How to do blog planning the right way: A complete guide
Masooma Memon
GatherContent Contributor, Writer
Annual blog planning is never an easy task. It takes a lot of strategic thinking, target audience research, deciding on content formats, and more. To add to that, you can’t afford to put updating and redistributing previous posts on the back burner. You have to plan for that as well.
This, however, is only a primer. There’s a lot more that goes into planning blog content and we’ll cover it in this article. But, first, we need to understand why blog planning matters in the first place.
Why plan blog posts?
Blog planning has many benefits. For instance, it helps to maintain:
Consistency. It’s easier to slack off on creating and updating blog content if it’s not scheduled. And, more importantly, if you haven’t yet invested any time or resources into prepping for it.
Topic focus. “Winging it” is risky. The chances of choosing a topic that’s not aligned with your goals or your audience’s interests are higher.
Order. Everyone involved in content creation needs to know the plan and have a single source of truth to refer to. This prevents miscommunication about what content to work on, how it'll be distributed, and so on.
Goal orientation. When you plan blog posts individually, you can forget the larger goals behind your blog strategy. Planning ahead allows you to think more holistically. As a result, you can ensure that each piece of content gets you closer to your goals.
But that last point raises a good question. How far ahead should you plan your content?
How far ahead should you plan blog content?
Quarterly planning is easily the most popular choice. It’s far enough out to help you stay on track or ahead on content, but not so far that you can’t adjust when needed. Yet, there are good arguments for all sorts of planning. That goes for annual, bi-annual, quarterly, monthly, or a mix of these.
For example, Christoph Trappe of Voxpopme creates a high-level plan for the year. But Cristoph determines exact topics on a rolling basis, explaining:
"I used to be more of a proponent of 90 days rolling, but COVID changed my opinion on that. A lot of content was scrapped overnight. Now, I recommend more of a 30-day rolling calendar. That gives us a bit of a practical roadmap with some runway, but it's also not too far out."
Will Whitham of CMO Alliance, takes a different approach.
"We actually do our planning on a biannual basis, so our blog content calendars are divided into H1 and H2 of the year. This gives us long enough to comfortably identify trends and what topics are getting the most engagement, while still giving us the flexibility to make changes. However, our blog plans are never set in stone. They're fairly adaptable so we can make changes on the fly where necessary."
Do you see the common thread here? Though some plan further ahead than others, content marketers agree that flexibility is essential. As a general rule of thumb, the further out you plan, the more wiggle room you need to allow.
But there’s another perspective worth considering. According to Stephen Jeske of MarketMuse:
"Planning really needs to match the stage of a company. For a large enterprise, planning annually is quite feasible. However, if you're working in a startup, then quarterly planning is the most realistic approach. Smaller companies can pivot more quickly and your content needs to support the change in business goals."
What’s the takeaway when considering how far out to plan? Don’t just think about preference or the general advantages of one timeframe over another. Think about:
Retaining or improving your company or organization’s ability to change direction quickly
Ongoing or upcoming changes within your organization that will impact content
Shifts within your target market or industry
Recent events or emerging trends that could surface a need for content you don't have planned yet
Accounting for your unique circumstances and needs will help you plan at an appropriate cadence. But we’ve got many more tips to help with your planning.
16 essential tips for effective blog planning
Many guides try to distill the blog planning process into just a handful of steps or tips. However, they leave out many details and steps you need to know to build an actionable plan for your blog.
In contrast, we’ve put together an in-depth list of 16 best practices. Whether or not you follow them can make or break the success of your blogging strategy. So, without further delay, let’s dig in.
1. Start with goal setting
First things first, set SMART goals. These goals are:
Specific. Identify exactly what you want to achieve.
Example: “We plan to grow our email list.”
Measurable. State the growth metric that will be most important to track.
Example: “We plan to grow our email subscribers by 10%.”
Actionable. Outline tactical steps to achieve the goal.
Example: “We plan to grow our email subscribers by 10%. We’ll do this by creating and offering simple templates to download.”
Relevant. Specify how the goal supports your overarching growth plan.
Example: “We plan to grow our email subscribers by 10% to generate more qualified leads for our sales team. We’ll do this by creating and offering simple templates to download.”
Time-based. Plan to achieve the goal within a specific time frame.
Example: “We plan to grow our email subscribers by 10% within six months. The goal is to generate more qualified leads for our sales team. We’ll do this by creating and offering simple templates to download.”
2. Divide your blog goal(s) into actionable plans for the year’s quarters
Simply setting goals is never enough. You need a plan to achieve them. You should write down how you’ll do so. For instance, in the example above, notice that the SMART goal was anchored to an action—creating downloadable assets.
Buy sat you’ve chosen annual planning. Since planning for the entire year can be overwhelming, create quarterly to-do lists. You might plan to produce quarterly downloadable ebooks to boost email subscribers. From there, chop each quarterly to-do list into monthly to-do lists. (Of course, the same principle applies if you’ve decided to create biannual or quarterly plans.)
3. Make a list of tools and resources you need
Create a list of tools you need for optimizing your content production.
Need a new plugin or keyword research tool, for example? Add it to your resource list. Will you need to outsource content production to meet your content goals for the year? Add ‘find new freelancers’ to your list.
You’ll also want to add a blog content planner to this list. Or invest in a content operations platform such as GatherContent. This tool can double as your blog post planner while providing you a place to:
Coordinate all content activities including creation, refreshing, and distribution in one platform
Manage all content production in one place, creating an accessible central resource hub
Create your blog calendar, content workflow, quality-control and SEO checklists, template-based briefs, style guides, and more
Manage content production and collaboration in one place—GatherContent
It's pointless to plan content that simply regurgitates what’s already out there.
Ask yourself: how can we take a unique angle? And, specifically, a unique angle that provides additional value to readers? Some ways to do this include:
Creating step-by-step guides on the topic complete with custom images and annotated screenshots.
Interviewing experts to write more authoritative content. You can also create roundup posts with insights from several experts.
Covering what hasn’t been covered before. For instance, sharing mistakes to avoid on a topic or highlighting growth tactics your company has leveraged.
5. Diversify your content mix
Ensure your blog plan includes a healthy mix of content types, such as:
Good to know: Don’t forget to include repurposed content and content refreshes to your blogging goals.
Just be sure to choose content types based on what your readers prefer to consume, not what you prefer to create.
Refresh your buyer persona and customer journey map
6. Pool content ideas from different sources
Never limit yourself to one source for your blog post ideas. Diversify your search for winning ideas by:
Reading books and other blogs (including those of competitors)
Using social listening to identify what your target audience is discussing
Surfing Q&A platforms such as Reddit and Quora to look for questions your audience is asking
Brainstorm content ideas with other customer-facing teams like sales and customer support
7. Validate and shortlist ideas
Not all the ideas in your blog content plan are going to be home runs. Every experienced blogger and content manager can agree with this. So, how do you spot the needles in your haystack of ideas?
For each idea, ask yourself two questions:
Is it relevant to your brand?
Does it solve one of your readers’ pain points or answer a question they have?
A good content topic idea aligns with both your readers’ and brand’s interests. (This is another reason why it's wise to collaborate with your customer-facing teams. It ensures the content you create is relevant to prospects and customers.)
As you source and sift through ideas, ensure that you’re planning content for all funnel stages. This way, your content marketing plan (and each blog post) will:
Increase brand awareness and reach
Educate new audience members on topics of interest to them
Nurture and engage interested leads by explaining how your product or service can help
Convert readers by addressing product or service-specific questions or objections
9. Work out a publishing frequency
If you don’t already have a plan for publishing content, create one. Decide how many:
Downloadable assets you'll publish in a quarter (e.g., ebooks, checklists, webinar recordings, etc.)
Blog posts you’ll publish in a week or month
Emails you’ll send to your subscribers in a week or month
Social media posts you’ll make daily or weekly (for each platform you are on)
Creating a posting schedule will help you identify gaps in your blog planning. You’ll see at which points you’d start to run out of each content type based on your chosen publishing cadence.
Scheduling is also helpful for identifying opportunities to repurpose content. It makes content distribution and promotion easier. In fact, you could bake repurposing into your process from the start.
For example, your quarterly ebook could become eight blog posts. Those eight blog posts could become 16 emails. And you could pull snippets from both the blog posts and emails to create dozens of social media posts. Or you could put the process in reverse and combine smaller, existing pieces of content on a topic into larger pieces.
10. Put together blog editorial guidelines and style guide
Many marketers and content creators treat editorial and style guides as optional resources. In reality, they’re essential for maintaining high quality standards and consistency across your blog. Both remove friction for readers.
"Many marketers and content creators treat editorial and style guides as optional resources. In reality, they’re essential for maintaining high quality standards and consistency across your blog. Both remove friction for readers.”
Provide thoughtful guidelines for your team’s sake. And for that of any agencies or freelancers you work with.These can include details such as:
You preferred manual of style (e.g. Chicago, AP, etc.) and any exceptions specific to your brand
Brand voice and tone guidance (as well as tones and phrasing to avoid)
Buyer persona overviews
Instructions on formatting
A search engine optimization checklist to help SEO blog posts attract organic traffic
Then, consider how to keep these guidelines top of mind for everyone creating content. In GatherContent, you can embed style guidance into the content creation environment. This way, writers and reviewers have them on hand at all times.
Embed helpful reminders for writers and reviewers into your GatherContent content templates
11. Identify posts in need of updates and refreshes
Look at Google Analytics and pinpoint any decaying content. In other words, pieces that were performing well but that have a reduced inflow of traffic lately. (This happens naturally as content ages or becomes dated or irrelevant.)
Create a list of these posts and add them to your content refresh list. From there, follow these steps to freshen up your content:
Add relevant internal links and check that all links are live and accurate
Refresh stale statistics—these shouldn't be older than two to three years
Add any new product or feature information
Update the publish date when you publish your refresh
12. Interview blog readers
Interviewing your readership is essential for sourcing blog post ideas. It’s also a great way to understand:
The content formats your readers prefer to consume
The language or key phrases readers use to describe your product or service
Your target audience’s pain points and how they make their buying decisions
This is one area where your email list can come in handy. Do you promote your latest blog posts via your email newsletter? If so, you can also ask for your blog readers’ feedback via that channel. It’s a simple way to reach your most active readers and understand what you could do better in the upcoming quarter.
13. Create a content distribution plan
Outline the steps to take your content from ideation to production. If you don’t already have a content workflow, that is.
Make sure you add content distribution to this workflow as well. Why? Your content marketing and blogging strategies will fall short of their potential if you don’t promote your content. So, create a detailed distribution plan, including the channels you’ll use and the cadence at which you’ll promote your content. Then, schedule it on your calendar to help you follow through.
15. Set deadlines for the first quarter’s content ideas
Now, prepare your content calendar based on your decided publishing frequency. Set a realistic schedule, factoring in content production, design, and publishing time.
Also, mark important holidays in your calendar. This way, you can plan relevant content when those dates are around the corner.
16. Don’t pack your editorial calendar to the brim
If there’s anything the pandemic has taught us, it’s that you shouldn’t plan everything down to a tee. Leave room for flexibility in your calendar.
A good rule of thumb: Plan 75% of your content for each month or quarter. Leave the remaining 25% for ad hoc requests or timely pieces.
3 things to consider before planning your 2023 blog content
So far, we’ve covered general best practices and steps for blog planning. But there are also a few things you should keep in mind when planning for 2023 specifically.
1. Update content for the new year
Each new year brings with it the risk of losing traffic to otherwise effective pages. The cause? Pages being dated with the previous year!
You wouldn’t want potential readers—or worse, potential leads—thinking your content is outdated or irrelevant. So, what should you do?
"Run a crawl and audit all service pages and blog posts where the year 2022 needs to be changed to 2023. Don't forget to check your title tags, meta descriptions, or headers that need to reflect the new year. Although there are several tools for this, Ahrefs makes it a pretty straightforward process."
Update any time-sensitive content as soon as possible (and certainly before we get months into the new year).
2. Prepare for uncertainty as best you can
Next, it’s important to be mindful of events and concerns that could impact your audience. Will Whitham explains why.
"2023 is looking like it could be pretty chaotic (not that the last couple of years have been smooth sailing). You'll need to be ready to make changes to suit your audience's needs.
For instance, how people are going to respond to the looming recessions is fairly uncharted territory. A lot has changed in terms of businesses, culture, and society since the 2008 Recession. Be prepared to adapt your plans and the topics you're going to be covering.."
"For 2023, content marketers must consider how blog content serves the entire organization. You may find yourself meeting with stakeholders outside of the marketing team. Think about how the blog can help PR earn more press mentions or how publishing a post from the engineering team can recruit more qualified candidates."
This is a timely reminder that content is more than a content marketing tool. It can play a role in accomplishing your company or organization’s larger business goals. But the chances of that are slimmer if you’re not intentional about:
Mapping content initiatives to those goals
Gathering input from other teams to ensure that your content meets their needs
Communicating the potential of your blog content to other teams
With the above in mind, are you ready to dive into blog planning (and planning for other content)?
Whether you answered “yes” or “no,” you’ll benefit from GatherContent’s content production planning guide. It’s free to download. And, in addition to what you've learned here, it’ll help you welcome the new year with a fresh, ROI-delivering content plan!
This, however, is only a primer. There’s a lot more that goes into planning blog content and we’ll cover it in this article. But, first, we need to understand why blog planning matters in the first place.
Why plan blog posts?
Blog planning has many benefits. For instance, it helps to maintain:
Consistency. It’s easier to slack off on creating and updating blog content if it’s not scheduled. And, more importantly, if you haven’t yet invested any time or resources into prepping for it.
Topic focus. “Winging it” is risky. The chances of choosing a topic that’s not aligned with your goals or your audience’s interests are higher.
Order. Everyone involved in content creation needs to know the plan and have a single source of truth to refer to. This prevents miscommunication about what content to work on, how it'll be distributed, and so on.
Goal orientation. When you plan blog posts individually, you can forget the larger goals behind your blog strategy. Planning ahead allows you to think more holistically. As a result, you can ensure that each piece of content gets you closer to your goals.
But that last point raises a good question. How far ahead should you plan your content?
How far ahead should you plan blog content?
Quarterly planning is easily the most popular choice. It’s far enough out to help you stay on track or ahead on content, but not so far that you can’t adjust when needed. Yet, there are good arguments for all sorts of planning. That goes for annual, bi-annual, quarterly, monthly, or a mix of these.
For example, Christoph Trappe of Voxpopme creates a high-level plan for the year. But Cristoph determines exact topics on a rolling basis, explaining:
"I used to be more of a proponent of 90 days rolling, but COVID changed my opinion on that. A lot of content was scrapped overnight. Now, I recommend more of a 30-day rolling calendar. That gives us a bit of a practical roadmap with some runway, but it's also not too far out."
Will Whitham of CMO Alliance, takes a different approach.
"We actually do our planning on a biannual basis, so our blog content calendars are divided into H1 and H2 of the year. This gives us long enough to comfortably identify trends and what topics are getting the most engagement, while still giving us the flexibility to make changes. However, our blog plans are never set in stone. They're fairly adaptable so we can make changes on the fly where necessary."
Do you see the common thread here? Though some plan further ahead than others, content marketers agree that flexibility is essential. As a general rule of thumb, the further out you plan, the more wiggle room you need to allow.
But there’s another perspective worth considering. According to Stephen Jeske of MarketMuse:
"Planning really needs to match the stage of a company. For a large enterprise, planning annually is quite feasible. However, if you're working in a startup, then quarterly planning is the most realistic approach. Smaller companies can pivot more quickly and your content needs to support the change in business goals."
What’s the takeaway when considering how far out to plan? Don’t just think about preference or the general advantages of one timeframe over another. Think about:
Retaining or improving your company or organization’s ability to change direction quickly
Ongoing or upcoming changes within your organization that will impact content
Shifts within your target market or industry
Recent events or emerging trends that could surface a need for content you don't have planned yet
Accounting for your unique circumstances and needs will help you plan at an appropriate cadence. But we’ve got many more tips to help with your planning.
16 essential tips for effective blog planning
Many guides try to distill the blog planning process into just a handful of steps or tips. However, they leave out many details and steps you need to know to build an actionable plan for your blog.
In contrast, we’ve put together an in-depth list of 16 best practices. Whether or not you follow them can make or break the success of your blogging strategy. So, without further delay, let’s dig in.
1. Start with goal setting
First things first, set SMART goals. These goals are:
Specific. Identify exactly what you want to achieve.
Example: “We plan to grow our email list.”
Measurable. State the growth metric that will be most important to track.
Example: “We plan to grow our email subscribers by 10%.”
Actionable. Outline tactical steps to achieve the goal.
Example: “We plan to grow our email subscribers by 10%. We’ll do this by creating and offering simple templates to download.”
Relevant. Specify how the goal supports your overarching growth plan.
Example: “We plan to grow our email subscribers by 10% to generate more qualified leads for our sales team. We’ll do this by creating and offering simple templates to download.”
Time-based. Plan to achieve the goal within a specific time frame.
Example: “We plan to grow our email subscribers by 10% within six months. The goal is to generate more qualified leads for our sales team. We’ll do this by creating and offering simple templates to download.”
2. Divide your blog goal(s) into actionable plans for the year’s quarters
Simply setting goals is never enough. You need a plan to achieve them. You should write down how you’ll do so. For instance, in the example above, notice that the SMART goal was anchored to an action—creating downloadable assets.
Buy sat you’ve chosen annual planning. Since planning for the entire year can be overwhelming, create quarterly to-do lists. You might plan to produce quarterly downloadable ebooks to boost email subscribers. From there, chop each quarterly to-do list into monthly to-do lists. (Of course, the same principle applies if you’ve decided to create biannual or quarterly plans.)
3. Make a list of tools and resources you need
Create a list of tools you need for optimizing your content production.
Need a new plugin or keyword research tool, for example? Add it to your resource list. Will you need to outsource content production to meet your content goals for the year? Add ‘find new freelancers’ to your list.
You’ll also want to add a blog content planner to this list. Or invest in a content operations platform such as GatherContent. This tool can double as your blog post planner while providing you a place to:
Coordinate all content activities including creation, refreshing, and distribution in one platform
Manage all content production in one place, creating an accessible central resource hub
Create your blog calendar, content workflow, quality-control and SEO checklists, template-based briefs, style guides, and more
Manage content production and collaboration in one place—GatherContent
It's pointless to plan content that simply regurgitates what’s already out there.
Ask yourself: how can we take a unique angle? And, specifically, a unique angle that provides additional value to readers? Some ways to do this include:
Creating step-by-step guides on the topic complete with custom images and annotated screenshots.
Interviewing experts to write more authoritative content. You can also create roundup posts with insights from several experts.
Covering what hasn’t been covered before. For instance, sharing mistakes to avoid on a topic or highlighting growth tactics your company has leveraged.
5. Diversify your content mix
Ensure your blog plan includes a healthy mix of content types, such as:
Good to know: Don’t forget to include repurposed content and content refreshes to your blogging goals.
Just be sure to choose content types based on what your readers prefer to consume, not what you prefer to create.
Refresh your buyer persona and customer journey map
6. Pool content ideas from different sources
Never limit yourself to one source for your blog post ideas. Diversify your search for winning ideas by:
Reading books and other blogs (including those of competitors)
Using social listening to identify what your target audience is discussing
Surfing Q&A platforms such as Reddit and Quora to look for questions your audience is asking
Brainstorm content ideas with other customer-facing teams like sales and customer support
7. Validate and shortlist ideas
Not all the ideas in your blog content plan are going to be home runs. Every experienced blogger and content manager can agree with this. So, how do you spot the needles in your haystack of ideas?
For each idea, ask yourself two questions:
Is it relevant to your brand?
Does it solve one of your readers’ pain points or answer a question they have?
A good content topic idea aligns with both your readers’ and brand’s interests. (This is another reason why it's wise to collaborate with your customer-facing teams. It ensures the content you create is relevant to prospects and customers.)
As you source and sift through ideas, ensure that you’re planning content for all funnel stages. This way, your content marketing plan (and each blog post) will:
Increase brand awareness and reach
Educate new audience members on topics of interest to them
Nurture and engage interested leads by explaining how your product or service can help
Convert readers by addressing product or service-specific questions or objections
9. Work out a publishing frequency
If you don’t already have a plan for publishing content, create one. Decide how many:
Downloadable assets you'll publish in a quarter (e.g., ebooks, checklists, webinar recordings, etc.)
Blog posts you’ll publish in a week or month
Emails you’ll send to your subscribers in a week or month
Social media posts you’ll make daily or weekly (for each platform you are on)
Creating a posting schedule will help you identify gaps in your blog planning. You’ll see at which points you’d start to run out of each content type based on your chosen publishing cadence.
Scheduling is also helpful for identifying opportunities to repurpose content. It makes content distribution and promotion easier. In fact, you could bake repurposing into your process from the start.
For example, your quarterly ebook could become eight blog posts. Those eight blog posts could become 16 emails. And you could pull snippets from both the blog posts and emails to create dozens of social media posts. Or you could put the process in reverse and combine smaller, existing pieces of content on a topic into larger pieces.
10. Put together blog editorial guidelines and style guide
Many marketers and content creators treat editorial and style guides as optional resources. In reality, they’re essential for maintaining high quality standards and consistency across your blog. Both remove friction for readers.
"Many marketers and content creators treat editorial and style guides as optional resources. In reality, they’re essential for maintaining high quality standards and consistency across your blog. Both remove friction for readers.”
Provide thoughtful guidelines for your team’s sake. And for that of any agencies or freelancers you work with.These can include details such as:
You preferred manual of style (e.g. Chicago, AP, etc.) and any exceptions specific to your brand
Brand voice and tone guidance (as well as tones and phrasing to avoid)
Buyer persona overviews
Instructions on formatting
A search engine optimization checklist to help SEO blog posts attract organic traffic
Then, consider how to keep these guidelines top of mind for everyone creating content. In GatherContent, you can embed style guidance into the content creation environment. This way, writers and reviewers have them on hand at all times.
Embed helpful reminders for writers and reviewers into your GatherContent content templates
11. Identify posts in need of updates and refreshes
Look at Google Analytics and pinpoint any decaying content. In other words, pieces that were performing well but that have a reduced inflow of traffic lately. (This happens naturally as content ages or becomes dated or irrelevant.)
Create a list of these posts and add them to your content refresh list. From there, follow these steps to freshen up your content:
Add relevant internal links and check that all links are live and accurate
Refresh stale statistics—these shouldn't be older than two to three years
Add any new product or feature information
Update the publish date when you publish your refresh
12. Interview blog readers
Interviewing your readership is essential for sourcing blog post ideas. It’s also a great way to understand:
The content formats your readers prefer to consume
The language or key phrases readers use to describe your product or service
Your target audience’s pain points and how they make their buying decisions
This is one area where your email list can come in handy. Do you promote your latest blog posts via your email newsletter? If so, you can also ask for your blog readers’ feedback via that channel. It’s a simple way to reach your most active readers and understand what you could do better in the upcoming quarter.
13. Create a content distribution plan
Outline the steps to take your content from ideation to production. If you don’t already have a content workflow, that is.
Make sure you add content distribution to this workflow as well. Why? Your content marketing and blogging strategies will fall short of their potential if you don’t promote your content. So, create a detailed distribution plan, including the channels you’ll use and the cadence at which you’ll promote your content. Then, schedule it on your calendar to help you follow through.
15. Set deadlines for the first quarter’s content ideas
Now, prepare your content calendar based on your decided publishing frequency. Set a realistic schedule, factoring in content production, design, and publishing time.
Also, mark important holidays in your calendar. This way, you can plan relevant content when those dates are around the corner.
16. Don’t pack your editorial calendar to the brim
If there’s anything the pandemic has taught us, it’s that you shouldn’t plan everything down to a tee. Leave room for flexibility in your calendar.
A good rule of thumb: Plan 75% of your content for each month or quarter. Leave the remaining 25% for ad hoc requests or timely pieces.
3 things to consider before planning your 2023 blog content
So far, we’ve covered general best practices and steps for blog planning. But there are also a few things you should keep in mind when planning for 2023 specifically.
1. Update content for the new year
Each new year brings with it the risk of losing traffic to otherwise effective pages. The cause? Pages being dated with the previous year!
You wouldn’t want potential readers—or worse, potential leads—thinking your content is outdated or irrelevant. So, what should you do?
"Run a crawl and audit all service pages and blog posts where the year 2022 needs to be changed to 2023. Don't forget to check your title tags, meta descriptions, or headers that need to reflect the new year. Although there are several tools for this, Ahrefs makes it a pretty straightforward process."
Update any time-sensitive content as soon as possible (and certainly before we get months into the new year).
2. Prepare for uncertainty as best you can
Next, it’s important to be mindful of events and concerns that could impact your audience. Will Whitham explains why.
"2023 is looking like it could be pretty chaotic (not that the last couple of years have been smooth sailing). You'll need to be ready to make changes to suit your audience's needs.
For instance, how people are going to respond to the looming recessions is fairly uncharted territory. A lot has changed in terms of businesses, culture, and society since the 2008 Recession. Be prepared to adapt your plans and the topics you're going to be covering.."
"For 2023, content marketers must consider how blog content serves the entire organization. You may find yourself meeting with stakeholders outside of the marketing team. Think about how the blog can help PR earn more press mentions or how publishing a post from the engineering team can recruit more qualified candidates."
This is a timely reminder that content is more than a content marketing tool. It can play a role in accomplishing your company or organization’s larger business goals. But the chances of that are slimmer if you’re not intentional about:
Mapping content initiatives to those goals
Gathering input from other teams to ensure that your content meets their needs
Communicating the potential of your blog content to other teams
With the above in mind, are you ready to dive into blog planning (and planning for other content)?
Whether you answered “yes” or “no,” you’ll benefit from GatherContent’s content production planning guide. It’s free to download. And, in addition to what you've learned here, it’ll help you welcome the new year with a fresh, ROI-delivering content plan!
Masooma Memon is a pizza-loving freelance writer for SaaS. When she’s not writing actionable blog posts or checking off tasks from her to-do list, she has her head buried in a fantasy novel or business book. Connect with her on Twitter.
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