30 Day Content Planning for Your Blog and Social Media

Getting started with Content Planning for your business is easier than you might think.

You know those companies who seem to be posting content you absolutely love to social media ALL THE DARN TIME?

How do they do it?

It’s probably safe to assume these companies don’t have hoards of people just sitting around doing nothing all day except posting to Facebook, although that would be a pretty cool job!

Rather, it’s more likely that they have a plan in place and are simply following a strategic content marketing plan.

One of the tasks I like to do with clients is to work through creating a 30 Content Planner, using a very basic spreadsheet. The goal here is to identify the content you are planning to post, and to identify any gaps, so that you can maintain a consistent presence on your blog and social media platforms. Don’t worry about adding in the content you share on the fly, think of that as bonus content.

Let’s take a deeper look at this screenshot:

• Column 1
  • Dates: In this example, we will assume we are planning for the month of December, with 4 weeks, Monday – Sunday on separate lines.
• Column 2
  • Authors: List of authors who will be responsible to provide the content for posting
• Column 3
  • Title: Enter in the title of the blog post, or some sort of title for the content you are planning on sharing. If you are planning on sharing an image, you might not have an actual title for it – that’s ok.
• Column 4
  • Type of Post: What kind of content will you be sharing? In a perfect world, we would create and share a thought provoking, helpful blog article daily. In reality however, a realistic goal would be to try to post to your blog at least once a week. In between blog posts, in order to not lose the interest of your audience, it’s important to maintain a presence with meaningful “fillers”. Take some time to make sure you are sharing something that your followers will appreciate. (Using Facebook Interest Lists is a great way to find shareable content if you get stumped!)
• Column 5
  • Call to Action (CTA): Always try to think of how you can lead your followers to a natural next step. What makes sense for them to do next, after consuming this particular piece of content? It might be to direct them to a download link or even something as casual as a suggestion to like or share the content. This works especially well when the post is a neutral piece of content like an image or cartoon as something light in nature. If there is no CTA that makes sense, leave it out. It’s more important to be authentic, than to force links and requests towards your faithful followers.
• Column 6
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO): If your content will be posted on your blog, you will need to do some research to learn more about how people might search for the information you are creating. For the purpose of your 30 day content planner, you SEO column should include a long-tail keyword (3 or 4 keyword phrase) that matches what your audience would search for. The title of your content should incorporate these words in a naturally sounding sentence.
• Column 7
  • Notes: Use this column to make note of any ideas that may come to mind as you begin your planning.

As you begin to fill in your calendar, remember to include upcoming holidays or any big events/conferences taking place in your industry. You’ll be surprised at how much content you already have in the works!

To get you started, feel free to download this 30 Day Content Planner, in Excel spreadsheet format. Simply change out the information on the data tab, so the drop down menus will be updated with your particular information.

Hope this helps!

Leanne