Have you ever heard someone say, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” I’ve heard this quote thrown around quite a few times. To be honest it probably gets repeated for one simple reason: it’s %100 true. You may have the most well-crafted content strategy, but without a clear and structured plan for setting it into action–you’re doomed.
What to Consider
Yes, writing content is fun and it gives you the chance to let your creative juices flow. However, everyone always forgets about the unpleasant counterpart: the planning. Having planned content is just as important as creating it. When you plan your content, it allows you to dive deeper into the who, what and when to ensure that the content you’re putting out is effective.
The “who” is simple, it’s understanding your target audience and knowing to whom or for whom you’re writing.
As for the “what”, you must think about the type of content your audience expects from you, then find the best way to deliver it to them. Therefore, it’s important to plan your content according to what your audience thinks or wants in that specific moment. Doing this ensures that your content is relevant.
Finally, there is the “when”. The material that you put out to your audience must be consistent. This holds true for blogs, social media posts, emails and any other type of content. Posting on a sporadic schedule will decrease the level of trust with your audience and throw them off track. When your audience recognizes your inconsistency, you could then find yourself with less clicks, less engagement and even less customers.
Dedicate Yourself to Planning
Dedicating yourself to planning means taking all the ideas and desires you and your team have and figuring out how to make them happen. The best way to do this is by setting your goals from the start. By setting and analyzing your goals with priorities in mind, you help yourself organize your content calendar. You now know what to post, when to post it and on what platforms for the best possible performance.
Have a System
Now that you’ve considered your audience and have your execution plan in place, it’s time to think about content. Planned content can be as simple as knowing the topic you’re writing about, or just knowing the title ahead of time. While on the other hand, it can be more in depth and include notes, links to helpful articles and even a full-blown outline.
When you start all this planning it’s easy to get overwhelmed. When you become disorganized you can forget ideas, misplace notes and lose important pieces of information. The solution? When you start brainstorming ideas for your content, you plug them into your plan. Adding resources into your content calendar as you accumulate them reduces the risk of something being misplaced or forgotten. You can't forget something if it’s already right where it needs to be!
This also makes life easier because it gives you more time to work later. Instead of rushing to come up with an idea, doing background research and writing all at once, you now have the time to focus just on the writing. Since everything is all in one place there’s no time wasted–in addition you now have the luxury of taking your time to rework and finesse your copy until it’s perfect. Having the time to ensure the quality of your content is crucial, as it plays a big role in the amount of traction you’ll receive from your posts.
Choose ProFromGo
Whatever the case may be, planning is the way to go. It ensures that you write content regularly, aids you in publishing relevant content and it allows for changes to be made based on your analytics. Without planned content, you’re a ship without sails that is going nowhere. So instead of going nowhere, get ProFromGo. We can help you plan and create your content to get your business where it needs to be.
