5 Tips to Help Content Marketers Build Stellar Content Plans
One of the strengths of seasoned content marketers is our ability to build diverse and engaging content plans. A robust content plan relies on a variety of topics that offer a balance of evergreen and topical content while bringing value to your target audience and solving real-world problems they face.
Even though content planning is a content marketer’s strength, it can be a challenge at times. Whether you’ve been plying your trade at the same company or are starting a contract as a freelancer at a new organization, building a content plan can be tough for different reasons. At a new company with an existing library of pieces, it can be hard to figure out where to start. In a role you’ve held for a while at the same organization, it might be tough to come up with new ideas and topics that will attract your audience, engage them, and convert traffic into leads.
To aid your content strategy efforts, here are a few tips and tricks you can use when having trouble getting started on building an effective, engaging, and enticing new content plan.
Tip #1 – Use AnswerThePublic.com
Your content should always be SEO-optimized while answering the questions your target audience has. Answerthepublic.com helps you do both.
While the site won’t optimize your content so it ranks well, it will give you the most common questions the online world asks about a topic so you can gain SEO points by addressing search intent. AnswerThePublic.com is a search listening tool that collects and presents autocomplete data from search engines like Google.
Using this free tool enables you to kickstart your content plan with invaluable insight into your target audience’s search behavior so you can answer their questions through relevant content for improved engagement.
Tip #2 – Interview your sales team
Interviewing your sales team for relevant and meaningful content ideas should be a mainstay of your process when strategizing where to go with your content, whether you’re having trouble getting going or not.
Specifically, what you should be looking for when talking to your sales team about content ideas are the objections and questions your prospects raise during the buying journey.
Objection handling
Addressing objection handling through content is a great way to engage your target audience near the bottom of your marketing funnel and an effective way to enable your sales team with how to respond to those objections.
Understanding if your product or service is too expensive, too complex, not sophisticated enough, etc. enables you to change the narrative internally and externally, while nullifying your prospects’ objections at the same time.
Questions that come up during the buying journey
Another way to support your entire organization while delivering relevant content to your target audience is to understand the questions that come up during the buying process. At every organization I have collaborated with, the majority of the questions are similar and follow a pattern.
Answering these questions through content accelerates the buying process, enables your sales team with the answers to these questions and a place to direct users for comprehensive insight, and provides you with boundless, meaningful material to write about.
Tip #3 – Don't ask ChatGPT
Generative AI (artificial intelligence) applications like ChatGPT are the future. There’s no question about it, and while they’re great aids right now, they’re not necessarily ready for prime time.
Asking ChatGPT to create a content plan for you might be a good idea to give you a starting place, but you’ll see for yourself that the results will leave a lot to be desired for.
You have the domain expertise, knowledge, and creative abilities. Without extensive refinement, direction, and instruction, ChatGPT will pale in comparison. When it comes to content plans, use generative AI apps like ChatGPT for initial ideas to build off of or to improve an existing strong plan.
Tip #4 – Work smart, not hard
This tip won’t help you generate new ideas, but it will enable you to be more efficient.
When building your content plan, build larger assets in smaller increments that can be repurposed for different mediums.
For example, if you want to produce a whitepaper or eBook in that plan, break those larger assets down into smaller, digestible pieces like blog posts. Work on and publish those articles on your blog and then amalgamate them into a whitepaper or eBook that you can use as a lead magnet and build a larger campaign around.
You can do the same for infographics, podcasts, videos, etc.
Tip #5 – Take a peek at your competition
Keeping a pulse on the content your competition is producing is a must whether you use it to inform your own narrative or not. A goal of any content marketer should be to position your brand as a thought leader. To do so, you should know what everyone else is saying and talking about—especially your competition.
From a content planning and strategy perspective, seeing what your competitors are writing about and publishing will also give you an idea of what narratives to set and how you can take the conversation to another level to make your brand shine brighter.
Final thoughts
Building a content plan can be both challenging and rewarding, even for seasoned marketers. With a few smart moves—like using tools such as AnswerThePublic.com to dig into real search behavior, tapping into your sales team for insights from the field, and maximizing efficiency by repurposing content—you can create a strategy that resonates and sets your brand apart. Keeping an eye on competitors’ content adds another layer, helping you stay relevant and forward-thinking.
With these practical tips, you'll be well-equipped to overcome any content planning hurdle, delivering valuable, engaging content that meets your audience's needs and positions you as a leader in your vertical. So dive in, apply these strategies, and watch your content plan come together, resonate with your audience, and climb to the top of SERPs (search engine results pages).
