The 6-Step Guide for Crafting an Effective Content Marketing Channel Plan

This is a guest contribution from freelance writer Kanika.

With businesses employing multiple channels for marketing, it can quickly get overwhelming. To stay across everything without losing your head, you really need to have a plan of attack for each channel. Only then will your business be able to get the best results from its marketing projects, campaigns undertaken across various channels, and comprehensively achieve its marketing objectives.

You have to ensure that the content created suits its targeted audience and is appealing and informative enough to hold the people’s attention. But the same content cannot be presented on different channels in the same format – t has to be moulded and revised to best fit into a situation, so it can deliver the goods. This is so important for the success of a business’s marketing projects and campaigns.

Follow this 6-step approach and you will be well on your way.

Research your chosen channel

Before a business goes ahead with putting its content on a chosen channel or channels like Twitter, Linkedin, etc., it needs to conduct deep research on various factors. The timing of publishing a content, what type of people it wants to target, the tone of content, and team members who will be writing it, and the budgetary limitations all need to be looked at. You also need to consider an estimated number of people who will respond to the content, what action you want them to take, devices people would be using for seeing the content, their time of accessing it; whether they would be at work or holidaying, and similar other factors. Only then will you be able to mold the content to best fit a situation and hold the interest of your target audience.

Choosing the right channel at the right time

It’s great that a business can maximize its content promotion efforts and use every available channel for promoting itself, its products, and solutions, but you need to use these tactically. Choosing some channels over others is best, as it enables a business to devote enough time and energy on few specific channels rather than spreading too thin across all. This is helpful for those businesses who have a limited number of personnel for doing various tasks like content creation, SEO, etc. For maximizing their output, it is better to selectively utilize a couple of channels you think will work well. After that, you can try others – but just starting with every channel and leaving many of them silent is not going to work. Moreover this will burn out team members who have too much work to do than they can easily handle. Failure to follow up with maximum channels is bad for a business’s reputation. People who have posted their comments and are waiting for ages to get their questions answered will get annoyed. This does not do much for your reputation – dissatisfied people can be pretty vocal about being ignored.

Formulating a content management plan

A business has to get created quality content in a time bound manner and this can be done by making a content management plan and executing it systematically. It has to devise a content strategy which will decide what type of content needs to be created for various channels and which type of audience will be targeted by the content. The team members who will be writing the content, submitting, promoting and marketing it, have to be identified and assigned their respective tasks. They should clearly know the deadlines of their tasks and milestones. Once content has been submitted and promoted on various channels, the results obtained need to be analyzed. This will help a business to know if its marketing efforts are succeeding as intended or do they need to be improved. This will give an idea what new or extra it needs to do for achieving the desired results. Thus it can better plan for its future content marketing projects. 

Executing the content management plan

After the content management plan for a project or campaign has been formulated, it needs to be executed in a streamlined manner. Activities of team members assigned with various content creation, submission and promotion tasks have to be coordinated. Their progress at their tasks needs to be tracked and critically assessed. A business has to know if they are completing their tasks within the stipulated time or if they taking more than required time for their execution. This helps it to know if a project or campaign will be completed within the allocated time and budget. If a business discovers some inconsistencies in the smooth functioning of such projects and campaigns, it should be able to take corrective measures in a timely manner.

This calls for improved organization, communication, collaboration and precise monitoring of tasks and projects. This is something which cannot be achieved manually. The reason being team members are often based in different locations and it becomes difficult to update them on latest developments happening in such projects. It becomes difficult to keep them at same page over a project. So better solutions are needed – and usually web-based.

Web-based project management tools enable smooth and proper execution of content management projects. These will improve communication and collaboration among globally dispersed team members so projects can be completed within time and budget. 

You might like to try some of these:

Basecamp: A popular project management tool enables enhanced management in projects in a simple manner. Team members remain well aware of any new activities happening in projects.

ProofHub: Team members can communicate, collaborate fast and transparently with this enterprising project management tool. This tool enables smooth implementation of projects and these can be completed as scheduled.

Trello: This collaboration tool boosts communication and collaboration among group members by making it smoother. Work, projects can be better organized and managed with this solution.

Asana: This project management system enables team members to work together without using emails. Their efficiency improves and they are able to achieve more at work with minimum effort.

Molding content as per the context

After content has been created, it has to be molded so as to fit into the right context. A business may witness new developments like it launching new features or solutions, redesigning its website, upcoming festivities like Christmas, New Year and others where it becomes quite necessary to mold the content to best fit to a given situation, context and the targeted audience. Thus the business would be able to present the latest and updated information to the people and they will respond more actively to the business’s needs. 

6. Creating an editorial plan

For properly using a chosen channel and for getting the maximum results, a business needs to create an editorial plan. This will get mapped to its global editorial calendar. The editorial plan enables a business to determine velocity, tone, intended action and structure for the content it needs to put on a specific channel. As an example, a business wants its Twitter page to consist of following things: 

Velocity: One post per day
Tone: Conversational, friendly and occasionally laced with humor
Intended Action: A business wants subscribers to click through to its guest post
Structure: 140 worded post with a business’s logo

An action plan means you get your business marketed effectively and quickly. I hope these six steps have helped you.

Kanika is a freelancer content writer who likes to delve deep into technology, tools, and making people aware about utility of such aids through her informative write-ups. In her spare time she enjoys sketching, cooking, travelling and spending time with her family and folks.