You’re going back to your desk in the New Year, full of energy for new marketing initiatives, one of which is your content strategy. Here are some pointers and resources to get started with your planning.

The essential plan

Understand the purpose of your content plan. Your content should be helping achieve your organization’s business goals, not your content goals. So be very clear and get agreement on this from the start. Your business goal may be selling products or services; creating leads for sales teams; encouraging engagement and frequent visits; helping users find what they need; or driving awareness, engagement or loyalty.

Your planning framework might, therefore, begin with a content mission statement, or a business case. For example: ‘Build multi-channel content that establishes/underscores my organization as the leader in the ABC economy/market/space.’ Or ‘Build multi-channel content that delivers qualified leads to the sales channel.’ Very different statements, requiring very different tactical plans. With your defined goal, you must also be looking at where your customers are appearing, and what message you want them to hear, with your content, at whatever point in the experience.

The customer is at the center of this at all times.

A good plan must:
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