Once you know what kind of content you will create, you need to establish the process for creating it. Your content execution plan should be a step-by-step map oh how an idea turns into a finished product. This plan adds stability to your content marketing efforts, and ensures that you can track the progress of each piece of content at every level.
What will a content execution plan include? A schedule, an idea process, a project brief and a content chain of command.
The schedule: You know what you’re trying to achieve with your content, now how much content do you need? Do you require one video per week? Two blog posts every day? One webinar and one demo every month? Build out a content schedule and share it with your team. Everyone involved in content marketing should know the schedule so they’re not surprised by any deadlines. The earlier the lead time, the more people can invest in each piece of content—and quality means everything.
The idea: Who is in charge of coming up with ideas? Certain people should be responsible for regularly contributing content ideas, but this should also be open to anyone with a great idea. You don’t want someone to keep an idea to themselves because of process. You also need to lay out where ideas are brought and who approves them. Once your idea is approved, you move into…
The brief: If your piece of content involves more than one person, you may want to consider mandating briefs. A brief outlines the idea behind the content, the goals of it, the target audience, the timeline/deadline and the role of each person involved in the project. A good brief helps you avoid tons of back-and-forth and questions between project leads and content creators. Build a brief template and share it with your team.
The creation: Everyone who creates content should know where they sit on the path towards the finished product. When creating content, you might, for example, start with writers. Once the writing is finished, you might pass off to a copy editor. Then you might pass along to designers or videographers. Once the content is completed you might pass it off to a manager. Any required changes will go back to the responsible creative and then back to a manager for final approval. Maybe you have a project lead managing the process in between each of these steps. Or you might not have the resources to undertake such a complex process, and your process might only involve one writer and one designer. Either way, people should know where they fit into the process and what their responsibilities are for a regular content project.