
According to Marketing Profs, 88% of B2B marketers in North America invest in content marketing. Yet Content Marketing Institute reports that only 30% of marketers say their organization is effective at content marketing and content strategy.
The content planning module in WriterAccess Academy is packed with lots of strategic information, video recordings, templates, and resources from a variety of auithority sources, offering clarify on why you need a content plan, how to develop content strategy, and what performance to expect from your content marketing investment with best practice content planning, strategy, and execution aimed at specific, realistic, data-backed, measurable goals.
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Who are the instructors of the Content Planning Module?
How long does it take to complete this module?
Book Chapter 1: Content Planning | 30 | Minutes | |
Core Planning Video | 30 | Minutes | |
Workshop Webinar Video | 3 | Hours | |
Bonus Planning Videos | 2.5 | Hours | |
Resources/Templates Review | 1 | Hour | |
Content Planning Quiz | 30 | Minutes | |
TOTAL HOURS | 8 | Hours |
What will I learn about content planning to help master content strategy?
Take a look at the core content planning questions we'll be answering in this module, with recordings, resources, templates and more.
What is a content marketing strategy?
Content marketers develop content strategy to pinpoint the opportunities, challenges, and goals for content marketing success. Content planning and strategy development begins with a comprehensive analysis of the business, customers, and competition in your industry. Depending on your budget, internal or external resources (worker bees), and goals, analysis may include website and SEO performance analysis, keyword research, editorial calendar development, content category maps, social media “conversation” analysis, customer journey and persona development, and more.
What is a content plan, and how will it help me achieve marketing goals?
Content plans are like a GPS for content marketing, defining the goals, key performance indicators, strategy, tactics, and goals for content marketing performance. Without a content plan, companies are shooting from the hip, bindly hoping for the highest without the insights, methodology, or tactics to map out a reliable path to achieve goals, and deliver return on marketing investment. With a content plan well crafted, companies can answer questions like...
Can I access sample content plans and templates?
Content plans are like a GPS for content marketing, defining the goals, key performance indicators, strategy, tactics, and goals for content marketing performance. Students will want to download and study both content plans to get a feel for the variations of research and analysis required for completion.
How do you research your audience and learn what they want and need?
Researching the questions your target audience is asking about your products, services, or industry is a great way to provide them with information they want and need. Tools like Quora, a Q&A platform that empowers people to share and grow the world’s knowledge, offers insights to popular questions that can help you understand your audience and the information and answers they seek. Learn one key question to ask your cusotmers at WriterAccess Academy, so you can turn more browsers into believers, and believers into buyers.
How do you develop content strategy for specific audience (personas)?
Without a deep understanding of who your customers are, marketing fails in many ways. Highlighting the characteristics and distinctions of multiple personas helps writers and marketers personalize content assets for different buyers, increasing engagement, conversion, and performance. The more data you can provide from your customer database, the more accurate the buyer personas will be. That, in turn, will boost content performance. Learn how to harvest data like demographics, location, spending habits, pain points, objectives, and more. And learn how many personas you may need depending on the diversity of your product, services, or customer base.
What is a customer journey map, why do I need it, and how can it help my content strategy?
According to Invesp, 44% of companies have a greater focus on customer acquisition vs retention, yet increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits 25% to 95%. Customer experience design aims to bring awareness to these types of problems, and it all starts by developing a customer journey map and documenting what your customers are thinking and feeling at different stages of their journey with your brand.
In the raw form, customer journey maps visualize customer journey at various stages ranging from discovery to investigation to consideration to trial to purchase to perception and more. More magnificently, customer journey maps document barriers to experience, opportunity for engagement, moments of truth, and motivators to progress customers through the journey to purchase, retention, and even sharing their experience with prospect customers to grow organically—the content marketing way.
Lots of WINS happen when you take the time to develop a customer journey map. Sales and marketing work together to document what customers are thinking and feeling at each stage, so better content can be created to deliver on each stage.
What's the purpose of buyer personas and customer journey maps?
Documenting personas and customer journey maps help you get your team get on the same page and unify goals. More importantly, they help content creators personalize content with the tone, style, design, and sophistication that will boost engagement and drive performance goals.
Do you have samples or templates of customer personas and journey maps?
Yes indeed. Download sample buyer personas and customer journey maps when you enroll with WriterAcceess Academy!
What's a new approach to the customer journey map? The customer playground!
The next evolution in content marketing is here, and marketers aren’t in charge. Customers are. Instead of moving through a traditional linear funnel, or engaging in a looping decision journey, customers are choosing their own adventure, charting their own path across all channels. As marketers, we must think several steps ahead of customers and prepare content that delivers the right message, no matter which path they stumble upon. Listen in to Listen in to Ashley Faus explain these new rules of creating a content strategy where every interaction relies on content, every channel is a touch-point, and every person is on their own journey. Learn how to measure success across channels and throughout the customers journey, and view real world examples of companies taking an integrated approach to content strategy and planning with the playground approach, way beyond the traditional editorial approach.
What are other ways to research customer’s wants and needs?
Getting under the skin of your target audience is the goal for content strategy development and planning. Below are a few hacks to help remove the guesswork and find the answers you need to create content customers and prospects want and need. Try them all to find the nuggets of wisdom that will likely surface along the way.
How does keyword research and SEO fit with content planning and strategy?
Here's the thing... content that is not optimized for both readers AND the search engines will not rank in the search engines or drive organic traffic to your website. Delivering on organic traffic goal requires thoughtful keyword research and planning, as well as optimization cadence and delivery. Learn how to research the keywords that drive traffic to your competitor’s website, and assess the difficulty of ranking so you can make decisions on which keywords to target for optimization, which help to define what topics and subtopics you should target with your content strategy. Look for a deeper discussion on keyword research and SEO in the Content Optimization module.
What type of content assets should you be creating to engage your audience?
Turns out that's a tricky question to answer, without first learning more about your budget, social channels’ popularity, organic marketing success, and ability to create quality content. Content strategy starts with an assessment and "reading" of all those variables before any
How do I research my competition and why is it important?
Visit one of our favorite competitive research tools called SpyFu. See below to quickly learn a TON of information about their digital marketing strategy, including their daily PPC spends, SEO strength, SERP listing positions, paid ad campaigns, and much more. Enroll in the Content Strategy MasterClass at WriterAccess to learn how to compile all the competitive data in a way that pinpoints opportunity to capture organic market share.
What are the best software tools for content planning, research, curation and UX?