Creating marketing content is always a challenge because doing content right takes time. If you’re executing a traditional content campaign, the marketing team has to create content while doing promotion and community engagement and to synchronize content with events, offers, and campaigns. It takes planning.

With these competing priorities, deadlines can be missed. A good campaign plan anticipates those missed deadlines, and allows for campaign execution to continue unabated. In this article I’ll look at three mistakes brands make related to content planning and publication, and tell you ways to help fix those problems.

Mistake 1: Failing to Prioritize Content

Some content cannot be pushed out to a later date. If a product launch date is coming up, or a holiday sale, or an event that happens on a specific day, you’re going to have hard dates when content needs to be ready for publication.

That seems obvious, and it also seems obvious that core content would be prioritized first. The problem is that campaigns usually require many pieces of content, and even core content can get lost in the shuffle when this is the case.

How can core content get lost in the shuffle? The conversation goes something like this:

Manager: Friday we’ll go out with our new product features list blog post.

Team member: It’s not ready. We haven’t been able to complete interviews of three of the feature owners.

<Awkward silence>

Manager: Ok, then let’s go with our Slideshare of the new features.

Team member: We were basing the SlideShare on the blog post so that’s not done either.

<Yelling>

Manager: Then let’s publish the infographic on the new features.

<Awkward silence part deux>

Manager: Let me guess, the infographic is based on the SlideShare presentation isn’t it?

The Fix: Create Content Flowcharts and Prioritize Content

When planning content for a campaign, it is amazingly easy for pieces of content to get lost in the shuffle. Getting those core pieces of content identified, and making them a high priority so that key content gets done first is essential. For smaller campaigns, this can be done at the end of the brainstorming process by having the team identify those pieces that are core to the campaign. Make this prioritization an independent, and essential step in the planning process.

For more complex campaigns with a lot of content, we recommend a content flowchart. A content flowchart shows the dependencies between pieces of content. Taking the scenario stated above it would show that the infographic can’t be done until the SlideShare is done, and that the SlideShare can’t get done until the blog post is done.

That information would point to that blog post as a core piece of content that needed to be prioritized. Optionally, you can add any steps needed to complete the core content.

You can use dependencies in most project management tools, charting software like Visio, or even a spreadsheet to track content dependencies.

TIP: In the example above, writing a blog post about the new features of a product might require input or interviews from numerous members of the product team. That’s something that’s good to know. Product teams don’t typically have a lot of time as launch dates draw near. Leaving a content creator to try can “catch a few minutes” with each feature owner is risky. It might be better to get supervisors involved and have all the stakeholders and the content team sit down over lunch to get all their questions answered. There are a number of ways to address those types of issues, but you will never address them if you don’t know they exist. Content flowcharts and core content prioritization can help you spot those potential issues.

Mistake 2: Not Having Short Content Pieces in your Content Plan

There are many types of campaigns that require deep, thorough, or technical content. It’s content that’s critical to showing product features, service benefits, and thought leadership. It also takes a long time to create.

This is where short content comes in. We’re talking about a single page blog post, a 2-minute video, an image with text overlay, or even a compelling tweet. This type of content serves a purpose too. They show your understanding of the problems faced by your audience, and can show empathy for the day-to-day problems they face.

It’s not just your content team that’s busy, so is everyone else and shorter content tends to get consumed when people don’t have time to engage with larger pieces of content. From a content development perspective, shorter content pieces can be created quickly and help you build up a repository of content that can keep your content channels full when your content plan is behind schedule.

The Fix: Include Short Content Pieces in your Content Plan

Some organizations are challenged by short content pieces, this especially seems to be the case for organizations used to creating longer, complex, or technical content. They can’t seem to come up with good ideas for short content. When working with our clients on this we’ve found two key factors that make shorter content pieces challenging:

1. Planning: Some organizations assume short is easy so they don’t plan for them. They might put some ideas in a grab bag document, and that’s as far as it goes. Short content also requires planning. Goals for the content need to be identified, topics brainstormed and selected, and outlines discussed, feedback solicited, authors assigned, and so forth. If you follow the same process for planning short pieces of content as you do long pieces of content, both types of content should end up being high quality.

2. Ideas: Simply put, some organizations have difficulty coming up with topics that can be covered briefly. Fortunately, there are lots of places you can look for inspiration:

• Answer common customer questions. A good example is this short informational video by Home Depot.

• Show videos of how customers use your products.

• Create a tip of the day for a product or area of interest in your industry. Karen Yankovich publishes lots of short Quick Tips on Social Media Today.

• Comment on a published article from outside your organization. Provide your organization’s perspective on relevant articles published about your industry.

• Overlay a compelling quote from previously published content on top of a compelling image. See General Electric’s Instagram account for an example of a highly technical organization that knows how to create compelling, shareable images.

• Put industry stats in a short, simple stat graphic. See this article from Co.Design on digital posters (what we call stat graphics) versus infographics.

Look for inspiration from competitor’s other content sources. Let the topics and content you find from others inspire your own.

A great tool for finding content ideas, as well as influencers is Buzzsumo. With Buzzsumo you can search by keywords, domains, and other criteria to find content, see what topics are popular, and who’s sharing them.

Mistake 3: Not Having Backup Posts Ready in Case Content Slips

It’s simple, if you are creating content to publish, some pieces will slip past their publication dates. It will happen. Someone will get sick. An interview will be rescheduled. The content will go down some unforeseen path, or the focus of the piece will get changed mid-development. Sometimes a piece of content just grows much larger in production than it looked in the outline.

The Fix: Plan for Slips and have Alternative Content Ready

The best way to mitigate the impact is to plan for it. No-one wants to miss a publication date, but a savvy social media manager anticipates it, and has other content completed and ready so that it can be published in its place. This is where the fix for mistake 2 becomes the fix for mistake 3 as those short content pieces are great for filling unforeseen gaps in your content execution.

Not only should you plan shorter content, but you should also set content developers to work creating shorter content in parallel with larger content pieces immediately so that you build a repository of content that can be published if something slips.

As we stated earlier, this doesn’t always work. Some content pieces need to be published on time - Core content is core for a reason. But, in a longer running campaign, there are often content pieces that aren’t tied to specific events, they’re designed to sustain campaign momentum. Having this content will allow you to continue the cadence of your campaign with fresh content.

Conclusion

Planning your marketing content has to be done with an awareness of the pitfalls inherent in the content development process. Prioritizing core content, ensuring that it gets done on time, including well planned short content pieces, and building a repository of completed content can help maintain your campaign’s publication schedule, and ensure your audience is engaged with new content. For more tips, see our ebook: SEO Analysis for Lead Generation for tips and guidance on planning your next digital marketing campaign.