Want to plan ahead and stay ahead of your content marketing efforts? Here are ways you can plan your content in advance.
In this article, you will learn five effective ways to strategically plan your content in advance, including ways you can stay 1-2 weeks ahead of your content planning schedule.
1. Use a content calendar
Create a content calendar to keep track of important dates such as the publishing of new blog posts, videos, trending topics, launches and promotional dates.
You’ll also want to use your content calendar to keep track of important dates you want to create content around such as hashtag holidays, national holidays or themes that are relevant for the month (i.e. back to school, New Year’s resolutions, summer bucket list).
For example, during the month of January, a topic theme that is top of mind for people are New Year’s resolutions, getting in shape, recommitting to eating healthy or getting better with their finances. Think of topics that are seasonal and top of mind for your audience and think of content angles you can incorporate into your content marketing to keep your content timely and your audience engaged.
An important thing to do is to also structure your content around your content pillars. Content pillars are 3-5 topics that your brand or business discusses in-depth. Content pillars are sometimes referred to as “content buckets” or “content categories.”
Your content pillars give you clarity around your niche, your messaging and target audience. Your pillars also serve to complement topics around your products or services and also support your overall goals (i.e. audience growth or revenue goals).
When you intentionally create and curate content around your content pillars, it helps to maximize your content strategy and marketing plan.
Related: How to Maximize Your Content Pillars for Content Creation
Content Calendar Template
Get access to this content calendar that helps you maximize your channel distribution and helps you with your content marketing.
2. Review previous content
When it comes to planning your content in advance, it’s important to review previous posts to see what you can share again.
Take a look at your analytics and see what performed well and determine if there’s an opportunity to share it again. You don’t have to always start content from scratch. See if there’s an opportunity to re-share or repurpose a previous post from your blog, website or social media content.
As you review your content, remember that you can always repurpose content in three ways:
- Trim: If you created a long-form piece of content such as a video, blog post or podcast, try trimming that original piece into multiple short assets.
- Expand: Try expanding an original piece of content and going more in-depth on the topic.
- Convert: Diversify your assets by converting your original piece of content into another format. For example, you can take a podcast episode and make it a quote graphic, or an audio snippet or use the text as part of your caption.
Download free guide
Avoid creating content from scratch and start repurposing your content to maximize your content marketing efforts. Download this Content Repurposing Guide to present your content in a new format and expand its lifespan and reach.
3. Swipe file
If you want to plan content effectively in advance, it’s important to leave yourself inspiration and notes through a swipe file.
A swipe file allows you to save bookmarks, images, words, or links to posts that you have previously saved and found inspirational. Refer back to your swipe file and incorporate your own creative take on the subject. Remember to contribute additional value or thoughts on the topic.
When you have a place to capture and store content ideas, it makes your content planning easier. Here are some tips to help you organize your content marketing ideas.
Make it a point to have a swipe file with podcasts, links to research, books, images, words or other things that inspire you or that you’ve learned so that you can add context and value to your content and better serve your audience with great content.
5 Tips to Help You Plan Your Content in Advance Share on X
4. Plan your content mix
To help plan your content ahead of time, you need to decide which platforms you will be active on, what type of content you will share and how often you will be publishing.
Don’t get lost trying to be everywhere at the same time. For example, if you want to be on Instagram, decide how often you’ll post photos, graphics or videos. Think about whether you’ll do Reels or Carousel posts. Perhaps you’ll prioritize one asset over the other.
It’s time for you to commit to a content mix so that you don’t burn out trying to be everywhere and post everywhere all at the same time. Knowing your scope of work will help you stay focused on your priorities and what content you need to create.
This step is important because it gives you a clear scope of work and helps you better manage your time with your content planning and content creation.
Remember, you don’t need more content, you need effective content. Think about what those effective pieces of content would look like and start planning and plugging them into your content calendar.
Content Calendar Template
This content calendar has the foundational elements built into it that will help you be more strategic with the content and marketing activities you’re focusing on.
5. Commit to a plan
To help you plan your content in advance, anchor yourself to the content pillars you will share, how many posts per week you will publish and reverse engineer it so that you meet your deliverable dates. Give yourself time to plan on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis.
Plan and schedule your content in advance:
- Map out your content on a quarterly basis so that you know what you have coming up.
- At the end of each month, plan for the following month.
- Set aside time once a week to plan and create content for the week ahead.
Aim to plan on a monthly and weekly basis, all while trying to stay 1-2 weeks ahead of your publishing schedule, or more. Work your way through a cadence that works for you.
Doing the day-of content creation is too stressful and can lead to a frustrating experience. Instead, set aside time once a week or a few days out of the month to create and schedule your content in advance.
Related: Content Planning Methods to Streamline Your Marketing
Key Takeaways
- Use a content calendar to identify key dates, announcements and launches that are important for your brand or business. Make sure to structure your content around your content pillars.
- Review your existing content to see what performed well and why. Identify ways to repurpose your content and give it a new format.
- Establish a system for capturing and storing content ideas and inspiration.
- Plan how many posts you will need to create and commit to staying on a publishing schedule.
What’s one thing you will implement to help you stay ahead of your content planning efforts?
