I rarely build content plans beyond a simple editorial calendar because I’m doing relatively simple experiments. A full content plan connects content and it’s elements to the larger marketing efforts and the timing of product releases and other events. I’m not going to do the entire process that B&J does for clients: it’s too complex, too time consuming, and too detailed for a simple example like Ke Nalu. While Ke Nalu makes a great test case, in truth it’s a small website that doesn’t deliver ROI. If your web efforts are the lifeblood of your company, then a full content plan is imperative.
Our simplified content plan could be based on any number of principles, usually a schedule of events and initiatives coupled to such things as formal market research into the interest of core prospect communities, intuition, observed interest at social marketing sites, or perhaps MBAs clutching focus group data to their chest. But you can probably already guess I’m going to say that Keywords are a critical component.
When I talk about using keywords to drive content most web-savvy people immediately assume I’m talking about sprinkling them through the content. While we certainly will pay some attention to that, we’ll try to make it very natural. But that isn’t the most important use for Keywords in my content plan. What we use Keywords for is deciding what content to create or how to re-purpose existing content..
Our content plan should consider all types of content, venues, and sources. Consider is not the same as include. I don’t mind rejecting an option as long as it has been considered. You might not be ready for crowdsourcing as a creative source, Facebook as a venue or Podcasts as a content type, but you should know and understand the options before you reject them.
For our example, Ke Nalu, we’re going to poke at almost everything. We’ll build our plan as a matrix to gain clarity. We’ll build it for popular keywords but we’ll also watch for long tail keywords that might fit upcoming events, or connect well to content I can easily create.
I’m also going to look hard at crowdsourcing some of the content that is most popular, since