Better Content Marketing: How to Create a Good Editorial Plan

The editorial plan is underestimated by many online marketers. Yet it forms the basis for successful content marketing. Without a strategic approach, your prepared content will not achieve the desired level of impact. An editorial plan can help you counteract this.

Why you should create an editorial plan

"Well prepared is half done" is a saying that, in just five words, expresses the great advantage that an editorial plan offers you. It strategically ties into the content audit. You now know what content you are already offering, which areas are over- or underrepresented, and where you should now intervene.

The absence of an editorial plan affects you in two ways: it is highly likely that your ideas will disappear in the daily business, and that you will start an ineffective production process due to time constraints or lack of ideas. An editorial plan, on the other hand, provides planning security. The more precisely you plan, the smoother your projects will run, and the greater your time savings in implementation. The earlier you recognize and correct a mistake, the lower your incurred costs.

In addition to planning security and time savings, the editorial plan offers you increased motivation and flexibility. The plan motivates you to start implementing your content ideas. You know what you want to achieve and can work towards it more purposefully. There is also a psychological effect. Set goals want to be reached. Checking off a task also gives you a good feeling and a motivational boost to tackle other tasks promptly.

Even though you have verified and scheduled your content ideas, you remain flexible with an editorial plan. Current news or relevant developments can be more easily incorporated, and other planned topics can be postponed if necessary.

The path to a good editorial plan

Editorial plans are created in several steps. The approach presented in Miriam Löffler's book "Think Content! Content Strategy, Content Marketing, Writing for the Web" is ideal for editors and online marketers who have little or no experience with an editorial plan yet are looking for a strategic but easy-to-implement approach. However, even experienced editors and online marketers can benefit from it.

The creation of an editorial plan proceeds in three stages: 1. Content gathering, 2. Content filtering, and 3. Content consolidation. The division into these three stages ensures that you do not get bogged down.

Stage 1: Content gathering

In the first stage, "Content gathering," you collect all content ideas from competitive observations, brainstorming, target group analysis, information from web analysis, etc. This phase is ongoing. That means whenever you have a content idea, you immediately write it down in a document created for it. This could be a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, but also cloud-based solutions like Trello or Wunderlist. The possibilities are diverse. What is important is that you can quickly access the document to capture your idea, as there is a great risk that this idea will be forgotten after the next meeting, break, etc.

The following questions can help you with idea collection:

1. Which unique selling points do you want to highlight more strongly?

2. What kind of content do your users expect?

3. What content is published by your competitors?

4. Are there contents that you have already started but haven't completed?

5. What are topics that interest your users?

Stage 2: Content filtering

In the second stage, "Content filtering," you evaluate your collected ideas and sort out the unqualified ones. Remove all content that does not contribute to the strategic business goal from the list. The remaining content is further refined and prioritized.

Add the following points to your already created Excel spreadsheet and fill them in with the corresponding content:

1. Content format (image, text, video, etc.)

2. Goal (image, reach, traffic, revenue increase, backlinks, etc.)

3. Target group (B2B, B2C, students, etc.)

4. SEO relevance (yes, no)

5. Expected costs (low, medium, high)

Generally, you should ensure that you cater to various types of content in your content planning. You should have the following types of content in your portfolio:

• Bread-and-butter content: Proven and established content that consumes few resources, time, and budget

• Evolution content: Further development of already existing content

• Innovation content: Trying out new ideas

Stage 3: Content consolidation

In the third stage, "Content consolidation," the contents are finally approved, the publication date is set, and assigned to the contributing employees.

Only now does the temporal component come into play. Look at your content and try to distribute it evenly over the coming weeks or months. Take your Excel spreadsheet again, open a new tab, and name this for example "Schedule." Of course, you can also create a new document. However, the advantage here is that you have all relevant information compiled in one place, which is particularly useful when several employees are involved.

Finally, create the following columns and fill them in with the corresponding details:

1. Date

2. Topic

3. Area (sub-category X, own blog, social media, etc. - depends on your company)

4. Author

5. URL

6. Published channels (website, blog, newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, guest post, etc.)

7. Status (open, in progress, completed, etc.)

Congratulations. Now you have a complete editorial plan.

What we can do for you

Do you have some content ideas in mind but are having trouble validating them? Do you need an objective opinion on which content to focus on and which to discard? Do you know how to create an editorial plan but are struggling to implement it operationally? Internetwarriors GmbH can help you. Contact us.