Planning out your content plan
Reading through the previous section you will already be coming up with ideas for content you can create, but if you need help coming up with ideas then it’s time to brainstorm! I have said that your content creation needs to be realistic – and part of your planning might be how you’re going to create the time and space to make the content happen – but forget that at the start and just get some great ideas down on paper first.
Get a big sheet of blank paper, pick one of your customer profiles and put their name in a circle in the middle and then write out around them what they care about – just like the spider diagrams you used to do at school for coming up with ideas. Once you have a list of what they care about, go around again and think of ideas of what content you could produce which is related to this or to the problems they have. For example, you might have a ‘vegan doner kebab van’ and you have identified ‘Student Steph’ as one of your customer profiles. Student Steph is always trying to save money but has only been living away from home for a short time, so you can create a series (blogs, videos, downloads or whatever format you settle on) going around the supermarket and showing the cheapest vegan foods you can buy, and then easy ways to prepare them. Show her how to create some of the foods you serve up on the van, build a relationship with her, and the next time she sees you at an event or festival she’ll make a bee-line for your van and drag Student Stephen, Saanvi and Saul with her too.
If you have profiled a number of different customer types, then do the same exercise for each. You might find you hit on an idea for content that all your customer types will love. The video for Student Steph of you going around the supermarket could also work just as well for ‘Wholefood Hakeem’.
Only once you have these ideas (and are really excited about them) should you then start to work out what resources you need to do them. How much time will they take from your week and do you have that time to give? Can you do them quicker? Do you need to spend ages setting up a video with lighting and microphones or will your message get over just as well if it’s recorded on your phone live in the moment? Of course, the first is more professional and something you should aspire to, but if you don’t get your content out because it takes too long to produce, then the slightly less professional way wins every time. Or look to do one professional sit-down video every month and update your followers from your phone for the rest.
Start to work your ideas into a content plan. Decide how often you want to talk to your audience and break that down into manageable chunks. Are you going to post something on Instagram every day, and if so then what strategy have you got to work that into your routine? Are you going to post something at the start of every day as you open the shop, or share a video as the last thing you do before you go home? Or are you are going to write an article a month? If so then you need to know now what next month’s article is going to be. Are you going to record a podcast? If you are, then have you got three episodes worth of people lined up to interview?
Map out your different levels of content creation to make sure they are realistic. Decide on if you are going to create content monthly, weekly or daily (or a combination). All content takes time to gather momentum and attract a following, so commit to an initial timescale of how long you are going to keep producing the content and decide what your measure of success is going to be before you start. You might only be talking to a very small number of people at the start, but that’s fine. Build momentum, have some tenacity, and stick with it.
An example content plan might be:
Content I will create every day: (eg: Instagram post)
- What’s the long-term story arc of this content? (eg: I will share photos of the orders I am sending out every day, meaning that people get to see the amount of orders I am getting and the care I put into packaging them)
- How long it will take to create, edit and post this content every day? (eg: 20 minutes)
- How I will judge if the content is working? (eg: posts are getting likes, number of new followers I get every month)
- How often I will review this content strategy: (eg: I will sit down and go back over my posts every month and see what I can learn from them – what got the most interaction, how much extra interaction they are generating for my account)
- How I will work this into my daily routine: (eg: I will create the post every day when shipping my orders)
Content I will create every week: (eg: article on my blog)
- What’s the long-term story arc of this content? (eg: I am going to write out one good tip every week for cooking on a budget)
- How long it will take to create, edit and post this content every week: (eg: including writing, uploading to my website, and re-sharing to Facebook: 3 hours)
- How I will judge if the content is working: (eg: number of views each post is getting over time, if I can see from Google Analytics that people are going from my blog to my products page)
- How often I will review this content strategy: (eg: after I have written the first 10)
- How I will work this into my weekly routine: (eg: I will block book every Friday morning just for this)
Content I will create every month: (eg: video interview with a customer)
- What’s the long-term story arc of this content? (eg: I am going to record a live Zoom interview with a customer every month and upload it to YouTube)
- How long it will take to create, edit and post this content every month: (eg: a day: 1 hour to plan, 1 hour for the call, 3 hours to edit and upload, 1 hour to arrange next month’s interview)
- How I will judge if the content is working: (eg: the customers I interview become more loyal customers, and the number of views and shares on YouTube)
- How often I will review this content strategy: (eg: every six months)
- How I will work this into my monthly routine: (eg: I will book the interviews a month ahead, giving me a deadline to do them)
Remember that this will take time and effort, but if you are building a brand and a business then this is part of doing it. A lot of people make the mistake of giving up on a content strategy too early. It’s easy to be just an observer in this digital world, meaning you can be pumping out really high-quality content and getting disheartened because you think no-one is listening – when in reality you just haven’t given enough time for those comments and reactions to slowly filter back to you.
