Let’s talk about content! Content marketing is huge. A perfect example is knowing that 82% of shoppers want a brand’s values to align with theirs (which comes from the content they create). And it’s only getting bigger as algorithms improve, new platforms are being created, and consumers are leaning more into the online world.
But just because consumers are hanging out online and consuming more content than ever before, that doesn’t mean that you need to create content…Right?
Wrong. You need to be where your target audience is. You need to be creating content that they want to consume (whether they know it or not).
But beyond publishing content, the reason goes beyond that. “Year-over-year growth in unique site traffic is 7.8x higher for content marketing leaders compared to followers (19.7% vs 2.5%)” (Neil Patel).
Whether you are a law firm, health and wellness coach, eCommerce shop, or financial consulting firm, your customers are searching for you online (as much as 76%).
Ready to skip the overwhelm that often follows content creation? Follow this process to create a quarter’s worth of content in 10 minutes.
Why You Need To Plan Your Content On A Quarterly Basis
Simply put, you do not have enough time to think about content creation on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. Trust me…I own a copywriting and content writing firm where we literally create content on a daily basis for clients. But when it comes to marketing FocusCopy, it would not happen if we don’t plan our content on a quarterly basis.
This process is what we use to not have to think about what we want to write and get us right into writing at the get-go.
6 Steps To Create A Quarter’s Worth Of Content In 10 Minutes
Sure, this process isn’t guaranteed to be done within 10 minutes at first. Like most things, it takes practice to perfect. But I can assure you that after creating content for over 8 years, this process simply works.
1. Remind Yourself Of The Details
First, you need to remind yourself of your business. You work hard to operate your business, but you sometimes need to come up for air to see what your brand looks like from the rooftops.
There are several things that you need to look at when reminding yourself of your brand:
- Your core message
- Your goals and values
- What actually performs
- Your content pillars
Be sure to write it all down to save time when it comes to planning the next quarter’s worth of content.
Your Brand
What is your company about? When you’re working so closely with your business, it’s good to remind yourself of your:
- Mission and vision statements
- Core message
- Target audience
- Core offer
Your Goals
Then get into what your quarterly or annual goals are. How are you currently measuring up against them as you complete this process?
Your Performance
What content has traditionally performed in the past? You may be able to extrapolate content ideas directly from this.
If you haven’t created content before, read through your sales and meeting notes. What messages do your clients typically respond to?
Your Content Pillars
Content pillars are the overarching themes that your brand can speak on. For example, FocusCopy’s pillars include: copywriting, marketing, and entrepreneurship. Everything we publish falls into one of those 3 categories.
You want to keep these specific enough for someone to identify your brand with it, but broad enough to capture a variety of topics. We suggest working with 3-5 pillars.
2. Brain Dump Every Idea
We like to use mind maps or even rolling lists for brain dumping. Go ahead and write every topic that you could write about for that given content pillar. Within 5 minutes, you should have a good list that covers more than a quarter’s worth of content. Keep in mind that the more you do this, the easier it will be. Great questions to ask yourself include:
- What pain points are your customers facing?
- Are there any questions they are asking or should be asking?
- What would transform your customers’ lives?
- What’s going on in your industry that customers should be aware of?
Now, this isn’t an exhaustive list, but it should get you thinking.
3. Evaluate Ideas & Schedule Them
After you brain dump, it’s time to evaluate your ideas. Not everyone is going to hit it out of the park, but you should land with a pretty good list of content topics that you want to pursue.
Then schedule them out for the quarter. In what order are you going to publish them? Can you build those ideas into a series?
The key here is not to overthink it.
4. Outline The Topics
If you’re feeling really into the content creation process, go ahead and start outlining it. We use ClickUp to schedule all our blogs, for example. In the description, we go ahead and outline what we want to talk about within that given blog. This makes it so much easier to remind myself what I was thinking about or gives the assigned writer an idea of where I want them to take the blog.
5. Outsource The Writing
Writing takes time. And although we now have access to AI tools like ChatGPT, it still requires a human to comb through the content to make it actually effective. There are several different ways you can outsource your writing:
- Delegate to an employee
- Outsource to a freelancer (but they may not have the processes to write with your voice or your dialect)
- Partner with a copywriting firm that specializes in brand voice and content creation (i.e. FocusCopy)
Regardless of what you choose, it’s imperative that the writer understands your brand, your voice, and your goals behind the content.
6. Repurpose The Content
Finally, content written only for one purpose (i.e. blogs) is a waste of marketing dollars. Every single piece of written content can be repurposed into:
- Email copy
- Reels or short form videos
- Long form videos
- Infographics
- Social posts
Take Your Content Marketing To The Next Level
We all know that when you’re more visible, you build your credibility (Forbes). And that ultimately leads to business growth – which, who doesn’t want that?!If you’re ready to take your content marketing to the next level, schedule a discovery call with our team to explore how to give you back more time while creating more opportunities for you to grow your business.
