How a content plan can boost your small business and reduce your stress.

Single-handedly running a business a business involves wearing a lot of hats, which is demanding enough let alone when you combine that with family life. With a content plan in place you improve your chances for creating the success you dream of for your business. Creating a plan to cover a set period has many benefits. (I use a 90 day plan that is then broken down into months.)

Just to be clear, when I say content plan this is different to a strategy. You would use parts of a strategy to help you know what to put in your plan.

Reducing your stress levels

When you’re constantly busy it can get overwhelming to juggle all the roles you need to fulfil. I know you’re probably thinking you don’t want to add something else to the to-do list but having a plan in place helps you feel more in control and reduces your stress. It’s proven that you achieve 41% more action when you have a plan to follow. So it makes sense to plan an ongoing task like content creation so that you can get the jobs done as easily as possible.

When you’re setting out your content plan think about what you need your business to achieve in your chosen time span, as this will influence the type of content you create. For example if you need to build people’s awareness of what you do then your going to need to focus on content that shows you understand what your customer needs and how you provide it.

Creating a smoother customer journey

Whatever what you want to achieve with your content, you will need an awareness of where your audience is in their customer journey* with you. Your content plan will help you map out content to move them from where they are now towards being ready to buy from you.

Carrying on the idea that you were aiming to raise awareness and grow your audience, you would be planning content for new followers to help them get to know you, taking them into the like you and finally into the trust you phase. The content in each phase is different and depending on the timeline of your plan and how much content you’re able to produce you probably won’t complete each phase in one content plan.

Balancing value and sales content.

It’s important when producing content to remember the ration of 80% value to 20% sales content. To make sure you’re not forgetting to sell to your audience but also that you’re not selling to much. People appreciate value.

Creating a clear message.

All this clarity on what you want your content to achieve and who your aiming to talk to will make it much easier to produce a clearer message. This not only benefits your reader but it also makes your job of writing posts much easier. This is especially useful for you during busy times of year. Like now as I write this with impending summer holidays and the onset of harvest.

If creating a content plan sounds like something that could really support your business, I have a ready made 90 day plan outline so that you can get started with a simple set of questions and planning sheets. You can find it right here

*Jargon buster: Customer journey is going from just discovering you to building that know/like/trust to finally being ready to purchase.