Craft a Perfect Content Plan in 5 Steps (Template + Expert Tips)

What is a text without a reader, a video without a viewer, or a photo without anybody to look at it?

It’s the content that didn’t fulfill its main purpose — appealing to its target audience.

Any content plan that attracts your target audience — thus making your content meaningful — can be freely called a perfect content plan.

However, content planning is easier said than done. 

Luckily, in this blog post, we’ll show you the way toward a perfect content plan in 5 simple steps.

We’ll also provide a content plan template and some valuable tips from marketing experts.

So, keep reading.

• A content plan is a tactical step-by-step process of creating meaningful content to achieve specific strategic goals.
• A content strategy is a more general term than a content plan and implies setting broader goals and objectives to achieve business growth.
• To create a good content plan, you need to set goals, analyze your target audience, select a suitable platform, establish a content calendar, and regularly measure results through audits.
• A good content plan helps content creators stay organized, generate ideas, properly link their content with their offerings, and schedule when and what they will publish.

What is a content plan?

A content plan is a tactical step-by-step process of creating meaningful content to achieve specific strategic goals. 

According to Gareth Hoyle, Managing Director at Coveragely, a content plan should include the following details:

Whether driven by marketing campaigns or not, content planning contributes to your business objectives in 2 ways:

• Directly — with increased traffic or higher sales, or
• Indirectly — by raising brand awareness and respect.

Either way, successful content planning is likely to convert your content consumers into potential paying customers.

How to create a content plan in 5 steps?

The 5 basic steps for creating a perfect content plan include:

1. Setting your goals,
2. Analyzing your target audience to determine the appropriate content,
3. Choosing an appropriate platform for your content,
4. Creating a content calendar, and
5. Measuring results and running audits.

Let’s dive into the details of each step.

Step #1: Setting your goals

The starting point of any good content plan should be proper goal setting, as it steers you in the right direction from the very beginning.

It’s important that your goals are clear and specific. As Gareth Hoyle explains, poorly defined goals often bring negative results:

A staff writer with Fit Small Business, Michael DeVault, explains the importance of setting specific goals:

All in all, proper goal-setting helps align content with your objectives, as well as measure your content’s success.

Step #2: Analyzing your target audience to find appropriate content

To create the right content for your target audience, you need to meet your audience first.

Our contributor, Shanna Morgan, a PR Strategist at NightSky PR, says that one way to truly understand your target audience is to actually talk to them:  

Also, you can always conduct keyword research on Google and incorporate some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools into your content planning process. 

Gareth Hoyle suggests in-depth research to get into the mind of your target audience:

Here’s how Farhan Siraj, the Co-Founder and CEO of OSHA Outreach Courses, finds inspiration for the appropriate content:

Step #3: Choosing an appropriate platform for your content

Once you’re familiar with your target audience, it’s time to focus on choosing appropriate channels for placing your content. 

To know which platform to use, firstly, you need to understand your target audience’s:

• Social media habits and preferences (e.g. specific platforms they use), and
• How they consume content (e.g. audio-visually).

The CEO of Flawless SEO, Israel Gaudette, explains that you should choose the right platform based on the purpose of your content:

Communication Consultant Jamie Levin explains why choosing the right distribution channel matters:

Knowing your goals and audience are key factors in determining the right platform for your content.

Step #4: Creating a content calendar

Managing content on multiple platforms can get quite challenging, as you need to keep track of several timelines at once.

Luckily, content calendars are a useful asset in planning when and where you will publish your content.

Israel Gaudette cites deadline-related issues as one of the biggest challenges in content planning:

Using a content planning platform such as Plaky facilitates the overall content organization and the creation of a content plan.

As a perfect content planning tool, Plaky offers a pre-made content calendar template that can spare you the trouble of creating your content calendar from scratch.

As you can see in the picture above, Plaky’s content calendar template allows you to break down your content by types (e.g. articles, blog posts, and videos).

You can also add further content details within Plaky’s fields, such as:

• Owner — to tag content creators,
• Status — to specify the content production phase (e.g. design or editing phase),
• Publishing date — to keep track of task or project deadlines and planned publishing dates,
• Channels — to specify the chosen platform,
• Target audience — to specify who the content is intended for, and
• Links — to attach drafts or final versions of your content.

If you’re looking specifically for a social media calendar, Plaky also offers a social media calendar template for free.

Step #5: Measuring results and running audits

An important part of content planning is measuring success and optimizing your content and content plans accordingly.

As stated in The State of Content Marketing 2023 Global Report, 61% of marketers conduct content audits 2 or more times a year. 

The same research found that running regular audits has several advantages:

• It prevents your content from becoming outdated,
• It increases engagement, and
• It increases traffic. 

A good way to learn how your target audience responds to your content is to consider the following metrics: 

• Organic traffic, 
• Search rankings,
• Leads, 
• Conversions, and
• Social shares.

The Co-Founder and CMO of GreenPal, Gene Caballero, agrees that content requires ongoing attention and refinement: 

After all, as Farhan Siraj highlights, engagement should be at the core of any content planning strategy: 

Sara Jensen, the owner of Brighter Messaging, says that they regularly audit content and make updates at Brighter Messaging, particularly with content that has lots of traffic or driving conversions. 

Sara shares that they also conduct regular audits with content that isn’t performing well:

What’s the difference between a content plan and a content strategy?

As explained by the Content Marketing Institute, “content strategy” is a more general term than “content plan”. 

Creating a content strategy includes setting specific goals and objectives that a company wants to achieve, thus making space for business growth.

Here are some of the objectives a content strategy can have:

• Increasing the revenues, 
• Lowering the costs, 
• Acquiring new customers,
• Educating the audience,
• Entertaining the audience, and more

A content marketing plan is a tactical step-by-step guide that outlines all the specifics of how you plan to execute your strategy, such as:

• Who on your team will be doing what task, 
• Who your target audience is,
• What type of content you will produce (e.g. audio, visual, or written),
• Topics you will cover, and
• When and where you will publish the content.

It’s important to remember that only after you’ve determined your content strategy, can you move on to crafting your content marketing plan.

Why is having a content plan important?

Having a good content plan should help you deal with some of the common obstacles content creators face every day, such as:

• Staying organized,
• Running out of ideas for your content, 
• Finding the best way to link content with your products/services,
• Knowing when and what you’re going to publish in advance.

Here’s an example of how having a good content plan helped out Israel Gaudette:

And, here’s how content planning helps Julia Voloshchenko, PR Manager at Usetech, solve a problem many content creators face:

8 content planning tips by experts

In the following section, we’ll highlight 8 content planning tips that our expert collaborators use on a daily basis.

Keep reading to learn more about their practices.

Tip #1: Align content with wider business goals

As Gareth Hoyle explains, your content should have a wider business purpose: 

Tip #2:  Listen to your audience

To create meaningful content, you need to listen to your audience. 

This is what Shanna Morgan, PR Strategist at NightSky PR, practices regularly —  actually engaging in meaningful dialogue with the audience. 

Once you’ve gained their feedback, Shanna suggests segmenting the feedback into the following 4 categories: 

With these 4 categories, Shanna adds, the content topics are endless.

Tip #3: Segment the audience

According to Jeff Mains, the CEO of Champion Leadership Group, audience segmentation is one of the practices that has consistently brought positive results:

Tip #4: Set aside time to brainstorm

According to the CEO and Cofounder of Instrumentl, Gauri Manglik, taking time to think is crucial for creating a strong content plan:

Tip #5: Prioritize evergreen content

Our collaborator, Farhan Siraj, highlights the importance of creating evergreen content: 

Tip #6: Leverage trending topics

Jeff Mains adds that leveraging seasonal and trending topics is a good strategy to employ in content planning:

Tip #7: Find the right balance

Julia Voloshchenko highlights the significance of maintaining a balanced content strategy:

Tip #8: Remain consistent 

Gene Caballero emphasizes the importance of consistency in a good content plan, stating:

How to create a content plan in Plaky 

Plaky is a user-friendly project management tool that enables you to manage entire projects in real-time and collaborate seamlessly with your team. 

In Plaky, you can view your content plan in 3 ways, as a:

• Table, 
• Kanban board, and
• Gantt chart.

You can switch between these 3 views with only a click. 

To best utilize Plaky, create a board for your content plan in Table view, which will include content tasks with all the necessary details, such as:

• The type of content,
• The creator of the content, 
• Due date, 
• Reviewer,
• Publishing date, 
• Distribution strategy, etc.

Then switch to Gantt view to see the visual representation of all the timelines in your content plan. This will help you spot any potential bottlenecks and inconsistencies in the timeline, thus ensuring your content plan is well-made and achievable.