Weekend Mission: Creating Your Content Plan
Well, we've come a long way on our 30-Day Content Marketing journey; I hope you and your staff are having a blast so far. Content marketing is serious business, it's true, but also the kind of thing that you should relax and have some fun with.
At this point in the challenge, you've spent quite a bit of time working with your buyer personas. So far you should have:
Downloaded and filled out our basic buyer persona templates.
Read some great articles on creating buyer personas.
Spoke with your staff to get their ideas on your patient personas.
Talked to your patients themselves about their needs and asked some great questions.
You've also spent some time building out your content marketing goals and deciding on which channels you'd like to try first. Plus, you've learned about how to write a great headline and a strong CTA.
Hopefully you've been able to keep up on your daily action items and you're getting a clear picture of your purpose and overarching mission.
So now it's time to build out your content plan.
Are you excited? I hope so.
Now, some people get a bit intimidated at the idea creating a content schedule. But it doesn't have to be tough or overwhelming. You can start out slow, maybe just the next couple of months, and work on it over time as you learn what's performing and what isn't.
Here are a few review items to keep in mind when creating your content schedule:
Timing is Key
How often do you get new products in your front shop? Launch new services like your prescription delivery service? These are the types of things to keep in mind when deciding what to create and when.
On the promotion end of things, you're going to want to time your content with new offerings. Informative posts about medications or health conditions may be on a different schedule.
Take time to sketch out the basic timing before you begin to make up your schedule.
Decide Which Platforms to Use
Different platforms have different requirements as far as what and when you publish. If you're posting to Twitter, with its shorter content, you'll want to post more often than on, say, Facebook.
On Day 4, we did a bit of research on social media and other potential platforms; be sure you're well informed about the ones you choose to use.. And don't forget to repurpose to optimize content for different platforms.
Don't Overwhelm Your Audience
Be considerate to your audience when creating and posting your content. Think about who you're targeting and how often they'll want to hear from you.
For example, while it's good to create as much content as you can, your readers may not appreciate an email from you several times a day announcing new content.
Try starting with a post a few times a week and sending out an email or newsletter once every week or two to make people aware of your posts. From there, you'll get a better idea of what your audience likes, and you can adjust as needed.
Decide on Your Topics
Now that you know what you're planning to promote, where, and who to, you can decide on topics. Perhaps you'll do a weekly run of one promotional post, one informative post and a fun graphic.
Start from the beginning and map out what you'd like to create and when; your schedule is starting to take shape!
Publishing, Due Dates & Promotion
Once you've decided on your topics, you can start to schedule due dates!
Don't forget to set due dates for each stage of creating, including:
Research
Creation
Outsourcing
Publication
Promotion
You can set out due dates for yourself and for staff members who are going to play a role in content creation. Don't forget to keep things reasonable as far as what you're juggling now as far as work tasks.
Content creation should be fun, so try and spread it out in a manageable, stress-free way. Add in enough time for outsourcing too, if that's the route you're going.
Once you're done, all you need to do is check your calendar each day to see what's on the schedule. Keep things consistent and realistic, and you'll be creating great content in no time.
Tweaking & Tracking
No process is ever complete without some tweaks here and there, and of course you'll need tracking to figure out what's working. Once you've published some content, you can use analytics to track the response.
If you notice anything amiss you can correct it on the fly. Have a headline that's not working? You can do a quick fix. Find a spelling mistake? Please do fix that right away, but don't sweat it; an adoring audience can be very forgiving.
Now, you've got some time to work on this, because we're going to devote the next 4 days to this one task. And if you're looking to stay organized, you can download your copy of the iApotheca 2021 Pharmacy Content Planner.
In it, you'l find pages that are ideal for laying out ideas for bog posts & series, planning your weekly goals, to-do's, staff responsibilities, and more. This is a helpful tool that we've developed to help you dominate with content marketing, so I hope you find it worthwhile!
Good luck and enjoy yourself as you create your master plan over the next 4 days! As always, be sure to ask your staff for input and let your creativity flow.
I'll be back on Monday (Day 21) to talk about building your email list with content marketing. An email list is an important marketing asset for any business, so it's a good idea to grow one and we'll get into how to do it.
Next week we'll also cover building a content marketing funnel, promoting your content, how to create epic content, and more.
So have a great weekend creating your genius plan! And as always if you have any questions don't hesitate to get in touch at rsmerhy@iapotheca.com. Don't forget to have fun!