Content Creation Plan

No idea who said this quote, but it's relevant here: "If you aim for nothing, you'll surely hit it." That sounds grim. You need a plan. Content marketing is vast and complex and hard, and publishing words aimlessly is not recommended. Get yourself a man. I mean a plan. Get a plan.

First, some general life pointers:

• Look at your competitors: what kind of content are they creating and publishing?
• Think about your audience: what questions are they asking online? How are they talking about the problem you solve for them?
• Perfection is the enemy of good. A- and out the door beats A+ and never published every single day. Be brave and get your content out there.
• Do keyword research, or pay someone else to do it.
• Never under any circumstance use the phrase "tangible value." If you do, a marketer somewhere will choke on their own bile and you'll be responsible. Also if you call yourself a storyteller I will come through this computer and punch you right now.

WTF is content?

Content is anything that shares your message. Content in all its forms—blog posts, web pages, newsletters, ebooks, the list goes on—it’s all  vital to modern marketing.  Channels come and go, but content is constant.

That makes us think about the tea flavor Constant Comment. Do you even know what that flavor is? Good thing Google helped us find this description:

To this day members of the Bigelow family are still the only ones who blend this secret recipe of black tea, rind of oranges and sweet spice.

Sweet spice! That's what you should be aiming for with your content. A proprietary blend of information, tone, and personal perspective. Steep your audience in constant content. But never without an aromatic plan.

Information — What is actually helpful to your audience?

Tone — Tone and personality matter as much as the information you're sharing. Are you into bizarre extended tea metaphors? Why are you still reading this?

Medium — How do you feel about the fact that LinkedIn rewards fuax-confessional deep thoughts from tech bros?

Form — variety is the spice of life.

Content Strategy Example

I guess we have to talk about how to do it now. Alright listen up. What's your goal? Your strategy needs to be based on that. As you can probably tell, our goal is to be bizarrely different. You can look up 25 way more helpful and useful articles about how to create a content strategy. So we're going for entertainment. Differentiation is key.

Ostensibly useful Process Flow

Providing valuable, free information to people on the internet is a fuck-ton of work. It's also highly lucrative and rewarding. Here's how to do it:

1. SEO Research. Hire an expert or use a tool from 2007. We don't care, just do your best.
2. Idea Development. Call a meeting no one wants to attend and sit in awkward silence alternating with everyone talking at once.
3. Write. We have no advice for this.
4. Edit. This is the least pleasant and most important part of the writing process. Be ruthless.
5. Publish. Press a button. Wait for the internet to notice. Sit there like Bernie Sanders in his mittens.

8 Steps to a Content Creation Plan

1. Reductive
2. How To Lists
3. Aren't
4. Actually
5. That
6. Interesting
7. or
8. Helpful

To return to meaningful life quotes that are applicable to content marketing:

Humans make plans and God laughs.

There's no ROI in heaven. God bless.