Between all of the holiday planning and actually taking a holiday, this time of year isn’t always the most available. Planning your 2015 content strategy may seem like it can wait, and while many companies may have found success in the past, putting a plan in place now is an excellent way to get ahead and feel less overwhelmed when the New Year finally hits.
The truth is that your content strategy this year may need some fine-tuning in order to really work in 2015, and that’s going to take some time. The sooner you can start planning how your content will run, the better.
Steps to Planning Your 2015 Content Strategy
Below is a step-by-step process to try and plan your content strategy for the New Year:
Evaluate your current strategy and different content-related data.
Part of understanding where your content strategy needs to go is understanding where you stand currently. Google Analytics offers great metrics regarding the success of your content that can help you see what’s working and what’s not.
Of course there are many different reports you can run in Google Analytics, many of which have to do with content, but there are four Content Reports you may want to start with: All Pages, Content Drilldown, Landing Pages, and Exit Pages. You can access the reports underBehavior and then Site Content. Below is an example of a Landing Pages report:
Discuss with your team what needs work and what is doing well.
Looking at your data and metrics will give you a huge clue as to what is working and what isn’t working in your current content marketing strategy, so it’s important to go over this with your team and think of ways to help or reasons why something may not be working. However, it’s also important to open the discussion up to new ideas that maybe aren’t shown in the data. This is where creative new ideas will come into play and how you will make sure you’re moving forward and not just improving upon what already exists.
Have a brainstorming session about topics, tone, etc. for future content.
According to Ion Interactive, which was mentioned in this article, interactive content such as apps, assessments, calculators, and quizzes generate conversions very well 70 percent of the time, compared to just 36 percent of the time for passive content. By 2017, online video will make up nearly 70 percent of consumer Internet traffic.
What these statistics essentially mean is that the way that consumers want to read content is changing. In 2015 you’re going to need to have a plan when it comes to interactive content and getting creative, and your YouTube presence is going to need to grow. This will take a lot of brainstorming and will be a fluid effort throughout the year, but the sooner you can put a plan in place the easier it will be.
Identify community outreach goals and influencers to work with.
This is an easy one. There are bound to be new publications and influencers in your industry since last year (as well as some that you might see as up and coming), so create a spreadsheet to keep track of where you want to reach out and create relationships. This is something that you should be doing throughout the year, but spend a lot of time on it before the New Year hits so that you can beat all of your competition that have the same idea. Below is a sample spreadsheet you may want to create:
Delegate who will be in charge of what metrics, SEO, social, etc.
Of course once you have all of your planning and goals set to go, someone has to actually make this happen. If you are the only one in charge of the blog then you will need to create a list of what needs to be done each day, but if you own a small business you will hopefully have a few writers and other online marketing experts working with you to help your blog succeed. This means deciding who will be in charge of every little thing, which may include:
- Writing articles each day both on the blog and on other publications.
- Who will be managing what relationships or going out to create certain relationships.
- Who will be optimizing each piece of content for SEO.
- Who will be monitoring and/or analyzing Google Analytics and the content metrics.
- Who is in charge of managing social media accounts and/or YouTube and video?
Extra Note: If you don’t have an editorial content calendar in place yet, 2015 is a great time to get started. This will help you stay organized and help delegating work run much smoother. If you’re going to be getting advanced with your content and more frequent (which you should be), an editorial calendar will be incredibly helpful. Visit this article to learn more. Below is a screenshot of the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin:
Set goals for your content plans and revisit this in a frequent meeting.
As always, you have to set goals for your content strategy and stick to them. Talk with your team and determine what you want to accomplish and where you want to be in one year and then use these goals to help fuel your content strategy throughout the year. A few great goals could include A). Specific metrics you want to hit, such as pageviews, clicks, a lower bounce rate, etc., B). Types of content such as more videos or infographics, C). A certain number of articles per week, D). A certain number of social shares, and many more.
Do you have any plans to get started on your 2015 content strategy? Are there any steps you would add above? Let us know in the comment section below.
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