The Importance of a Marketing Content PlannerContent planners create a vision for content creation, publication, and distribution. They are also responsible to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of a plan.This type of content informs viewers about the products and services provided by the company. It also helps the viewers solve problems and meet their needs.A marketing content planner is a spreadsheet or it can be a third-party software. The difference is in the way you utilize it.1. Identify Your GoalsBenjamin Franklin's famous quote "If you don't plan, you are planning for failure" is a fact. Structure, workflow efficiency and clear communication are necessary to transform a visionary strategy into a successful content marketing engine.Setting goals is among the most important steps to take in this process. You can begin with a high-level goal for your business, or you can make use of the SMART Framework to make them more specific. This is also a great opportunity to revisit existing content goals and make sure they still in line with the current strategy.Understanding your goals will enable you to monitor the performance of every piece of content. This will allow you to determine what is working and what isn't working, allowing you to make the necessary adjustments and improve overall performance. This will ultimately ensure that you are reaching your goals overall and delivering quality content to your audience.2. Identify Your AudienceIt is crucial to know who your audience is to develop content that is relevant, engaging and effective. The best way to do this is by conducting research and identifying the characteristics of your ideal customer personas. This can be done by using surveys, data analyses, and other methods to collect details about your customers.Based on the findings of this research, you can then identify the kinds of content that are most effective for your business. This could range from blog posts and social media posts to webinars and podcasts. Once you've decided which formats are most effective then you can begin creating your content strategy.A tool for content planning can help you keep track of marketing goals and ensure the appropriate people are working on the appropriate projects. It can also boost productivity by allowing teams to focus on the most important things and avoid distractions. CopyPress provides a no-cost Content Analysis Report that you can download right now.3. Identify Your Ideal PlatformsIt's important to tailor your content for the platform you prefer. Instagram users want aesthetically pleasing images, whereas TikTok audiences enjoy trendy short-form videos. Conducting some market research can help you discover your ideal users and their preferred platforms.A marketing content planner can help you to plan all the steps required to turn your ideas and concepts into a final product. It will give you the framework you need to meet your goals and ensure that everyone in your team is on the same page.Content planning tools such as Monday and Kapost help you with this. They let you create tasks and assign them, work together and monitor their progress in a single dashboard. There are other more advanced tools, like Wrike, that provide drop-down menus that include tables with actionable items as well as a message board and a project-wide timeline. Both come with a no-cost version and more comprehensive subscriptions for teams that require more advanced capabilities.4. Identify Your Content TypesIf you're a single influencer or a large marketing team, a content planner can help you keep track of your ideas and ensures that everyone is on the same page. It's a great tool to use for managing content for projects that have a longer lead time for projects like annual or quarterly campaigns.A good content planner will help you identify which kinds of content you should create and the best way to create them. This involves determining the format of your content, like blogposts, infographics or podcasts, case study, or social media releases. This should include a timeline of when these pieces are expected to be created and published.You should also be keeping track of metrics related to your goals for content marketing like traffic and engagement. This will help you evaluate your results and make necessary changes. Using a tool like Ahrefs will help you understand what's working and what's not. It can also give you insights into your competitors' performance.5. Identify Your Content ObjectivesWhen you have clear objectives for your content your team will keep track of their progress and ensure that they're achieving their goals. A clear set of goals will help you reach your content marketing goals, whether it's to increase SEO traffic by enhancing blog posts or to increase retention of customers by organizing webinars.A good content planner can aid in defining your goals by creating an organized workflow and allowing collaboration. It can also incorporate tools like image-generation software and text-to-image instructions, or social management apps to make the process easier.Apart from setting goals and creating an expected workflow, a content planner can help you identify your metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). This will allow you to assess the effectiveness of your content and adjust in a way that will improve your marketing strategy. Some examples of measurable metrics include bounce rate web traffic, website traffic and social media shares and newsletter signups. These metrics must be tracked throughout the lifecycle of content, including production and publication.6. Identify Your ResourcesIf you do not have the resources to implement your content strategy, it's useless. During planning, make sure that you have the budget to accomplish all the tasks you've laid out. This may include team or salary payments, production costs for materials and web space, and paid marketing strategies.Once you have a budget in place, you can begin assigning responsibilities for each task. You can assign different employees to conduct keyword research, copywriting, editing or design. Alternately, you could employ a tool like Sprout to simplify the process of scheduling content across various platforms and channels.You can connect your social media accounts to the Sprout tool and schedule posts to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn company pages and Google Business Profiles all from one dashboard. The scheduling tools offered by Sprout include an image library to make it easier to manage the management of assets and cut down time when creating posts.7. Identify your Key Performance IndicatorsIt's crucial to make your marketing efforts worthwhile if you're going spend many hours creating content. You can improve your results by analyzing and tracking the most important performance indicators.For instance, a popular KPI for content marketers is the number of return customers. This metric is used to assess how well your content converts customers and to determine areas to improve your future campaigns.It is also crucial to determine the type of content you'd like to create based on your goals and your target audience. This could include blog posts, videos, infographics or social media posts. Once you have identified the different content formats and formats, you must develop a strategy for each one that includes frequency and distribution. This will ensure that the correct people are viewing your content at the appropriate time.8. Identify Your tracking methodsA marketing content planner is a valuable tool for any company looking to enhance their marketing strategies. It can help you keep in mind your goals, audience and resources, while allowing you to assess how efficient your strategy has been over time.A calendar for social media will aid you in planning your content and ensure it is released regularly. You can also prepare for holidays and events that could impact your followers.A keyword content plan is a great way to optimize your SEO strategies. It can help you identify the right keywords for your content, which will improve your search engine ranking and visibility. It will also help you evaluate the effectiveness of your keyword content strategies over time.9. Find Your MeasurementsYour marketing plan should allow you to identify which metrics are most important for each piece, regardless of whether you arrange your content according to themes or keywords. This will help you assess the effectiveness of your content to keep improving it. A cloud-based marketing planner, such as Optimizely CMP can also help team members to work together and produce reports that are useful for making future content making decisions.