Assignment

Content Marketing Strategy and Plan

CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY AND PLAN

Content marketing is the only marketing left – Seth Godin

So, let’s get going on this content marketing journey…

Objective(s)
 Apply content marketing fundamentals principles to develop a basic content marketing strategy
and plan

Instructions
Storytelling
What’s your story? Your “youness” right now for the next step in your career for a personal brand.
Your brand promise or unique selling proposition (USP) for a brand in general.
 Describe your deeper story/your ultimate why statement
 Clearly demonstrate this from page 1 of the strategy and plan

Content Marketing Mission

What is the goal that you want content marketing to help achieve–for your personal brand, for a
business brand you’re associated with? Why are you doing this? How will this help with the next step
in your career path? What does success look like? Content needs to have a purpose to keep you
excited to do it, to keep investing time and money in it.
 Identify one or two (1-2) personal brand or business brand goal(s)
 Write your content marketing mission
 Define your SMART goal(s)

Audience Persona
Who can you provide unique value to through your content? Why will this person care? Use your
knowledge of segmentation based on needs and wants, demographics and psychographics.
 Build an audience persona for the person you want to connect with using the Xtensio persona
template

Brand Voice
How do you talk normally? This is a good starting point. Are you funny, serious, shocking, informative,
entertaining, educational? It’ll likely be some combination of these factors.
 Describe your voice using two to three (2-3) adjectives that feel right to you

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Assignment
Content Marketing Strategy and Plan
Content Ideas
What topic will your content focus on? Which formats will it be delivered?
 Identify one (1) topic area (Digital marketing isn’t a topic because it’s too broad)
 Outline three (3) content ideas (aka cluster content)–working title, content format, and a brief
description of the idea/type for each piece of content to include in the content calendar

One (1) piece of content must be long-form written article 1,000-1,500 words that’s very “readable”.
For example, Formatting Secrets of Content That Gets Shared from Buffer is a how-to resource that’s
over 2,500 words(!)–well researched, logical flow with clear sections, easy-to-read text and includes
visuals to support words, demonstrates organic SEO practices.

One (1) piece of content must include some multimedia element (i.e. infographic, audio, video or photo
essay) with a quick hitter written post (300-400 words) to describe/outline it and optimize for search
online. For example, SPOS #654 – Brand Storytelling With Ekaterina Walter from Six Pixels of
Separation is podcast w/supporting show notes and resources to provide more context and
demonstrates organic SEO practices.

One (1) piece of content is up to you to choose. It could be another post from the above two options. If
you don’t have an About page for your website (or if you do and it’s just kind of there) then consider
taking it to the next level. For example, here are some Awesome About Me and About Us Page
Examples from HubSpot for inspiration.

Publishing Plan
Where will you publish content? On what specific online platforms will you use? There needs to be a
home/hub platform–typically this is a website blog–that you can direct people to. Choose from one
of three (3) options:
1. Your personal website if you’ve got one already
2. Articles for your LinkedIn page
3. The blog for organization you’re working/volunteering for

When are you going to publish and post?

 Create a content/editorial calendar in a table format (so it looks like a calendar)
 Outline your plan for micro-content content on two (2) social networks, with at least one (1)
post for each piece of content on each social network

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Content Marketing Strategy and Plan

Assignment Format
 Create a multi-page report using one of the Slidedoc templates (in Microsoft PowerPoint) that
was provided in the course resources
 Aside from cover, table of contents and appendix; each page of a Slidedoc is organized to
include these elements along with white space:
o TITLE
o Main takeaway
o Supporting body copy
o Data visualization (usually 1, absolute maximum of 2 on a page)
 Make sure each element on the page is clearly readable at 100% page size ("zoom")
o Typically, this means the minimum font size of 12pt for the important elements
 Submit the final document in PDF format–which will keep your original formatting intact