How to Build a Content Marketing Plan Template in 9 Simple Steps

Whatever you do, you need a concrete plan, and content is no exception. An accurate content marketing plan template makes it easier to achieve your marketing and business strategy goals. In this article, The7 shares 9 simple steps to build a professional content marketing template for a Facebook Page or website. Let’s take a look.

 

Step 1. Do Detailed Research

In The7’s experience, the research step is the most important, because a sample content marketing plan delivers results when it:

– Covers exactly the content your customers want to learn about

– Highlights the strengths of your brand or products/services

– Stands out when compared with your competitors.

That is also why you should research 4 areas thoroughly: your brand, your products/services, your customers & your competitors.

Research Your Business’s Brand

You need to answer questions like these:

– What is the name of your personal brand or your company/business? Does it carry any meaning?

– What does your brand sell? Who is your target audience?

– What are the core values of your company/business?

– What are your brand’s strengths? Why should customers buy your products/services instead of your competitors’?

Research the Products and Services You Need to Market

For each product/service, you need to research in detail across the 3 main points below:

Product/service features

As an example, The7 takes the features of the iPhone 13, which include:

• Face recognition
• Full HD video recording
• Top-tier stabilization
• Tap to focus
• Wide angle…

Or the standout features of The7’s 100% SEO-standard article writing service:

• SEO-standard content, written 100% from scratch
• A commitment to quality content
• Revisions on customer request
• A keyword strategy grounded in reality…

Product/service benefits

Each feature has its own benefits, and you should list every one of them. For example, the face recognition feature of the iPhone 13 delivers the following benefits:

• Unlock the phone with face recognition
• Automatic beautification when users take selfies
• Automatic focus and light balancing for faces.

Or the benefits of an SEO-standard article from The7 are:

• Easier to reach the top of Google and improve keyword rankings on search engines
• Frequently appears among users’ top search results.
• Complies with the guidelines Google has set…

Research Your Customers

You need to look closely at the following aspects to understand your potential customers:

– Demographics, including age, gender, income level, country/territory, occupation…

– What are their behaviors/habits?

– What do they think about your product/service (aware or not aware)?

– What types of content do they like to read?

– Do thorough keyword research to understand your customers’ needs and find out what they are searching for.

– Analyze customer insights, including the difficulties and worries they face. What do your customers want?

Research Your Competitors

Analyzing competitors is not about copying them. It is about:

– Seeing what they have done so you can avoid doing the same.

– Finding their strengths and weaknesses so you can learn from them and draw lessons

– Finding good ideas you can improve and upgrade.

– Putting your own spin on what they do, making it better and turning it into your own.

>>> See more: Holistic marketing explained: benefits and how to implement Holistic Marketing

Step 2. Set Goals for Your Content Marketing Plan

Your content marketing plan template will depend largely on your goals at each stage. And The7 knows you are not creating content just for fun, right?

Use the AIDA Formula

If you are starting from zero or have not had any good results yet, you should use the AIDA formula. Here is how it works:

– Aware (Awareness): Give your target customers some new information they did not know before.

– Interest: Create something intriguing so your audience pays attention, thinks about it and remembers it.

– Desire: Build emotion that moves readers from interest to wanting to own it.

– Action: Call on them to take actions such as like – share – comment – sign up…

– Content Marketing: For example, sign up with an email address to receive The7’s best articles.

You can combine several goals as long as they stay logical. But remember, do not get too greedy.

Other Ways to Set Goals for Your Content Marketing Plan Template

The7 will set goals for you to aim for, such as:

– Reaching the top of Google or ranking higher on search engines

– Increasing website traffic

– Increasing engagement such as like – share – comment

– Increasing sales of products/services

– Announcing new products/services

– Building lasting trust with customers

– Making customers more loyal to your brand

– Setting the goals of your content marketing plan in line with your marketing strategy.

Step 3. Define Your Communication Message

Your messages will differ depending on your goals at each stage. Put simply, a message is what customers remember you wanted to convey after they read your content.

For example, in July 2022 The7 focused on these messages:

– Follow The7’s website for more great knowledge about content marketing

– The7’s website is a place where content is created with heart and dedication

– Content that falls short, The7 deletes immediately

– The keywords The7 wants the audience to associate with it are DEDICATION & QUALITY.

These messages are not slogans, so you do not need to polish them, but they should follow these principles:

– Get straight to the point

– Be relevant to your audience and make them care

– Use language that is easy to understand and familiar

– Be different, and above all, do not overlap with anyone else

– Stay consistent and not easy to confuse.

Step 4. Define Your Main Topics (Pillars)

You need to define the main topics for your Facebook Page/website (known in the industry as Pillars).

For example, to increase awareness of The7, the main topics (Pillars) would be:

– Brand: The latest brand news, contract signings…

– Educate: Share content marketing experience that solves customers’ difficulties/problems and meets their needs.

– Entertainment: Fun information about content marketing or the latest industry news.

– Case study: The7’s achievements and how they were accomplished.

If The7’s goal is to increase sales, the main Pillars would be:

– Advertising: Sales posts/introductions to products and services

– Feedback: Letters from customers, positive comments, inbox reviews of the service…

– Promotions: Seasonal discount content, free gifts/special offers…

– USP: Posts about your brand’s strengths.

– Features/benefits: Posts about products/services and the benefits they bring.

Step 5. Come Up with Content Ideas

In this step, you will define specific content ideas for each Pillar, such as:

– How to write SEO-standard articles

– Tools that support content marketing writing

– A checklist for writing SEO-standard articles

– How to…

Through Research

If you have already done the research in Step 1, all you need to do now is list those ideas under the appropriate Pillar. If you have not done the research yet, scroll back up and do it right away.

Through Brainstorming

In this step, you and your team will pose a specific problem and think of solutions for it. You can ask your team members: “Which topics would fit the brand Pillar?” Then everyone discusses together to come up with content ideas for that Pillar.

Consider Spontaneous Ideas

With the methods The7 described above, you have to actively look for ideas. With this approach, ideas come to you on their own.

Here are some ways to generate more spontaneous ideas:

– Read a lot of books

– Get a good night’s sleep

– Listen to podcasts

– Play sports

– Go to the bathroom

– Ask someone for their opinion

– Broaden your experiences

– Master the knowledge in quality content marketing materials…

In short, learn, experience and consult as much information as you can, and out of nowhere you will come up with an idea to solve the problem. Don’t forget to carry a notebook to jot down spontaneous ideas. It will be very useful for your content marketing plan template.

Step 6. Decide Which Ideas Go into Your Content Marketing Plan Template

Obviously, not every idea gets carried out, so you need to be selective. A good content marketing idea is one that:

– Has a point of difference: Or at least improves on older ideas many times over.

– Is feasible: Can you and your team actually do it? Do you have enough budget to carry it out?

– Fits the goals you have set

– Conveys the message you want to send.

Of course, a good content idea meets all of the criteria above, so keep it and get to work. If not, delete it.

Step 7. Finalize Your Content Marketing Plan Table

A sample content marketing plan table has these main sections:

– Goal

– Pillar

– Article title

– Where to publish.

You can also add more items such as writer, deadline, publishing time, handover link… to make management easier.

Step 8. Write and Optimize Your Content

If you don’t yet know how to build a content marketing plan template that delivers the best results, learn from these sources:

– A guide to writing SEO-standard content – The7

– How to teach yourself content marketing for beginners – The7…

Step 9. Publish, Measure and Optimize

When you measure, you can tell which content works and which doesn’t. From there, you can revise or upgrade your sample content marketing plan so it’s easier to reach your goals.

The factors that help measure how effective your content is include:

– Keyword rankings

– Page views, time on page, bounce rate, and actions such as like – share or purchase/sign-up.

– Tracking the engagement rate (like – share – comment)

– Reading your audience’s comments and checking share counts

– Checking key conversion metrics such as CTR and CR.

Remember to change your methods, not the goals you have already agreed on. Another important part of a sample content marketing plan table is that you should not skip the plan for re-optimizing content. Not all content is at its best the moment it goes live. So you need to edit or change it until it is as polished as possible in users’ eyes. For a website/blog, content optimization plays an important role in helping articles/websites climb the search engine rankings.

After completing the process above, what remains is tracking how your content performs and building detailed weekly/monthly reports. At the same time, review the feedback to optimize your content plan after each campaign, and measure effectiveness through detailed engagement reports to see whether your current content plan is optimal.

Sample Content Marketing Plan Templates for Your Reference

Below, The7 shares a sample content marketing plan for marketing on today’s hottest social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. Each of these social media sites works differently and appeals to different user tastes. So you need to create a separate Excel spreadsheet for each social media platform to build highly tailored content. If you publish the same content on every social network, you won’t be able to get the most out of each platform.

Monthly Social Media Planning Schedule

In the Excel sheet “Monthly Social Media Planning Schedule,” you fill in an overview of all the social media campaigns you run each month. This sheet gives you the broadest view of your content marketing activity across every social media platform. It makes sure you don’t miss any important event.

When you use this sample content marketing plan table, there are 3 things to keep in mind:

• Color-coding key: Use different colors to identify each specific group of activities. Content of a similar nature should be shaded the same color so you can monitor it easily. Divide it into categories such as product introductions, blog posts, webinars on your website…
• “Month” and “Year”: You will need to edit these cells at the top of the plan as well as in the content cells below.
• Content to enter: The cells in the table are divided into each day of the week. Then fill in the advertising content for that day and choose a suitable color code to tell items apart easily.

Content Marketing Plan Template for Twitter

In the sample content marketing plan, click the “Twitter Updates” tab to start planning your marketing content for Twitter.

• The first 4 columns, “Day,” “Date,” “Time,” and “Date & Time”: These let you schedule each of your tweets. Here, enter the publishing date and time for your content on Twitter. The “Date & Time” column is filled in automatically based on the data in the previous two columns.
• The “Message” column: This is where you enter the content of your tweet. In this cell, you should set a limit of 115 characters if you want to attach 1 image and 116 characters if you want to attach 1 link. The number of characters you enter is counted automatically.
• The “Link” column: Here, you can paste the URL you want to include in your post. This link should carry a UTM (a snippet of code that adds information to a URL). The UTM code helps you monitor traffic, ROI and leads.
• The “Campaign” column: Enter the name of the campaign you are running to get a broader view.

If you can’t insert an image into the spreadsheet, follow these steps:

Step 1: Right-click the cell where you want to insert the image.

Step 2: Select “Hyperlink” > Document, then click “Select” to choose the image you want to upload.

Step 3: In the “Choose a File” window, pick an image already on your computer and click “Open”.

Step 4: You will now see the image attached, along with the “Insert Hyperlink” screen. If you want to adjust the text, go to the “Display” field, rename the file and click “OK”.

Content Marketing Plan Template for Facebook

In the sample content marketing plan Excel file, switch to the “Facebook Updates” tab. Here, scheduling your Facebook content marketing works much like updating your Twitter activity.

• The first 3 columns, “Day,” “Date,” and “Time”: Use these to enter the exact day, month, year and time you want to publish the post.
• The “Message” column: Write the content of the post to publish on Facebook. Note: make sure you choose the cell with the date and time that match when you want to post.
• The “Link” column: Enter any links you want to add to the post.
• The “Campaign” column: Enter the name of the campaign
• The “Image” column: Enter the link to the image you want to publish (size 1,200 x 900 pixels)

Content Marketing Plan Template for LinkedIn

The sample content marketing plan table for LinkedIn differs in a few ways from Facebook and Twitter. In this plan, you will see 2 additional columns, “Company Pages” and “Groups”.

• The “Day”, “Date” and “Time” columns: Same as above.
• The “Title (For Group Discussions Only)” column: On LinkedIn, you can create “Group Discussions”. The topics discussed will give you more ideas and fresh content for your content marketing campaign. If you create a Group Discussion, enter its title in this column. If not, you can skip it or write N/A.
• The “Message” column: Write the content of the post you want to publish on LinkedIn.
• The “Link” column: Enter the URL you want to include in the post to guide readers better.
• The “Campaign” column: Enter the campaign name
• The “Image” column: Paste the link to your image (size: 700 x 520 pixels).

Content Marketing Plan Template for Instagram

You can plan your Instagram content marketing with the sample content marketing plan the same way you did for the social networks above. However, there are a few points to note:

• The “Message” column: This corresponds to the message and content of the post. On Instagram, posts have a tighter character limit than on Facebook or LinkedIn. Although you can enter up to 2,200 characters when creating a caption on Instagram, it gets truncated after the first three lines of text.
• The “Link for Bio” column: Add a link to your bio page on other social media platforms. Also, don’t forget to add a UTM tracking code to keep up with user behavior.
• The “Campaign” column: Enter the campaign name to help you organize each post and sort them into different content marketing campaigns.
• The “Image” column: Paste the link to your image (size: 1080 x 1080 pixels).

Content Marketing Plan Template for Pinterest

The steps for building content for a Pinterest content marketing campaign using the sample plan are not very different from Facebook and Instagram:

• The “Day”, “Date” and “Time” columns: Enter the exact date and time to post.
• The “Message” column: Enter the description.
• The “Link” column: Enter the URL that links to the full article.
• The “Campaign” column: Enter the campaign name.
• The “Image” column: Paste the link to your image (size 735 x 1102 pixels).

If you have carefully read this article from The7, a provider of full-service marketing, you have already seen detailed examples of content marketing templates for a Facebook Page/website, haven’t you? The7 will send you an even more complete content marketing plan. Contact us via hotline: 084.397.77.77 or website: https://the7digital.com to get it right away.

The7 hopes that this useful series of information on content plan templates helps you build an effective content strategy. We wish you all the success you are hoping for.

Content marketing resources:

What is content marketing

Types of content marketing

Content marketing strategy

How to write content marketing

Content marketing trends 2022