Free Content Plan Template

What is a Content Plan?

A content plan is a comprehensive strategy that outlines how you will create, manage, and distribute content. It helps you organize the content production process and track your progress.

Often, a content plan is mistaken for a content strategy. Although they have similar names, a content plan is not the same as a content strategy. A content strategy defines the goals and other important elements that inform your content marketing efforts.

Meanwhile, a content plan does the following:

• It outlines how you will manage and execute your content marketing strategy
• It determines the type of content you need to achieve your business goals
• It prioritizes your content accordingly to ensure a smooth production process
• It helps you create a content calendar and plan your content in advance

With a detailed content plan, you will know what type of content to create and when. This removes uncertainty from your content creation process and ensures the content you create aligns with your overall business goals.

Why Do You Need a Content Plan Template?

Content plays an important role in business lead generation. A well-designed content plan makes it easier for your team to implement your content strategy to achieve your marketing goals.

Using a content plan template helps you stay organized and bring efficiency throughout the content lifecycle. Below are the key benefits of using a content plan template to manage your content production process:

• Strategic alignment: A robust content plan template ensures your content marketing efforts are aligned with your overall business goals and objectives.

• Audience alignment: It clearly defines your target audience and their likes and preferences, and lists content ideas that will resonate with your audience.

• Seamless collaboration: A content plan template makes it easier for team members to collaborate on tasks as they implement your content strategy.

• Prevent delays: A helps you organize your content production process to help your team members stay on top of content deadlines and prevent delays.

• Resource efficiency: A content plan template projects future resource allocation to help you prevent unnecessary expenses that could blow up your budget.

• Measurable results: A well-defined content plan template includes performance metrics that allow you to measure the success of your content marketing efforts.

An effective content plan template keeps everything and everyone on track and aligns your content with your overall business strategy.

Our FREE content plan template will help you organize your content efforts to ensure every piece of content you create contributes to business success.

What’s Included in Our FREE Content Plan Template?

Our comprehensive content plan template provides you with useful information to help you manage your content assets effectively. Here's what is included in this our free template.

1. Content Strategy

What goals do you want to achieve with your content? Our content plan template has a section where you can outline your content strategy to ensure your content efforts align with your overall marketing goals.

Here’s what you can include in this section:

• Your top-level SMART content goals and objectives
• Your reasons for creating content for your audience
• A competitive analysis of the content landscape
• Your unique selling proposition across all content
• The audience-centered content topics to focus on

2. Target Audience

Who are you creating content for? Our content plan template includes a section where you clearly define your target users. This will help you create content that appeals to your target users and drive them to action. Here’s what you can include in this section:

• The specific characteristics of your target customers
• Details on how your audience finds information online
• Brief description of the users your competitors target
• The top ways your audience consumes content online
• The stage in the buyer’s journey where your users are

3. Distribution Strategy

This section covers how your content will be delivered. The content planning template includes a section to define the distribution channels for your content assets. Here’s what you can include in this section:

• The platforms you plan to use to tell your brand story
• Plans to promote your content to reach a wider audience
• The different forms of content you’ll create for different platforms
• The timing and frequency of your content distribution efforts
• Strategies for cross-promoting content on different platforms

4. Search Engine Optimization Plan

This section helps you plan how you will scale your content against the competition. This free content plan template allows you to add your target keywords and other SEO best practices to help drive quality traffic to your content assets.

Here’s what you can include in this section:

• Details on how to find keywords for your brand’s content
• Details for optimizing your content for on-page SEO
• Plans for optimizing your content for mobile customers
• Local SEO plans for content targeting specific locations
• Strategies to optimize your website’s user experience

5. Editorial Calendar

Here, you plan your content publishing schedule. Our content planning template includes an editorial calendar where you can specify the deadlines and publishing dates for each piece of content to prevent delays. Here’s what you can include in this section:

• How frequently you will be publishing your content
• The stages content goes through before it’s published
• The deadlines for each stage of the content process
• How your content calendar aligns with seasonal events
• Opportunities to repurpose existing content in the calendar

6. Content Team

This covers details on your team members who are responsible for researching, creating, filming, editing, and publishing your content. The template streamlines the content production process by providing a section to add the roles of different team members. Here’s what you can include in this section:

• The roles of each member of the content team
• The expertise of each member of the content team
• How the work flows from one team member to another
• The collaborative framework for the whole team
• Communication protocols within the content team

7. Associated Costs

Here you can list the resources you need to create high-quality content for your audience. Our free template includes a section to add the costs associated with different tasks and functions within the content marketing process. Here’s what to include in this section:

• Budget for the tools and software required for content creation
• Budget for acquiring creative assets like stock photos and videos
• Plans to boost the visibility of your content through paid promotion
• Budget for hiring external content creators, editors, and designers
• Costs associated with subscribing to premium web analytics tools

8. Performance Tracking

In this section, you can plan which KPIs you’ll use and how you’ll track them. Our free content planning template allows you to highlight your key content performance metrics and strategies for tracking them so you can improve your future and existing content.

Here’s what to include in this section:

• Highlight the KPIs that align with your content marketing goals
• Specify the tools/platforms you’ll use to track the selected KPIs
• Mention how often you will collect and review performance data
• List plans for performance benchmarking against industry standards
• Mention how you will collect direct feedback from user reviews

How to Use This Content Plan Template

Here’s how to use our comprehensive content plan template to manage your content production process effectively:

1. Download your FREE copy of the content plan template
2. Fill in the different sections of the content plan template as instructed
3. Add a deadline and preferred publishing date for each piece of content
4. Assign content marketing roles to different members of your content team
5. With everything set, start creating the content according to the template
6. Monitor the performance of your content assets based on the identified KPIs
7. Audit the effectiveness of your content plan and optimize it where necessary

FAQ

Q1. What is a content plan?

A. A content plan is a comprehensive framework that outlines how you will create, manage, and distribute your content. Having a well-defined template helps you streamline your content production process and consistently create high-quality content.

Q2. How do I create a content plan template?

A. Creating a content planning template can be a time-consuming and laborious process. We've done all the hard work and present you with our comprehensive, ready-to-use, and FREE content plan template.

All you have to do is download it using the links on this page to get your own FREE copy. You can customize it to your needs and use it to make a comprehensive content plan for your business.

Q3. Why do I need a content plan template?

A. A content plan template outlines how you will manage and execute your content marketing strategy. It determines the type of marketing content you need to achieve your business goals and prioritizes them accordingly to ensure a smooth production process. It streamlines your entire content creation and distribution process, thus saving you precious time and effort.

Q4. What are the 7 steps for using our free content plan template?

A. The steps for using our comprehensive content plan template are as follows:

• Download the resource: Use the download buttons on this page to download a copy of the content planning template.

• Fill the necessary sections: Provide the information requested in different sections such as your target audience, business goals, and content KPIs.

• Add deadlines: Set the deadline for each piece of content and add the key dates to prevent delays and maintain a consistent publishing calendar.

• Add team members: Assign different roles to your team members according to their skills and capabilities.

• Create content: Start creating your marketing content according to the content plan template and ensure to stick to the deadlines.

• Track your performance: Monitor the performance of your content assets based on the identified performance metrics.
• Review and refine: Audit the effectiveness of your content plan against your content marketing and adjust where necessary.

Q5. Is the content plan template really free?

A. Yes, it is absolutely free and there are no hidden charges. Use the download buttons on this page to get your FREE copy today.

Manage Your Content Production Process Effectively With This Template

Don’t miss the opportunity to streamline your content production process. Download our FREE content plan template to manage your content creation and distribution effectively.