Free Content Plan Template To Adapt To Your Needs This 2025 via @sejournal, @donutcaramel13

Consistency is crucial when posting content to ensure your customers remain engaged with your business and its products.

To maintain consistency, it’s essential to develop a structured posting schedule aligned with your company’s marketing objectives for optimal results.

Our content plan is designed to support this process.

But, what exactly does a content plan need? And what differentiates an effective one from an ineffective one?

This article provides an overview of productive content planning, outlining essential components, and offers a customizable free template for your content team.

What Is A Content Plan?

A content plan is a strategic roadmap that defines the what, when, and where of your content, as well as its purpose in achieving specific objectives.

It spans various content types, from snappy Instagram Reels to 2,000-word blog posts, across platforms that support your marketing funnel.

Ideally, the content should align with one of the funnel stages: Awareness, Consideration, or Conversion.

Why Do I Need A Content Plan?

A content plan helps ensure alignment and consistency within your team while smoothing out the posting schedule to keep your audience engaged.

It also supports SEO and marketing efforts by maintaining focus on key priorities. These include targeting the best keywords, creating high-quality content that satisfies search intent, and enforcing consistent publishing schedules.

By creating and implementing a content plan, you make it easier for your team to collaborate and execute effectively.

A well-structured plan ensures efficient resource allocation, minimizing delays and costs while maintaining organization and preventing redundancies.

Content Strategy Vs. Content Plan: What’s The Difference?

Although they sound interchangeable, they are not.

Content strategy refers to your overall vision and goals for content – a content marketing masterplan, if you will.

A content plan is a tactical tool that helps to implement your strategy.

You’ll need both to succeed in content marketing.

Your content strategy outlines the overarching goals and purpose of your content within the broader marketing plan.

The content plan, on the other hand, focuses on the specifics, like detailing what content will be created, when it will be published, and where it will be distributed to support the strategy and achieve your objectives.

Leverage your content plan to achieve specific goals outlined in your content strategy, such as driving organic traffic, boosting on-page engagement, and increasing conversions.

Your content strategy needs to be crafted first, with the content plan serving as a tool and blueprint to execute.

What Information Is Included In This Content Plan?

The structure of a content plan is largely determined by your specific goals and the needs of your team and organization.

For content managers, it’s essential to track who is responsible for what tasks and identify opportunities for high-quality content within the given timeframe, whether monthly or annually.

For the team, an effective content plan should provide all relevant information in a clear and easily accessible format, enabling them to efficiently create or oversee the production of content.

In our experience, every content plan includes core elements, though they may be labeled differently. These are the columns in our content plan:

• Status: Simply put, the current stage of your content. Whether it has not yet started, is in progress, is under revision, has been completed, etc., you can keep track and provide updates to stakeholders or team members during meetings.
• Title + Creator/Owner: A clear title crafted with the primary topic/keyword and reflecting the content is essential on every plan so you can reference it easily. The creator/owner is the point person for producing that specific title.
• Primary Topic/Keyword: This is the focus of your content based on keyword research. These help ensure your content is relevant, searched for, and aligned with SEO goals.
• Marketing Funnel Goals/Customer Journey Stage: Understanding the stages of awareness, consideration, and conversion (others have a fourth stage: loyalty/retention, depending on your company’s goals) allows you to tailor content to your target audience’s needs and craft the most effective messaging to engage them.
• Prioritization: With 1 being the highest and 5 being the lowest, you can prioritize which content requires more attention and budget allocation from your team.
• Content Formats And Types: Is it a blog post, white paper, infographic, or video? This is where you specify what your content will look like and what it’ll contain. The choice should be influenced by your target audience’s position in the funnel.
• Distribution Platforms: Take your pick from social media platforms, company sites, etc.
• Promotion Strategies: Whether a combination of social media push and email marketing, paid ads, or entirely organic, having a plan maximizes the visibility of your piece of content.
• Publishing Schedule: A target schedule for when it’s created until when it goes live. For the latter, it may or may not be the deadline for the writer to submit the content.
• Notes: Context for anything that doesn’t necessarily fit the above, like suggestions from stakeholders, insights from analytics, or other instructions important to creating that content.

For additional details on tone, structure, layout, word count, categories, and URLs, we recommend utilizing a content brief to maintain clarity and avoid clutter in your content plan.

Different Types Of Content To Include

We mentioned this above, but we cannot emphasize enough how every piece of content should tie in with the marketing funnel and align with your customer’s needs.

Now as a quick refresher, let’s look at each stage and discuss the types of content that work best for each stage of the customer journey.

Awareness

This type of content is going after the top of the marketing funnel (TOFU). The goal is to introduce your brand to customers and quickly capture interest.

Ideally, TOFU content should be easily consumable and easy to share. For some companies, that could be visually desirable home decor ideas or top trends on TikTok.

Common types of awareness content are:

• Social media content.
• High-volume keywords for SEO.
• Short-form videos and live streams.
• Non-branded blog posts and articles.

Learn More: How To Use SEO To Target Your Audience Throughout The Funnel

Consideration

At this point in the funnel (a.k.a. the middle of the funnel or MOFU), the customer is evaluating your brand and factoring in other solutions to their problem.

You’re already on the customer’s mind, but they need more convincing to choose you over your competition.

They need more information, and this is your chance to present your product as the solution to their pain point. Given this, your content should be more in-depth and provide evidence of solutions.

Content that works well for the consideration stage includes, but isn’t limited to:

• Blogs establishing your authority.
• How-to guides.
• Comparison content.
• Webinars.

Learn More: How To Write Content For Each Stage Of Your Sales Funnel

Conversion

This is the last stage at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU), where your customer knows your brand and has already compared all the options. They’re now ready to take action.

Aside from purchasing the products or service, this could look like a free download, subscribing to newsletters, or calling someone on your sales team.

The goal is now to encourage customers to take action and remove any blockers for a smooth process. Content types that can help in this stage include:

• Sales, promos, and coupons.
• Case studies and white papers.
• Customer feedback and user-generated content.
• Consultation offers, product demos, free trials, comparison content.

Learn More: What Is The Content Marketing Funnel

Creating Your Own Content Plan: Template + Tips

Download the content plan template here and edit it for your brand’s content team.

You can also customize it to best fit your team’s requirements. Here are some suggestions:

Tips On Tailoring Your Content Plan

1. Refine Your Content Goals And Make Them SMART

Each piece of content must serve a clear purpose from the moment it’s listed there – it should align with user intent, title formulation, format, target audience, and other elements of your strategy.

As you look at each column, continuously assess and make sure that each piece is aligned with its intended objective.

When trying to achieve more defined goals under the marketing funnel, keep SMART goals in mind (specific, measureable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound).

2. Know Where The Target Audience Is

Understanding your audience’s position in the marketing funnel and selecting an appropriate format is crucial, but it’s equally important to choose the right social media platform to engage them effectively.

Identify your target audience, explore all available platforms (both social and non-social), and decide the optimized placement for each piece of content.

Note that certain content types perform better on specific platforms: Short-form videos thrive on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Facebook, while webinars are more sought after on LinkedIn.

3. Factor In Your Budget

When creating and publishing content, you can use the plan to carefully manage your budget.

For instance, if you’re managing a travel blog and preparing resource-intensive Christmas content for a major event, you would want to reduce your budget in other months to ensure you can invest in your event.

The plan can help you visualize where you can scale down and better allocate your budget where it’s best spent.

The great benefit of a content plan is that it gives you information about ongoing and upcoming projects at a glance.

4. Establish Your Publishing Schedule

Add or subtract as many rows as you need to when you tweak this content plan.

Your frequency of posting will depend on many factors relevant to you, so once a week might work for one brand, and five times a day is right for another news publisher.

As for social media, you could post multiple TikTok videos every day or publish static assets on Instagram as few as three times a week on social media, depending on the platform and several other factors.

Gaining credibility and growing your audience requires regularly releasing fresh content at the best times to post.

Have a rough estimate of how long it takes to craft various content types, as well as the resources needed for planning, production, and publication.

Then, try to gain insights from your customers as to how frequent they’d love to see your brand, perhaps via survey and feedback sessions.

Finally, decide the frequency based on your primary content goal.

For example, if you’re trying to grow your audience, you should probably post more frequently. But if you’re trying to gain authority, taking the time to produce higher quality content would be even better.

5. Tailor To Incorporate Into Your Workflow

You need to know who’s responsible for each piece of content.

For a smoother workflow, you need to determine what content a team member is responsible for at each step. Then, establish a process for submission, approval, publishing, and social media crossposting.

Try to structure your free content plan around your team to integrate it without much friction.

You could rearrange the columns, add a color-coded system for each member of the production team, and include COUNTIF formulas, add/subtract types, etc., if you have target numbers for each type of content.

You may also merge the top cells and leave instructions for people to tag, input URLs, etc.

Make it as granular or as broad as you need to for seamless integration.

Content Planning Reminders

So, you’ve downloaded the template, edited it to your team’s requirements, and are ready to fill out the months.

But, before you start outlining every piece of content you’ll produce this year, here are some other reminders and recommendations:

Keep SEO In Mind

It’s crucial to ensure your customers can find you, and organic search is a critical part of this.

Every piece of digital content you create should be built around your SEO strategy and be optimized to maximize visibility and reach.

Consider your keywords and strive to make helpful content that matches search intent.

Also, always be looking at your competitors through competitive analysis and content gap analysis to see if you are missing any opportunities.

Consider Crossposting And Repurposing

Get the most out of your investment in content and repurpose where you can.

For example, if you have a lengthy how-to video tutorial, you can cut that into shorts, or summarise the highlights into a post.

You can also create templates for multiple trendjacking opportunities, like the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day.

Keep A Tab On Ideas

Content ideas tend to strike while you’re planning other ideas in your spreadsheet, so make a note that you can return to.

Consider adding another tab to your content plan spreadsheet called “Ideas” or “Idea File,” where you can list ideas for future content.

Keywords can give you extra material for generating ideas. Marketing holidays and major U.S. events are great sources for inspiration, too.

Conclusion: Make Your Content Plan Work For You

Creating a good content plan doesn’t automatically mean your brand will go viral and achieve immense success.

But, organization and workflows are essential in managing content production and implementing content strategies. It is all about planning.

Using the template provided, you might adapt it over time to suit your needs.

So, download the content plan template and start planning for the year to create your best content yet.

Happy planning!

More Resources:

Featured Image: David Gyung/Shutterstock

The Future Of Content Distribution: Leveraging Multi-Channel Strategies For Maximum Reach via @sejournal, @rio_seo

Content is everywhere. Consumers are inundated with it throughout the day – catching up on social media happenings, scanning the news, consuming articles, or listening to podcasts.

Given the staggering breadth of content available across the digital landscape, content marketers’ jobs have become increasingly difficult.

Breaking through the noise is a hefty feat, one that requires substantial amplification to ensure your messages are being seen.

Since consumers quickly shift their attention and are targeted by high-quality content across various platforms, marketers must focus their efforts on distribution strategies.

Simply outlining, drafting, editing, and publishing content is no longer enough.

The opportunity for brands to emerge from the clutter as the top content consumption choice is there, given this disconnect.

Now is the time for content marketing leaders to seize the chance to expand their content’s presence across all the channels your customers frequent.

With only a few businesses taking advantage of expanding their reach, amplifying your brand’s presence through effective content dissemination will help you more effectively target and captivate your audience.

Meet your customers where they’re looking.

By the time you finish reading this article you’ll have a clear-cut framework for how to create a multi-channel content distribution strategy that actually works.

We’ll explore how consumer behavior has shifted over the past several years, the benefits of distributing content across diverse channels, and the next steps to take to elevate your current distribution strategy.

Let’s start by first examining why changes in consumer behavior dynamics necessitate a revised content strategy.

The Shift In Consumer Behavior Driving Multi-Channel Strategies

To say consumer behavior shifts frequently is more than evident for marketers.

As a marketer, you’re well attuned to how often consumer behavior changes and need to adapt to it.

Falling behind consumer behavior trends leads to lost revenue, lower retention, and being overlooked.

Technology is largely to blame for shifts in consumer behavior.

Every year, an abundance of new technology is born, most of which is designed to enhance our lives. In turn, so too has the proliferation of digital touchpoints.

People are no longer turning to only a business’ website for information. They’re scouting the brand’s social media channels, emails, podcasts, and more to gain the information they’re craving.

Consumers expect to be met with a consistent experience across every channel.

Consider you’ve invested ample time and resources in creating a steady stream of written content in the form of blogs, ebooks, and studies. You’ve worked hard to ensure your written content is helpful, clear, and matches user intent.

What if your podcast offered a completely divergent experience? Your audio quality is choppy, your podcast host doesn’t have experience in public speaking, and your podcast topics are disjointed.

This would lead to a negative customer experience and could cause consumers to disengage with your content. It’s imperative every piece of content you write and distribute maintains the same quality across channels.

Increased Use Of Multiple Platforms

Consumers aren’t just visiting your blog. They’re heading to your YouTube for in-depth product tutorials, digesting your monthly newsletter for company updates, and downloading an ebook for long-form content consumption – all in a single browsing session.

The stakes are higher than ever for brands to maintain an active presence across numerous platforms to stay top of mind.

For example, a gym might share weight loss success inspiration on its Instagram stories and offer personalized personal training via email communication.

People-First Personalization

Personalization is the current rage right now, and for good reason. Personalization isn’t a nice to have – it’s a must.

Consider that a whopping 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when it doesn’t happen.

Technology like artificial intelligence can assist businesses in hyper-personalization, ensuring messages are sent to the right audience at the right time.

For example, AI and retargeting can showcase content that’s relevant to end users based on previous browsing behavior.

Consider a consumer who’s interested in snowboarding and has been shopping around for new ski pants.

If the consumer has signed up for a company newsletter to become aware of promotions or savings, the business could send a 15% off new customer promotion or a promotion for the specific ski pant they’ve been eyeing.

Mobile Continues To Dominate

Gone are the days of optimizing solely for desktops. Mobile has made a significant splash over the past decade and shows no signs of slowing down.

In January 2025, for example, mobile devices accounted for the largest share of ecommerce site visits at 76% compared to 23% from desktop.

For most consumers, mobile is their device of choice for consuming content, which is why businesses must maintain a mobile-friendly experience.

This includes ensuring your website is optimized for mobile users, vertical video content is created, and emails render correctly for mobile devices.

Benefits Of A Multi-Channel Content Distribution Strategy

Knowing consumers are navigating multiple channels, seeking personalization, and consuming content largely on mobile devices, it’s clear a one-size-fits-all solution will suffice any longer when it comes to content distribution.

A comprehensive, cross-channel strategy is the quickest way to succeed and ensure your brand is as visible as possible. Other benefits of a multi-channel content distribution strategy include:

Foster Trust

When customer experiences are consistently pleasant across every channel a customer can find you, they’re more likely to have faith in your business.

Building trust is one of the foundational steps to building long-lasting customer relationships.

Improve Visibility

Being found wherever customers look requires ample effort and SEO.

The first step toward increasing your reach is to ensure you have an accurate presence across multiple platforms, especially the platforms your target audience uses most frequently.

It’s crucial to understand your audience. What motivates them? What frustrates them? How can you solve their needs? And where do they spend their time online?

Diversify Content Formats

Written content remains a preferred consumption method, but customers are also interested in other formats.

Video content has been on a steady upward trajectory and is often surfaced as the top search result for certain queries.

Additionally, podcasting has been on the rise as well. Diversifying your content formats ensures you’re meeting the needs of all consumers, including those that prefer audio and visual content.

Mitigate Risk

The saying, “Don’t put your eggs in one basket,” holds true for content distribution.

If you’re relying on a single platform to drive revenue and traffic, you risk losing potential sales.

For example, an apparel company that targets a Gen Z demographic may risk missing potential customers if they don’t have an established TikTok presence.

Conversely, a business that sells medical supplies may also miss the mark on reaching its target demographic if it maintains a social media presence on TikTok but doesn’t post content on YouTube or Facebook.

More Opportunity

Multi-channel marketing strategies are gaining traction. In 2024, 30% of brands consider their multi-channel approach very successful – up from just 17% in 2023. Meanwhile, 65% rate their strategy as somewhat successful, showing steady progress in reaching customers across multiple touchpoints.

There are more opportunities than ever to guide a consumer down the sales funnel.

Additionally, with the rise of social commerce, it’s now easier than ever for consumers to purchase without even having to visit a company’s website.

A simple one-click is all it takes to make a purchase. Businesses should tap into all the emerging revenue opportunities to ensure they never miss out on a sale and to further streamline their sales process.

A Framework For Multi-Channel Distribution Strategy

Developing an effective multi-channel strategy requires careful planning and thoughtful execution. It’s not just about being present on every platform – it’s about doing it well and with the resources you have.

For example, if a marketing team is tight on resources, initiating resource-intensive efforts like podcasting may not make sense.

On a similar note, if your target demographic likely doesn’t spend time on Facebook, it wouldn’t be worth your effort to allocate resources there.

To get the most of your multi-channel content strategy and focus your efforts on what will work for your business, the following step-by-step guide can help you get your content distribution efforts off the ground and on the path towards tangible results.

Know Your Audience

Marketers must have an in-depth understanding of their target audience.

When you know your audience, you understand how they behave, what types of content they prefer, the devices they use most frequently, and more.

Use tools such as Google Analytics, Google Business Profile, social media insights, and customer feedback to gain a deeper understanding of your target audience.

For example, a software company might find that its audience browses LinkedIn more often than any other social media platform.

Focus on the platforms that align with your audience’s preferences and invest resources there.

Repurpose Your Content

Creating content can be a cumbersome task, let alone creating content for different platforms and in different formats.

Get the most out of your current content by repurposing your existing content into formats for different channels.

For example, you may want to break out a long-form ebook into multiple blog posts or create a series of LinkedIn posts to encourage consumers to watch your recent webinar.

Ensure your message is consistent across every platform and adheres to your brand’s voice and tone.

Integrate Technology

Technology has undoubtedly revolutionized the marketing industry. It has offered significant time savings with the use of AI-powered tools and automation in general.

AI can help you create comprehensive content outlines for writers, spark ideas for ebook topics, maximize your on-page SEO, suggest optimal dates and times for publishing, and so much more.

If you’re not already capitalizing on the AI wave, now is the time to start.

Analytics have also come a long way, offering more insights than ever before into consumer behavior.

Technology, like Marketo and HubSpot, enables businesses to seamlessly manage email campaigns, social media posts, and analytics in one centralized platform.

Google Business Profile insights for multiple locations become more transparent and simplified with local experience platforms.

Investing in technology simplifies mundane, data-heavy tasks and allows marketers to focus on what matters most – motivating consumers to act.

Allocate Resources Effectively

Many businesses experience resource limitations.

As earnest as your efforts are, it can be daunting to accomplish everything you wish you could with limited resources. That’s why it’s essential to determine which channels to prioritize and which deserve your attention.

Invest your resources wisely to ensure that employees don’t feel overwhelmed and burdened with their job responsibilities.

Burnout leads to churn and, inevitably, the loss of good employees. When it comes to content distribution, it’s better to be a master of some than all.

A/B Testing

It’s unlikely that your content distribution strategy will be perfect from the start. As with any marketing effort, it takes time and experimentation to get it right.

Use A/B testing to identify what works best. Test different messaging, posting schedules, content types, and visuals to gauge what captures the most attention.

Refine your strategy based on tangible evidence of what’s working and what isn’t.

Practice Ethical Marketing

Consumer privacy is a growing concern for many. Consumers are wary of giving their information to businesses they don’t trust.

Be transparent about how customer data is stored and how it will be used. Adhering to ethical business practices will establish you as a trusted resource with socially responsible values and give you a competitive edge over less ethical competitors.

Next Steps For Content Distribution

The future of content distribution is straightforward: Track consumer behavior, create effective content in different content types, and distribute your content where it makes sense.

It’s likely that even a year from now, a new social media channel or content type will pop up, disrupting your existing content distribution strategy and redirecting your attention elsewhere.

As marketers, staying agile and being ready to meet audiences where they are is what wins the game.

Being a late adopter won’t suffice; customers are digitally savvy and have become accustomed to following the masses when a new content consumption opportunity pops up.

They’re also shifting away from consuming written content and moving towards visual, video, and audio content.

Now is the time to audit your current approach, experiment with new channels, and embrace emerging technologies.

Dig into your analytics to gain a true understanding of your client base and what causes them to convert.

The future is multi-channel – are you ready for it?

More Resources:

Featured Image: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock