Global online content consumption doubled during the pandemic and has been growing steadily ever since. This is especially true of social media, given that 98% of users said they expected to use this channel to make a purchase in the future.
For marketers, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing efforts while generating almost 3X as many leads.
The foundation of all online marketing is: Content.
So, a good content marketing management plan is akin to a seasoned captain setting sail with a well-defined map, a clear destination, and a deep understanding of the stars under which they navigate.
Let’s begin the journey. 🚢
How to Create a Content Marketing Management Plan | ClickUp
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat is Content Marketing Management?
Content marketing management is the strategic practice of planning, creating, distributing, and analyzing content to reach and engage a target audience effectively.
It is the backbone of a successful digital marketing strategy, ensuring the right messages reach the right people at the right time through the right channels.
This involves:
Crafting content: Articles, videos, podcasts, infographics, and reports that resonate with the audience based on a thorough understanding of their needs, challenges, preferences, and behaviors.
Distributing content: Ensuring the content reaches its intended audience through optimal channels, such as website, blog, newsletter, YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
Repurposing: Increasing content marketing efficiency by repurposing and redistributing content across various channels. For instance, writing a blog post from a podcast or creating animated videos from company events.
Analyzing impact: Measuring the effectiveness of content marketing efforts against content marketing KPIs with data points, such as no. of visitors, engagement, leads, conversions, etc.
Leveraging tools: Using Content marketing software to create, automate, and analyze campaign performance.
That being said, effective execution of the content marketing strategy hinges on the captain of the ship: the content marketing manager. Let’s delve deep into a content marketing manager’s role, responsibilities and skills.
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe Role of a Content Marketing Manager
Just as a captain must chart a course, manage the crew, and respond to the changing tides, the content marketing manager must guide their content through the choppy waters of the internet, ensuring it reaches its intended destination: the audience.
The key responsibilities of a content marketing manager
Content marketing managers take on several responsibilities, including:
Developing content strategy: Crafting an effective content marketing strategy aligning efforts to business goals, customer needs and marketing objectives. This would include:
- Key messaging
- Content pillars
- Content formats
- Distribution channels
- Metrics and KPIs
Build on the foundation of content marketing strategy templates. Customize, add/remove fields, and use them as you need.
Creating content: Overseeing the creation and curation of engaging, relevant content across various formats (articles, videos, infographics, etc.) and platforms (blogs, social media, websites).
Team coordination and management: Leading and collaborating with the content team to create high-quality output. This involves:
- Goal setting and delegation
- Content brainstorming for creative campaign ideas
- Working closely with writers, designers, videographers, and other content creators, providing direction and feedback
- Setting standards for quality
Editorial calendar management: Planning and maintaining a schedule for content production and publication across all channels. Setting up content calendar templates to ensure consistency and repeatability across teams.
SEO: Enable ranking with search engine optimization tactics such as keyword research, on-page optimization (such as meta tags and headings), and off-page credibility building.
Budget management: Overseeing the content marketing budget by allocating resources efficiently, negotiating with vendors and contributors, and maximizing the marketing mix.
Analytics and continuous improvement: Monitoring performance on key metrics so the team can continuously improve its outcomes.
Skills required of a content marketing manager
While anyone with an eye for marketing and content can work up to becoming a content marketing manager, here are some skills that would help.
- SEO: Writing, optimizing, and managing ranking on search engines
- Editorial: Language and storytelling skills
- Time management: Resource allocation, scheduling, and organization
- Feedback: Reviewing and guiding content creators
- Research: Market, customer, and internal research techniques
- Collaboration: Working with cross-functional teams across sales, engineering, HR (for employer brand content), finance, etc.
- Leadership: Hiring, managing, and enabling the marketing team
With these skills, here’s how to maximize your content marketing outcomes.
Summarize this article for me pleaseContent Marketing Strategies and Tactics
Successful content marketing needs the right blend of strategic thinking and efficient execution. Let’s see how they come together.
Define your goals and objectives
Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals. Common examples are:
- Increasing website traffic by 15% in the next quarter
- Generating 50 new leads from search engine marketing per quarter
- Improve social media sales by 30%
Understand your audience
To create a successful content marketing campaign, you must make it meaningful, valuable, and usable to your target audience. To do so, you need to know them.
- Conduct surveys to collect primary quantitative data
- Conduct interviews to ask deeper questions and gather qualitative data
- Use analytics to understand behaviors (both conscious and unconscious)
For example, if you’re launching a new productivity tool, you might survey professionals to collect primary data, interview your specific TG, and then launch user observations to monitor how they interact with your MVP. Then, create a persona of potential customers.
Understand the market
Market and competitor analysis is fundamental to creating differentiated content. Here are some ways you can do that.
Basic search: Google basic questions about your business offerings. See what is already available to later brainstorm on what you could contribute.
Detailed study: Visit your competitors’ websites or social media channels and observe them. Note what you’re impressed by and what you’d do differently.
Don’t stop there. Look at other brands that serve your customers, even if they are not in competition with you. For example, if you’re a project management app, you might want to see content from productivity influencers or desk/office supplies brands, which might give you insights into the user psyche.
Tool-based research: Use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to analyze competitors’ content. Look at their most shared and highest-ranking content to identify missing topics. This can reveal opportunities to cover those topics more thoroughly or differently.
Build SEO capabilities
Use your research to create an SEO strategy and build best practices.
On-page SEO: Create content on topics directly or indirectly related to your audience. Include keywords, meta tags, meta descriptions, H1/2/3 tags, image alt-text, slug, and internal links.
Off-page SEO: Create backlinks through consistent engagement
Technical SEO: Ensure you have all the necessary elements, such as an XML sitemap, the right architecture, robots.txt, menus, pagination, etc.
Most importantly, focus on creating comprehensive content that addresses user intent to improve rankings.
Don’t stop at publishing
The real impact of your social media strategy is in engagement after publication. Encourage comments and feedback to create a two-way conversation.
- Invite comments by asking a question. “What’s your favorite? Reply in the comments” is the simplest way to get started
- Run polls
- Conduct contests, quizzes etc.
- Host guests/star customers on your platform
Never let a comment go unanswered (okay, within reasonable limits!)
Measure and analyze your results
Use digital marketing apps like Google Analytics to track how well your content performs against your goals. Look at metrics like page views, bounce rate, and conversion rate to understand what works and refine your strategy over time.
Stay up-to-date
Stay informed about the latest in content marketing and your industry. Attend webinars, follow thought leaders on social media, and subscribe to industry newsletters. Being adaptable and informed allows you to adjust your strategy to stay ahead.
If that sounds daunting, no sweat. We’ve found a simple and unique framework for you to integrate all the best practices into one clear plan. Let’s get to it.
Summarize this article for me pleaseSteps to Creating a High-Quality Content Marketing Management Plan
In the evolving world of the internet, content marketing can feel like sailing against crosswinds. You can prevent that with a robust content marketing management plan. Here’s how.
1. Conduct a three-way content audit
Before you go shopping (i.e., creating a content marketing management plan), you need a shopping list (i.e., content audit). So, conduct thorough reviews of the following.
Existing content for:
- Topics you cover and those you miss
- Site architecture and organization of your content
- Language, tone, style and other brand elements
- Social media channels and audience reach
Team capabilities for size, skills for creation/distribution of content, budgets, and subject matter expertise you need.
Competition landscape for topics covered, ideas that work, influencer collaborations, offers, etc.
2. Brainstorm content ideas
The content audit should give you an idea of what you need to do to be effective in your content plan. Now, gather your team for brainstorming sessions to come up with content ideas.
Use ClickUp Whiteboards to discuss ideas together as a team. Move topics around, organize, plan, and schedule, all in one place!
While you’re doing this, sometimes, the topics you list might feel random. So, create a map of the topics. SEO teams use the content pillars approach or the hub-and-spoke model to organize themselves.
Use ClickUp Mind Maps to create an architecture/hierarchy of ideas. Node-based mind maps also enable you to connect ideas, building a neural network of content you’re creating.
Share with the team and collect feedback.
3. Make the content plan
Now that the high-energy brainstorming is done, organize the ideas to put them into action.
Identify topics: List everything you can create content about to help your chosen target audience. Think tangentially. You can also use AI marketing tools for ideation.
For instance, if you’re selling fountain pens, you can obviously make content about your products. You can also create engaging content about the history of writing instruments, the latest tech, and complementary products like inks, storage, etc.
Think of the entire landscape and list ideas accordingly. Go from idea to action by converting nodes into trackable ClickUp tasks.
Write briefs: Once you leave the brainstorming table, your team will forget everything you discussed. So, note them down. ClickUp Docs is a great note-taking tool while you’re brainstorming.
From there, create a detailed brief for each content piece, outlining the topic, target audience, keywords, and objectives. Also include what format you need the content in, such as video, audio, infographic, images, etc.
ClickUp Docs can help manage these briefs. You can also use the description part of the task view. Don’t have the time? Use ClickUp Brain to whip up briefs in no time!
Set acceptability criteria: Set content creators up for success by clearly stating what they need to achieve. For instance, this could be the number of words, inclusion of keywords, credible sources, Grammarly check, etc.
Checklists on ClickUp tasks is a great way to ensure this. Just create a template and apply it to all tasks automatically in the future. Voila!
Edit extensively: Develop a comprehensive set of editing guidelines that cover style, tone, grammar, and the factual accuracy of your content. Then, assign specific tasks to content editors, copy editors, proofreaders, or fact-checkers based on their expertise.
4. Create a content calendar
Set deadlines: Schedule the content items on a calendar to ensure that you have a consistent and diverse distribution of content across channels. Typically, teams break this into x blog per blog post, email newsletters on Wednesday, etc. You can also set recurring tasks on ClickUp and update descriptions on the go.
Don’t reinvent the sail. Use ClickUp’s content calendar template to get started.
Assign users: Give each task a team member. See who’s available and assign them work based on their workload. If a resource works on multiple tasks, ensure their workload is reasonable. Also, map dependencies, if any.
Plan for high activity: Identify seasonal content, campaigns, product launches, or other events that are likely to happen—schedule content for these well in advance to prevent the last-minute rush.
5. Distribute. Distribute. Distribute.
You might be writing the next Pulitzer-winning article. However, if it’s not distributed, no one’s gonna read it.
So, share your content on social media, sure. But do better. Consider:
- Email marketing
- Paid advertising aimed at lead generation
- Repurposing to other formats/channels
- Re-upping social media posts after a short period
- Updating content periodically
6. Operationalize content creation and management
Once you have the foundation, begin standardizing your content marketing management process. For instance,
- Content writing templates are a great way to ensure consistency in your writing
- Use repeatable landing pages for specific content pieces or campaigns
- Use ClickUp Automations to change the status or send reminders for each task automatically
7. Track and analyze performance
For a lean content team to deliver consistent business outcomes, you must measure performance on your marketing KPIs. ClickUp’s Dashboard is designed to enable exactly that.
Integrate your marketing tools into ClickUp for a consolidated view. Track and analyze progress towards your marketing goals in detail and at a glance. Contextualize tasks connected to your roadmap and go-to-market plans.
Summarize this article for me pleaseEffortlessly Navigate the Content Marketing Rough Seas with ClickUp
As we dock after our voyage on creating a content marketing management plan, it’s clear that the journey is indeed complex. A good content marketing management plan needs the imagination of a content creator, the market focus on a marketer, and the organizational skills of a project manager.
This unique blend can be further enhanced with the right tools. ClickUp’s marketing project management tool is designed to support a wide range of users, whether creators, reviewers, or managers.
Get to the shore safe and satisfied with ClickUp. Try ClickUp for free.
Summarize this article for me pleaseFAQs About Content Marketing Management Plan
1. What is the role of a content marketer?
The role of a content marketer is multifaceted, blending creative, strategic, and analytical responsibilities to drive brand awareness, engage audiences, and, ultimately, contribute to business growth.
At its core, a content marketer’s role is to create valuable content and distribute it consistently to attract and retain prospective customers, which will drive profitable customer action.
2. What are the 4 fundamentals of content marketing?
The 4 fundamentals of content marketing are:
- Understanding of the audience
- Content creation
- Content distribution
- Measurement and analysis
3. Is content management part of marketing?
Yes, content management is a foundational element of marketing. It enables marketers to efficiently and effectively use content to achieve business and marketing objectives, making it indispensable in today’s content-driven digital world.
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
