The most significant challenge I have with blogging is content planning.

I remember listening to an interview of rapper 50 Cent. He was talking about the success of his major label debut single In The Club. He talked about the difficulty of trying to create another song to top the success of that single. Even if you don’t listen to Hip-Hop regularly, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the song at some point. If not, try listening to it during a workout. It does the trick.

Like 50 Cent, I found myself in a similar situation.

No, I have not created a hit single. I haven’t even created that hit blog post yet.

I have, however, found myself attempting to create that next big piece of content that outperforms the last.

Developing great ideas for content planning is cumbersome. Striving to sustain a higher level of content production is natural. Stepping up your content production game requires strategic planning. With this in mind, I have discovered 6 ideas for content planning.

So, to get you brainstorming about your next big hit…

Here are 6 Ideas for Content Planning

1. Engage Your Organization

Your organization has a wealth of resources. I’m not talking about the company assets, I’m talking about the human capital used to move your organization forward. All the stakeholders involved with making your organization a success.

Everyone from employees, board directors and investors all have diverse experiences that can help influence great content.

Additionally, they already consume various forms of content that will help when brainstorming about new content. All you have to do is ask.

2. Listen on Social Channels

You can do more with social listening that spying on your competitors. Social media is a great resource you can use to stay up-to-date with what’s going on in your industry.

It will provide you with real-time insight that can spark inspiration for highly relevant content. See what your network is talking about and participate in the conversation by creating content they can amplify.

3. Interview Consumers

Your consumers are arguably your most important asset. Why don’t you interview them to see what type of content they wish to consume?

The main objective for any business is to provide for their customers. By interviewing your consumers, it shows that you care about what they want. It also shows that you welcome their participation in your content planning process.

4. Send Out A Survey

Your consumers are used to surveys —whether they like them or not. They understand that organizations strive to provide highly customized offerings. Surveying your consumers is a very efficient way gather feedback.

Send out a survey that includes questions about the content they like to consume. Ask questions about the other blogs or YouTube channels’ content they consume. You can even inquire about the mediums in which they consume content such as Feedly, Medium, Tumblr, etc..

5. Map Content with SEO

Blogging has come easy for me. I started out creating content only to fill my blog with posts.

You know, to have something posted for people to consume.

I soon learned that optimizing my content to get more readers has everything to do with content and SEO.

I told myself, the content created going forward should be SEO friendly. Meaning, the SEO tactics I used should be applied consistently across my blog so I can include my blog post in online search results.

These tactics include mapping my content to keywords that are popular for digital marketing such as content marketing, social media, and digital marketing. These are very broad topics/keywords, but it’s where I started.

Now, I am attempting to map my content to more specialized keywords such as digital branding, content aggregation, and social influence to name a few.

6. Map Content Planning with Your Product Launch

I saved the best for last.

Aligning your content around the launch of a new product or services is the best way to plan content. Since consumers value content more and more, organizations have implemented content marketing strategies to convert their audience into customers.

Having a series of engaging content released around a particular business priority will certainly help alleviate any challenges within the consumer purchase process.

Although mapping content around your product launch seems like an obvious tactic, it can be extremely difficult. It requires you to plan your content well in advance (possibly six months to a year). This can present challenges for organizations trying to stay top-of-mind by consistently producing relevant content.

If this sounds like your situation, I suggest throttling the cadence of your relevant content and put more effort into mapping content that will aid in the launch.

I would love to know your thoughts about this suggestion in the comments section.

Final Thought

A nice way to organize your content is by monthly or quarterly themes. Each theme should have its own messaging and assets (i.e. images, videos, etc.). For instance, if you have an upcoming theme, be sure to have all the messaging and social planning created before posting.

This will help you focus on the additional application of the planned content without being concerned with creating more during this time. Happy planning!