Small business owners seem to always find themselves in a predicament when it comes to content development. They seem to have enough time to create enough content to get by. They add a few blog posts per month, post on social media and change their website when promotions and other things arise. However, they tend not to have the time or resources to create and manage a full scale content marketing plan – even though content is continuing to prove to be an effective way to generate traffic, create brand awareness and bring in new customers.

Whether you are outsourcing your content development, email marketing, and social media or are doing it in-house, make 2014 the year where you create a functional content plan for your business. In a matter of a few hours you can create clarity, have everything organized, know what you are going to write about, and have a schedule for when and how you will create content for the year.

How Do I Create A Content Plan for my Business?

There is no one right way to create a content plan for your business. Your content plan will be unique in the sense that you will address your specific business and online marketing goals and objectives. The important thing to keep in mind is that you need to develop a functional plan that makes sense for your content needs and a plan that is realistic given your budget and time commitment.

What to Include in your Content Plan

Here is a list of what you can include in your content plan:

• A content development budget. How much money allocate to content? Will it be allocated solely to blogging? What about website pages? Guest posts? Social Media Management?
• Assessment of your current website and content. What are you currently producing? How can your content be improved? What opportunities exist?
• Who will create the content. Will you be writing the content? An employee? A freelance writer? Who has final say before the content is published?
• A list of Targeted Keywords. What keywords are you targeting? What is your primary keyword term? How will you integrate keywords into your content?
• A schedule to post content on social media. When? How often? And, what social media sites will you use to distribute your content? What hashtags will be used? What social media management tools will be used? What email marketing tools will you use to email content?
• An editorial calendar. What days will you post? What time of day? How many posts per week? Will you preload your blog posts? Who will upload the content to your blog/website?
• A list of topics. What do you want write about? What content are your users interested in? What subjects need to be addressed?

These are some of the main things that you need to include in your small business content plan. Remember, your content plan does not need to be complex. Many people use an excel file to organize their content plan. Keep things simple!

Does your small business have a content plan? Why? Why not? Do you plan to create one this year?