Ever wanted a sneak peek into the content plans of other companies?
With many content strategists in the process of finalizing their content plans for 2019, I thought it was only fitting to reach out and ask them to explain in a couple of paragraphs what their plans are for the upcoming year.
I received a total of five very different responses (thanks to those of you who so willingly shared your plans). Hopefully, these responses provide ideas and insights you can use to grow your brand.
Here’s what they had to say:
1. Matthew Baggetta—Content Strategist, 7shifts
“Our goal for quarter one is to plan out a set of strategic focus keywords to create 3 months worth of blog posts.
The focus is on creating content that meets our target persona’s needs at every stage of the funnel by covering the different search intents that motivate searches along their journey from TOFU (awareness), to MOFU (consideration), and to BOFU (purchase).”
2. Jane Flanagan—Content and Brand Director, FreshBooks
“For 2019, I’m very focused on a “less is more” approach. Two years ago, I really needed to build our publishing muscle. But now, we have an archive of really wonderful content and a lot of performance data that tells us what content is working (and what content is not).
We’re going to spend the first part of the new year examining this. This will likely mean some tough decisions about some of the content we’ve created.
By end of Q1, we’re probably going to delete a significant volume of non-performing content. This may sound like blasphemy to many writers!
While much of the content we’ll delete may be easy-to-remove “fluff”, some of it will also be content that was well-researched and written on topics we were passionate about. But if it’s not playing the role we imagined on a buying journey, it’s time to separate
The end result we’re aiming for is a blog that’s a library of meaningful content performing at every funnel stage. This will allow our users to focus on what really matters—no more rabbit-holes of questionable archives to get lost down.
By Q2 we’ll probably start to think about publishing again, except this time it will be to strategically add to our considered library of content, not just to publish for publishing’s sake.”
3. Tatiana Morand—Content Marketing and SEO Specialist, Wild Apricot
“In 2019, I’m concentrating on consolidating our SEO strategy. We already have a strong base to work from — now it’s time to take that to the next level by building out our internal linking and backlinking plays.
I’m also focusing on growing and scaling our content production through freelancers and hiring.”
4. Allycia Puzas—Content Marketing Manager, Pollfish
“Our content plan for 2019 leans in heavily on brand awareness, as we are still a young company and there are quite a few competitors in our space. We plan to pump up our conference attendance and thought leadership development with some of our executives to promote our methodology.
This is a core component of who we are and why we are different, so this has been identified as a critical message to set us apart amongst others in our niche.
We’ve been rapidly building out our website and optimizing it for SEO at the end of 2018, which has had a high impact on bringing in new and prospective clients and will continue to be a large focus in Q1.
Our product team has also been rapidly releasing new features, so we are doing more educational blog and demo-video content around these features as upsell opportunities, as well as boosting our drip campaigns to bring back users who have abandoned carts, lapsed, or are simply mid-funnel and still undecided.
The new features happen to dovetail nicely with our methodology messaging and can be easily included in the speaking opportunities.”
5. Ben Rock—Sr. Content Marketing Manager, LiquidPlanner
“Coming from magazine publishing, I’m always thinking about my content strategy in three-, six-, and twelve-month packages that are ever revolving as each month cycles out.
That content planning extends beyond our blog posts and encompasses our webinar, newsletter, podcast, and social media calendars as well.”
6. Nick Verity—Head of Growth, Cleverly
“Our ultimate goal as always = drive leads. To get there, we’ll focus on creating pillar pieces for the top content groups relevant to our client’s audiences, as I believe: 1. Content clusters provide the most value 2. They give us to best chances to rank for MQL type keywords. 3. We can turn them into PDF lead captures.”
Few other focuses:
- Clickable menus at the top of blog posts
- Creating tools/calculators
- Link building
That’s a wrap for the year…
I want to thank those of you who agreed to be part of this final newsletter for 2018. I also want to thank you for your continued business and support throughout the year.
It’s been a very busy year and my business has grown exponentially—something I couldn’t have done without you.
I look forward to working with you in 2019 on many new and exciting projects.
May you have a well-deserved break this festive season and spend lots of quality time with loved ones.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
All the best,