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Do you need a content plan?

09.11.2011 - Martin Smith

Why does anyone need a content plan?

You need one because potential customers are visiting your site and leaving because there is little useful to them beyond product information and platitudes about innovation.  You need one because your rivals are creating useful, educational content, which is helping them to be found and helping them to convert new business.

When a company hires an outside firm, they do so because that firm has expertise that they do not already possess.  However, whether you have the expertise that company needs or not, you will be instantly dismissed if the company cannot see evidence of your expertise, right there on your website.  That is why you need regular, interesting new information.  You need thought-leadership content and you need a plan so you keep on track to deliver it regularly.

Matching your content needs to the buying cycle

To make your content meaningful, you need to think things through from the perspective of the buyer, not the seller.  That means working out the issues faced by the different people involved in the buying cycle at the different stages of the cycle.  In a business buying cycle, there are typically six stages.  They are: identifying the problem, defining the criteria of the solution, search, evaluation, selection then procurement.

Overlay the different job roles involved in the buying cycle and you have an accurate picture of the buying cycle in your business.  When you can see it in black and white you can understand the different types of content that you need at different stages.

Some people at the start of the cycle maybe need some persuasion that the issue needs to be addressed.  Or they need to be shocked out of complacency.  Or they might need an ABC of the stages involved in addressing their issue.  Later in the cycle, people need more third-party reassurance in the form of case studies, testimonials, analyst reports etc.

Brainstorming the content

In my experience, some of the best content ideas come from the product manager/director level.  They are typically very close to the strengths and weaknesses of the product and the challenges faced by customers.

In the best case scenario, you schedule time with the product managers and listen to all the great ideas they have been dying to share with someone.  In the worse case scenario, you prepare a guided brainstorm where you probe them on everything.  The neatest way of doing that is by presenting the buying cycle to them and asking them what problems each individual faces at each stage in the buying cycle.

Developing and scheduling the content

Ideas, like seedlings, need the right support to help them grow.  When you have an idea, start writing it down, so you have at least a paragraph of content that can be expanded upon later.  Just like you would see with the first paragraph of a feature article in a trade magazine, introduce the challenge, some of its facets and hint at the solution.

Gather those paragraphs of ideas and plan out what you are going to do with them.  Maybe it is as simple as translating each idea into a blog post once a week for the next eight weeks.  Or maybe four become blog posts, two become bylined articles to place in trade mags and one becomes a whitepaper.  You’ll know what you can do based on your own (or your agency’s) bandwidth.

Keeping the content fresh

Your content plan is unlikely to be a long-term plan.  Products, companies and the market never stands still, so plan by quarter and you have enough structure without tying you in to ideas which external circumstances may make old.  Plan to refresh every quarter and you can ensure you have fresh ideas which are constantly in tune with your changing market.

On a final note, just do it.

When you have fixed this, you will be amazed at just how much simpler the PR and marketing program becomes.  No wonder content planning is one of the fundamentals of our “three Cs” approach which marries competitive positioning, content planning and channel planning.  When all of these are in place and acted upon, the marketing machine becomes a thing of beauty.

Categories: Blogging, Content Creation, marketing, Mobile PR, Telecom PR, Telecoms PR