Creating a content plan sounds like a lot of hard work. Why bother, when you could just sit down at the computer and write what’s relevant or what comes to mind?
Here’s the thing – unless your mind is constantly bursting with inspiration, it’s inevitable that one day you’ll find yourself at your desk with your mind as blank as the page on the screen in front of you. Writer’s (or poster’s) block is no fun. Making a content plan may not be fun either – but, in the long term, it’s the lesser of two evils.
Creating a content plan does four crucial things:
- It plans out what you’re going to post about in advance, saving you a lot of brain-racking and page-staring down the line
- It keeps you accountable – it’s harder to procrastinate when you’ve got a clear, dated content plan to work to
- It helps to keep you posting – which in turn keeps you in the algorithms’ good books
- If your content team has multiple people (or if you like to use freelancers), a content plan keeps everyone on the same page
It can also save you a lot of time. Yes, really! We know it sounds counterintuitive, but taking a bit of extra time to create a content plan genuinely will free up time later that Future You will be grateful for.
We love a content plan here at Sox. OK, well, ‘love’ might be a strong word, but we certainly find them useful. So, just for you, here are our top tips for creating a content plan:
1. Be realistic with your posting schedule
It’s easy to be ambitious when you’ve got a blank calendar in front of you, but less easy struggling to carve out time for content when you’re busy and exhausted. So, if you only take one thing on board from this blog, let it be this: be realistic about what you can achieve.
If you have a huge content team, fantastic. Schedule reams and reams of content and assign it as you see fit. If it’s just you or you and maybe a couple of others, be restrained. Remember that general life stuff is always going to leave you with less time than you think you’ll have. And, for the sake of your own mental health, you shouldn’t let content creation start eating into your downtime.
Remember also that it’s not just creating the content that takes up time. If you’re doing it right, you should also be checking your content regularly and actively engaging with people who are commenting, sharing etc. All of that will take up a lot more time than you might expect.
So, craft a schedule that you can easily stick to even at the very busiest times. Or, if you want to post more than you might be capable of creating, get a good freelance writer on standby to pick up the slack (we have a great one – not that we’re biased – give us a shout if you want her details!)
2. Be consistent
Consistency is important for building up a relationship with your audience and for staying on good terms with the algorithms. As we’ve covered, you don’t have to post too frequently, but consistency really will help your content strategy to succeed. So, pick a regular schedule that you can stick to – for example, a blog every other Wednesday, social posts every Monday morning etc.
3. Keep a list of ideas
Every creative knows that ideas never arrive when you want them to. Rather than lighting up your neurones when you’re at your desk and ready to work, inspiration tends to hit when you’re walking the dog, or doing the washing up, or at 3 in the morning just when you really don’t want your brain to be buzzing with ideas.
The trick is to write down these ideas when they arrive, maybe in your notes app, and transfer them to a master document when you have a moment. Something as simple as jotting down ideas when they occur to you can make a huge difference to the ease and efficiency of your content plan.
4. Create content in batches
Many, many writers use a batch approach to content creation. It’s a lot less mentally exhausting to take on content in batches than it is to get yourself ‘in the zone’ individually for every single piece. On a more practical note, batch creation when you have spare time will give you breathing space and plenty of banked content to lean on when things are busy.
Our writer likes to arrange blog batches by topic, as this means that all the information is fresh in her mind as she tackles every blog on that subject. This does mean that the content isn’t created in chronological order – typically she’ll work several months in advance to make sure that every topic batch is finished on time (this is another good reason to make a content calendar – it means that people can work on and bank content way before posting).
You don’t have to work by topic, of course. But we do recommend that you batch create when you have spare time. Trust us, Future You in a very busy month will thank you for having a batch ready in advance. And, if you have no idea how to craft and target content… Well you’re in luck because we’ve got a blog on that.
5. Adjust as needed
Creating a content plan is great for helping everyone to understand and stick to a schedule – but don’t make it too rigid. If something crops up that would make for a more relevant post than what you’ve got scheduled, adjust your plan. If you find that you have time for more posting (and want to create more content!), slot some more posting spots into your calendar (just remember to be consistent!).
The important thing is that this is your content plan. It should serve your business needs – not become a cruel taskmaster that keeps you in its thrall. So, don’t be afraid to change things that aren’t working and add in things that seem like great ideas.