content to address their needs and speak to their interests
• Determine the most effective channels for distributing your content
• And track and measure performance so you can continue to improve your results.

So, without a content strategy, we are just creating content blindly with no real direction or ways to measure and track our content’s performance, so it’s all going to be hit-and-miss and guesswork and assumptions.

As we will see later in this course, eventually your business will end up with a very difficult mess to deal with and many more problems to try and sort out.

So we want to put a content strategy in place before we start creating and promoting our content.

But, this has its own challenges.

The first challenge is that a content strategy involves all areas of our business because content impacts all areas of our business.

Even writing a simple article or blog post for our website has to take into account areas like marketing and research, product development, accounting, legal stuff related to what you can and can’t say in your content, and even different types of technology like servers and different applications that are used by different teams or departments to store and send information, and so on.

You can read more about this challenge by following the link on your screen.

The point is that our content strategy has to take all of this into account.

The next challenge is that creating high-quality content and managing our content effectively requires quite a sizeable team.

There are many different roles involved in the process of planning, creating, promoting, and managing content.

So, whether you’re an individual blogger or part of a larger organization, all of these roles and responsibilities have to be met, so our content strategy also needs to take all this into account.

This leads to the next challenge, which is that it takes significant resources to create high-quality content and manage this content effectively.

You need a sizeable budget and personnel with the right skills and expertise, plus spending time doing content research, content planning, and documenting systems.

All of this is time-consuming and takes resources away from other areas of our business.

Most businesses operate with very limited resources and have very little time to devote to areas like content planning and documenting systems, so that’s a big challenge when it comes to creating a content strategy.

And finally, the last of the “not-so-obvious” challenges only becomes obvious when we try to start putting our content strategy together.

And this challenge is that all of the basic business foundations need to be in place for our content strategy to be truly effective.

Let’s think about what this means.

If the aim of our content strategy is to help our business achieve specific goals and objectives, then our business first needs to define those goals and objectives before we can put a strategy together to achieve these goals and objectives.

But it’s not just setting goals and objectives.

Before we can put an effective content strategy together, we also need to have a clear marketing plan, and this comes from having a clear marketing strategy, which comes from having a clear business plan, which comes from having a clear business strategy, which comes from having clear strategic goals and objectives, which come from having a clearly-stated business vision, mission statement, and core values.

If all of these processes are not clearly defined, then our content strategy will not be as effective.

So, let’s recap what we need to know and do before developing a content strategy for our business.

First, we need to be aware of the challenges of managing content effectively and

Then, we need to make sure that all of the basic business foundations are in place.

I’ve listed a number of articles on this screen that I recommend you read, as these cover in more detail everything that we’ve talked about in this lesson.

So, make sure to visit the website and if you have subscribed to the free email course, you will get additional information on everything that we cover in this video course.

So, that’s the end of this lesson.

In the next video, we’ll cover module 3, which is all about understanding our target audience.

Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.

• Go to Lesson 3.
• Return to the video course outline.

Tutorials

See the following lessons and tutorials for more information  about the topics covered in this video lesson:

• The Challenges Of Managing Content Effectively
• Digital Business Basics
• Digital Business Structure
• Digital Business Setups
• Content Management Mindset
• Content Strategy

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Image: Robin Higgins. Music Bensound.