If you’re taking on the world, you’re going to need a plan.

After all, man didn’t land on the moon without a fair bit of planning and battles don’t get fought or won without plans. 

Yep. Big ideas need plans. The simpler, the better. 

If you’ve decided that content (blogs, videos, podcasts, social posts or any other form of info you put out there) is a good way to tell people about your creative business then I agree. But it’s not going to happen by coming up with ideas on the fly.

Putting things out just when you remember, rather than when you’ve planned it, means you probably aren’t sure where you’re headed. And that’s ok for a bit, but sooner or later, when you realise you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll also realise that you (of course) have no idea how to get there.  

So. Your content needs a plan if you’re going to use it to take down the competition. It needs to be taking you to the place that you want to go. 

Why Content is a Master Plan.

Just in case you aren’t convinced, here are a few things that brands can do with super-duper content: 

1. Make an audience laugh, cry, feel something, care. And when you do that for people, you start to matter to them.

2. Once you matter, people will give you their attention. They’ll give you their trust, their heart and even their money.

3. Google recognises really good content and gives you an SEO boost up it’s rankings.

4. People like to share really good content, so it helps to widen your audience and bring you more fans.

Those are just a few of the reasons why great content is a master plan for your business. 

Content Needs a Purpose.

Think about this. There’s a difference between having some money in the bank and feeling nice about it, or investing that money to make it work really hard and grow. The same applies to content. 

You need to put your content to work by knowing why you’re publishing it and who it’s for. 

Ask yourself some content questions…

• Is this for someone who’s coming across my business for the first time or someone who’s a returning customer? What point are they at with me and how can I move them one step closer to loving this brand and maybe even buying something?

• What am I doing this for? To make someone laugh? To give them a great idea? To make them feel inspired? What do I want the outcome to be?

• Is this content for Instagram? My blog? A podcast? Is it right for that channel and the audience that goes with it?

• What is the next step I am going to ask the reader to take after watching / reading / seeing this bit of content? How can I continue to draw them in, surprise and delight them?

If you have loads of people on your email list, but none of them want to buy anything, ask yourself how content could help. 

Or if you have a few gorgeous people on your email list who buy everything, but it’s not quite enough, ask yourself what content you could put out, and where, to help you reach more people. 

So How Do I Plan Content?

Lots of people have lots of answers, but here’s a simple one. 

First, think about your business. What are three or four topics that matter most, to you and to your audience? These four topics will become the pillars of your content that you build everything else around. 

Here’s an example. 

I’m a freelance copywriter. I write for creative businesses and I know (because I ask them every year on a survey) that my audience likes to read about branding, SEO, marketing and just what it’s like to be a person running a creative business. 

My content pillars might look a bit like this:

1. Pillar One - Marketing and SEO

2. Pillar Two - Creative business

3. Pillar Three - Content & Copy

4. Pillar Four - Branding

Now around each one I just brainstorm a load of topics. I think about the questions that customers ask me. What do they want to know about? What are the topics that are interesting to my audience and how can I present them in a way they’re going to really “get”?

I love this video from Hubspot. It explains how easy it is for Google to crawl your website and for people to find your content when you start with ‘cornerstone’ blog topics as your foundation and then link out to write lots of related topic posts around them.

Stop and ask yourself….What are the content pillars of my own business? What other topics can I write about?

Tell Stories, Capture Hearts.

People love stories. They love to be moved and they love to feel emotion. Isn’t that what makes us human?

So how can you use your pillars to tell people stories? How can you match your content pillars up with the values of your brand and the things you believe in?

Be honest, be genuine. Talk about your actual experiences and be vulnerable enough to show people behind the scenes. 

Here’s an example:

Pillar - Marketing and SEO

Topic - Easy SEO wins for your creative business

Story - That when I started my first online business I could never get found, which made me want to learn everything about SEO in as simple a way as possible to tell other people. 

Tell a story with words, with pictures, with honesty and with the values of whatever it is you believe in. 

Clever, heart-capturing brands create content all the while that isn’t necessarily about a product. They just thrill people to build confidence in who they are and what they’re about.

Stop and ask yourself… What are the defining moments that caused me to start this business or the turning points along the way? How can I weave those stories into topics under my content pillars?

How Far Can I Stretch My Idea?

Once you’ve come up with your topic, make a rough draft. I do this when I make a video for the SEO Express by scribbling down the things I want to say very loosely to get them in my mind, then flipping over the paper, ignoring what I’ve written and making the video off the cuff. 

Still, the most important bits, or headings, will have been in my scribble. 

It’s the same with a blog post. Once I’ve written one I go through it and see if I can pull out several small points that I could turn into graphics, posts or stories on Instagram. 

Maybe I’ll make 3-4 different pins for Pinterest too. You can see a couple of them here in this post. 

See how far you can push your content to create extra little bits for social media, all the while remembering what you are trying to DO, the story you want to TELL and WHO you want to talk to. 

If you wrote one really valuable post a month of at least 1200-3000 words, it wouldn’t be too hard to plan an entire year’s worth of content using content pillars as a foundation. 

Try this for a basic format:

PILLAR: Branding

CORNERSTONE POST: “Uncovering the Astonishing Secrets to Brand Storytelling”

RELATED POST 1: “Why Your Backstory is One You Should Never Forget”

RELATED POST 2: “10 Brands Using Story as Product”

RELATED POST 3: “How Genuine Brand Values Can Transform Your Business.”

Then take one of the posts and list out 8-10 snippets for social media.

Make sure you have a call to action at the end of EVERYTHING and make sure that you schedule in the time to write the actual content as if it’s as important as the work you’d do for a client.

Good Content Takes Time. 

There’s no point in churning out poorly written, keyword-stuffed sentences every day and hoping for traffic. It doesn’t work any more. 

Similarly, you can’t write one decent blog post and start earning your first million. If you’re going to use the master plan of content you need to look at it as a long game. 

I’m finding it’s a long game that pays off.

Are you in a jumble with content? Would you like a hand to plan it, write it or execute it? I’d love to have that conversation with you. Get in touch here.