Boost Your B2B Marketing with a Content Marketing Plan

Here at 1827 Marketing, we believe that forward planning is key to having a successful content marketing strategy so setting aside time to think about upcoming events and how they relate to your marketing goals just makes sense.

Ideation and planning sessions should be regular events in your team’s schedule and are excellent fallback activities should you ever find yourself with a little downtime on your hands.

Forward planning and content scheduling won’t just save you time and prevent stress down the line. Having a buffer of content prepared and ready to go frees you up from the pressures of having to think about what to post in the moment. You can maintain a consistent posting schedule, meet your audience’s expectations and be more strategic in your communications.

What Is a Content Marketing Plan?

A content plan (also called a content calendar or editorial calendar) is an agreed and documented schedule for your upcoming content. It includes details of when, where, what, and for what audience you intend to publish.

When you search the term "content calendar," the results are dominated by social media content calendar templates. However, we believe it’s important to move the focus of your content marketing efforts beyond just social media marketing and to take a holistic view.

Just as your content marketing strategy utilises a range of platforms, your content calendar should encompass all pieces of content you produce. This means including things like upcoming blogs, social updates, email marketing campaigns, video collaborations, live workshops, and updates to existing website content.

Why Use a Content Calendar?

A content plan allows you to see individual pieces of content in the context of your wider communications strategy. Taking a bird’s eye view offers you a new perspective and makes it easier to identify content gaps throughout the year and plan ahead. It also maximises brand engagement by ensuring you can offer your target audience a diverse range of topics and formats throughout the year.

Many big brands plan months in advance, taking a similar approach to their content planning as a monthly glossy magazine. They organise their publishing schedule around key dates in their calendar, identifying important events, dates, and launches that need to be incorporated into their content.

A content calendar also helps with work execution. Planning out our projects and putting them on a calendar means we perceive them to be more manageable, which increases motivation. Breaking out what needs be accomplished ensures that everyone is on the same page regarding the detailed steps for creating each piece and who has been tasked with completing each action.

How Do You Create a Content Plan?

Your content calendar doesn't have to be complicated – you can start off with something as simple as Google Sheets. However, many teams find the additional functionality of an integrated content marketing and marketing automation platform, such as SharpSpring, invaluable.

Benefits include the ability to connect your calendar directly to your content channels and schedule pieces in advance for automatic publication. Using an integrated platform also allows you to easily pull in, use and analyse customer, behavioural and marketing performance data. This means you gain a more comprehensive view of your content and a competitive advantage.

Regardless if you use a manual spreadsheet or a marketing automation platform, here are four important elements that you should include in your content plan.

Step One: Establish Your Key Marketing Dates

Once you start researching, you’ll find there is no shortage of dates you can use to inspire content ideas. Even a brief session of pulling out dates and jotting down ideas will give you plenty to flesh out your content marketing schedule.

Looking through organisational, cultural, and industry calendars will bring up a wealth of anniversaries, conference dates, product launches, holidays, and more.

It’s important to have some criteria in place when selecting which dates to put on your content calendar. Identifying which are dates are most appropriate for your brand and audience is a crucial part of any solid content plan.

Each occasion you identify should represent a major opportunity for connecting with your audience and target customers. By joining a conversation around these events, you can increase engagement and reach new audiences throughout the year.

Holidays, Observances and Awareness Days

Public holidays, observance days and awareness give your brand a chance to connect with your audience at times of great personal significance.

Make sure to choose carefully which days to use. The dates should be relevant to your business and match the tone of voice of your brand. For instance, perhaps certain awareness days chime well with the themes you already talk about in your content generally, or give you a chance to talk about your business’s charitable work. If your company sponsors a particular sporting or cultural event, there’s room to create a tie in there.

However, there’s more to it. Your content must also be sensitive and appropriate for the occasion. It is especially important that you are aware of things such as tone, representation and cultural appropriation, and that you’re not centring your brand if you’re entering a conversation on a sensitive issue.

Here are some useful resources to get you started:

UK holidays and observance days

Holidays and observance days for countries worldwide

United Nations observances

National awareness days

Wikipedia’s list of minor secular observances

International holidays

Funny, random and weird holidays

Key Industry Dates

When it comes to your business calendar, consider which events your business is already involved with. Which events do you have stands or speakers at? Which are you sending delegates to? Are you leading any workshops? Are you launching a particular product at those events? The goal is to build out compelling content that primes your audience in an engaging and compelling way.

You can also research which industry events generate a lot of buzz and conversation on social. Look up their hashtags and be aware of how people get involved. Plan your contributions to the conversation so that they both fit in and bring something new to the table.

Key Company Dates

You will have already included any big company events, such as a rebranding or a brand new product launch, in your content calendar. And in thinking about key industry events you’ll have already folded in any conferences your company is involved in. However there will be other significant dates in your business calendar you can include, such as the anniversary of founding dates, annual team building events or big press pieces.

Step Two: Outline Your Content Creation Process

The next step is to organise your marketing campaigns around the key dates and events you’ve identified. Hold brainstorming sessions to draw out interesting and relevant themes and use those ideas as a base to create your content. Also, establish the who, how, what, and why of your content production process. Doing so you will help you stay organised and meet deadlines leading up to the target occasion.

Here are some of the questions you might want to address when it comes to content creation:

• What is the event that this campaign is being created around?

• What types of content would be most effective for this campaign – blog posts, social media, webinars, visual content? How does each type of content fit into the overall theme (such as in support of an event appearance perhaps)?

• What stages does your content need to go through before it is published? How will you plan for different format production times? How will you track assignment progress?

• How will you ensure content quality? Is there a review process that each piece of content goes through before publication? Who is in charge of giving final approval?

• How will you track content performance? Can your different types of content be tied into Google Analytics?

List the content you want to produce and break them down into the steps needed to create each type. For instance, the steps for blog posts might include keyword research, outlining, writing and rounds of edits, and creating or finding visuals. The process for a podcast might be finding a topic, arranging interviews, recording audio, and editing the content.

From there, you can add each step to your calendar and note who is responsible for completing the associated tasks. Doing so creates a sense of accountability and will help improve workflow for your marketing team.

Step Three: Promote Your Content

List out what channels you’re currently on and how they can be used to support your campaign. For instance:

• Social media posts;

• Email marketing;

• Print magazines, brochures, or newsletters;

• Blog or website content updates;

• Live streaming events, webinars, etc;

• Paid advertising.

Ask yourself how far ahead of the actual event to you need to launch the campaign. What audiences will you be targeting? What is your promotion budget? On what platforms?

Add that information your editorial calendar, including deadlines, platforms, and targeting information.

Step Four: Fill Out Your Calendar

From here confirm that all of your key marketing dates, content creation steps, and promotional activities are listed on your calendar. To make everything actionable, you will want to use a tool that aligns with your team's workflows. As previously mentioned, a lot of marketing teams prefer to use a content calendar that integrates with their marketing platforms. This way you can prepare your campaigns and schedule content using marketing automation.

We recommend having your calendar planned out a minimum of three in advance – some brands plan out as far as 12 months.

Things to Think About When Planning Ahead

Scheduling in advance means you need to be prepared to react if events render your pre-planned content inappropriate. Never set it and forget it. Always review what you have planned regularly and call an emergency editorial meeting in light of any major breaking news stories. This will allow you to pause your campaigns if that is the sensitive thing to do.

Part of forward planning also involves making time to keep content pieces updated with current information. For instance, updating your landing pages and CTA to reflect different events around the year. Or replacing old stats in your white paper with more recent data.

Also, schedule time on your editorial calendar for site-wide content audits to remove or deindex content that is no longer relevant. For example, old webpages for products you no longer offer. Doing so improves customer experience and can help boost your SEO performance.

Time to Get Started With Content Planning

We hope this article inspires you to give your content marketing a boost by planning ahead. You can always contact 1827 Marketing if you have any questions about content planning or want to learn more about B2B marketing strategy.