You need to uplevel your content game in 2023 and create a results-driven content plan for your online business.
However, many people think that creating a content strategy is the same as creating a content plan.
Heck, I don’t even think people can tell the difference.
Your content strategy is different from your content plan. Let me explain this further.
Your content strategy is the action steps that you take in order to use content to achieve whatever goals you’ve set for your business.
While your content plan determines the content you hope to create and sets expectations for how it should be created and distributed.
After you have created your content strategy and it’s locked and ready to go, you’ll then come up with a plan to execute the strategy.
If you work with a team, you need a content plan to outline who’s responsible for creating a piece of content, and who’s going to vet, publish, track and measure.
The content plan also helps you to define the purpose of each piece of content and how it will impact your overall business strategy.
But really, why do you need a content plan?
I know I said you need it to execute your content strategy, but what exactly about it will help your business?
You need a content plan in order to drive traffic and sales to your business.
Without a plan on how to execute your strategy, achieving your business goals will be nearly impossible.
Having a content plan helps you to reach your business expectations and tackle your business goals.
RELATED: Steps to creating your online business strategy for 2023
Steps to Creating a Results-Driven Content Plan
1. Determine Who The Content is for
The first thing you need to do is to determine who you are creating the content for, i.e, your target audience.
There’s no way you’ll be creating content without having the consumer of that content in mind.
The first rule of business is to know your target audience, know where they can be found, and know what makes them tick.
If you want to really figure this out, the best thing to do is to look at the people who are already consuming your content.
So if you have a blog, to find out who your blog readers are, go to Google Analytics and take a look at your audience insights.
This will help you know what age range they are in, their location, their gender, and so on.
On Instagram, you can find out the people who engage with your content mostly by going into your insights.
Armed with this information, you can create a content plan that has your target audience in mind.
And once that happens regularly, you’ll be reaching those who you intend to reach with your business offerings.
2. Determine Where it Will Be Published
When you have figured out who your audience is, the next thing is to find out where they are.
That is, what social media platforms do they use the most? That is where you want to be showing up.
A good, results-driven content plan will highlight where each piece of content will be published.
Asides from the fact that you want to be on the same platform as your audience, you also want to use the right content forms.
If your audience is of the younger age group, you’d want to use a lot of short videos and show up on channels like TikTok and Instagram reels.
If you educate small business owners of a semi-older age, you want to show up on Instagram a lot with videos and pictures.
If you know that your audience like longer videos, you want to show up on YouTube a lot.
Once you know where your target audience goes mostly to consume content, you should go there too.
Have in mind that each social media channel has different ways of displaying content.
Good-quality pictures are great for Instagram. If you’re going to post any pictures at all, make sure that they are of great quality.
If you are using carousels, let them tell a good story so that they can keep your audience engaged from the first slide to the last.
A good Instagram caption must have a very captivating hook so that your audience can click more.
Your caption must not be too long and it must not be too jumbled up, use paragraphs.
Instagram Reel
If you are posting a reel, a general rule of thumb is to stick to 7-15 seconds.
Short reels tend to loop and when they do so, they count as multiple views.
Then the algorithm picks it up and shows it to many more people.
Instagram reels do not necessarily need long captions, people won’t check them anyway.
So just put a short sentence at the visible part, use a good cover image and add trending audio.
Twitter is one of my favourite social media platforms, it is highly engaging and a good place to put yourself out there.
How can you leverage it for your online business in 2023? Through careful planning.
You are only limited to 240 characters on Twitter, so you have to make it count.
Use those 240 characters to share educative content that also ties to your offerings, whether that’s a product, a service, or even an online course.
You can also use Twitter threads to share information, a great way to build authority on the platform.
The best tweets that generate responses are those that are simple, relatable, trendy, and tend to evoke emotional responses.
YouTube
YouTube is another great platform where you can educate your audience and share thought leadership content.
But you have to be sure that your target audience has it as their preference.
When you are filming YouTube content, make sure that you get to the point very quickly.
Most times, people are on YouTube to get answers quickly and would be very impatient.
So ditch the long-ass introduction and go straight to the point.
You should also make sure that you are using great click-worthy titles and great thumbnails to get people to watch it.
Podcasts
If you’re doing a Podcast, you also want to get to the point quickly.
Most times, when people listen to podcasts, they listen to them while doing other things.
I like to listen to Podcasts when I’m working out, doing house chores, or commuting.
So when you drag your introductions or you’re dragging a particular discussion, our minds tend to stray, and it’s really difficult to remain engaged.
WAIT A MINUTE! SHOP THESE BLACK FRIDAY ITEMS NOW!
3. What Problem Does Your Content Solve?
Back in the day, we just went online, shared one or two pictures, and chat with our friends.
These days, social media platforms are out to make money off your content, so you better be making money too.
And the best way to make money online is to solve a problem.
If your content is not solving a problem, people won’t even bother because all they care about is what’s in it for them.
Successful content doesn’t only need to reach your audience, it must also help them solve a need.
So whether you are just advertising your product or service, you need to highlight how they can benefit from it.
And the data that you’ve gathered from your audience research in point 1 above should also help you understand the problems they have and then you can swoop in with your solution.
4. Determine What Makes Your Business Different?
I’m assuming you already have a Unique Selling Point (USP).
You need to let the USP shine through in your content plan and in every content that you create.
The reason is that your competitors are doing just that.
They are creating great content, they are showing up where their target audience is, they are using the right content formats and they are churning out great value.
But they are not you. That is why you need to let what makes you different show at the forefront of your content plan.
For example, I love to teach, I teach in all of my online platform, I also love humour, so I add humour to my content, especially my YouTube vidoes.
So it’s not as if you can’t feel humour in other peopl’e content, but the way I do it is peculiar to me.
People always tell me that I’m funny, so I let that show in my content.
Whatever it is that is peculiar to you, make sure that you show it in your content.
5. Determine Who/How Your Content Will Be Created
If you work with a team, you want to determine who does what in your content plan.
When you want to create a results-driven content plan, you want to make sure that you are as clear as day.
Give everyone their tasks. Who is going to come up with copy? Who will create the designs?
Who will vet and who will publish, track, measure and report?
But if you are the only one, say you’re a one-man army, you would likely be doing everything by yourself, except for the times that you outsource.
You want to make sure that you create a simple system that will help you create consistently.
The best system is REPURPOSING. I do a lot of repurposing.
One piece of content can be broken down and published on multiple platforms.
A YouTube script can be extracted from a long blog post.
Talking points from that video can then be repurposed into a carousel for Instagram.
You can also summarize the YouTube script in another video for Reels and TikTok.
Take that carousel and arrange it into a Twitter thread.
Conclusion
Now that you know how to create a results-driven content plan, roll up your sleeves and get to work.
2023 will come with a lot of challenges, but at the same time. with a lot of good things that’ll help your business grow.
Take advantage of every opportunity and be ready to put in your all.
P.S. If you want to know how to nail client dicovery calls and sign new gigs all the time, watch this video.