The Ultimate Guide to Content Planning
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Posted by simonpenson
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
A transition is in effect. The web is maturing and like any form of media that has gone before it that can mean only one thing: That content is now at the epicentre of audience creation once again.
The introduction of Penguin, as we know, is forcing every online business to re-examine how it ‘does’ online marketing and begin looking for ways to grow reputation, reach and visibility via content rather than the link building practices of old.
As Google turns up the algo to promote great content and social gives us all access to the social graph and the network effect it offers there has never been a better time to get your content game in shape and pull together a killer strategy for your brand.
I recently wrote a piece for another digital marketing site that goes into a little more detail around why content is coming to the fore and so for extra context it is certainly worth a read.
In addition to the above theory one thing we do know is that all forms of media before the web have followed the same basic evolution. It starts with obsession about the technology and the iteration of it to a place where the platform has mass media reach. The end game, and the thing that gives the platform longevity, is the content shared on it. Think print, TV and radio and this is true of all of them. We don't get excited about where a paper is printed any more. Instead its about the content that's printed on it.
The web is next and in this post I want to delve a little deeper into how to structure your own content planning to take advantage of this change and maximise the reach and impact of this change.
How to Plan
Stage one of any great content strategy is the plan. Without it you will fail. Without a clear roadmap of the kinds of content you need to produce, when and for whom you’ll quickly become an also-ran.
The question is how do you first understand what you should be creating and how can you structure your plan to cater for the various personas visiting your site?
Firstly you need to understand exactly WHO your audience is. Many people, especially when they start to become more comfortable with content strategies, often overlook this; and it's key to the whole process.
The point is all men and women are not the same. Obvious, right? Well we can all be guilty of treating our audience as the same person with the same ideals, needs and beliefs. Clearly this isn't the case and so it is important to segment your audience in a way that create two, three or four 'types' - all of which get to your product or service in different ways.
To explain this, and the planning process as a whole, I organised a round table catch up (an evening of beers) with some former colleagues of mine from the world of consumer magazines to pick their brains again on the best way to structure and execute your content plan
Their view, and mine, is always to ‘keep your reader as close to you as possible in every decision you make.’
That process must follow the same basic steps:
- Understand your Brand
You cannot begin to talk about personas or content ideas before you truly have your brand values down on paper. Many businesses skip this part but you MUST know exactly what you stand for, your tone of voice, political and social allegiances etc.
To do this you must first map the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. A simple SWOT analysis works well here as it lets you see easily where you might be able to steal a march and differentiate.

You can then align these strengths and opportunities to your brand values and begin to build a map of what you may want to ‘own’ from a content strategy perspective.
There are lots of tools out there to make this process easier too. SWOT analysis templates are available across the web while Moz's own TAGFEE core values can really help you structure your own mission statement and brand strategy. For those really interested in this area I can whole heartedly recommend spending time reading Michael Porter's work and strategies. His books make for great reading.
With this in place you can then move onto stage two…
- Understand your Audience
The plan to understand your reader is twofold; the first part is to create the ‘Typical Reader’. Here you should be specific and a great example may be:
Steve is 24 and drives a 2006 plate Range Rover Sport and he sees this as being the second most important thing in his life, after his fiancée!
He spends his time and money socialising, discussing sport, music and cars. He drinks Budweiser and occasionally a decent whiskey (as he thinks this is cool). He wears Ralph Lauren shirts but can’t afford to stretch his brand tastes further and so goes with generic jeans and shoes. To him brand is as important as the product, and it influences his buying behaviour.
The process of getting to this point is a post in its own right but the key point is to do your research well. Split it down into two specific parts:
1. Quantitative > Surveys via email and social work well for this. Ask general questions about your product or service so you can get a picture of where it sits in their lives and in their buying cycle. This can lead you to stage two, which is...
2. Qualitative > Customer focus groups, either in a pub or working with research companies and utilising controlled environments helps you to add 'colour' to the picture, enabling you to understand tone and emotive pointers etc.
From this you will usually be able to model your 'typical' client or customer, as above. You'll also be able to understand how to break the audience down into personas, each of which have more specific characteristics and ways of getting to, or interacting with what it is you are selling. For a step-by-step of using data to create them I recommend Mike King's excellent Keyword Level Demographics post.
The next step is then to nail your editorial proposition and to do this you must record your key USPs (things like ‘jargon free advice’ and ‘well written by people who understand the culture and fashions of the market’).
This is a relatively straightforward process and should get you to a point where you can easily sum up your editorial/content persona in the form of a famous person.
This is a really useful way of working as by agreeing that as a brand you are ‘John Wayne’, for instance, it becomes much easier to share tone of voice and attitude across a team, either in house or externally.
While this process is really useful to capture your core values we all know that in reality you have many different types of ‘reader’ and so the process of persona mapping is key to really ensuring your content appeals to your chosen audience.
The process of creating personas is a subject all of its own and this post cannot cover the entire process but several pieces here recently including this one and this one can help you segment your audience in a way that will help you when it comes to pulling together your content strategy.
Let’s assume then that you have followed those tips and have three or four tidy personas in place.

At this point you now have a really clear picture of who you are, your tone and editorial stance. You may even have drawn up an editorial guidelines document to steer the entire team in the same direction.
In short you are more prepared than a cub scout but structure is nothing without great ideas….
- Brainstorm Ideas
Ideas are