Content Planning: Grow Your Business with Strategic Content

✍️ Author: Sinead O'Connor

You are not alone if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the need to create engaging content for your wellness business.

While strategic content planning involves a lot of work upfront, you’ll save time simply by having a plan to follow once you have it done. Even better, creating content with intention is more likely to increase website traffic, engagement, and even conversions.

After reading this article, you will have all the tools you need to create an easy-to-follow content marketing plan that helps grow your business.

Table of Contents:

• Why Content Planning Matters
• Elements of an Effective Content Marketing Plan
• 4 Steps to Develop a Content Plan for Your Wellness Niche
• Content Planning Tools 

Why Content Planning Matters

Without doing any research or creating strategy for your content, how do you know what your audience cares about or what questions they need answered?

That’s where content planning comes into the picture. When you take a calculated approach to creating, scheduling, and sharing relevant information that matters to your target audience, everyone benefits!

Now, what does it actually mean to take a calculated approach to planning content? What does a real content marketing plan look like? Let’s dive in.

Elements of an Effective Content Marketing Plan

There are several key pieces required to build a successful content marketing plan. The primary elements to have in place are:

• Clear Goals and Objectives
• Thorough Audience Research
• Audit of Existing Content
• Established Content Calendar

Clear Goals and Objectives

Like any other strategic effort, an effective content plan is based on clear goals and objectives. Each piece of content should have its own goal. However, these goals don’t need to be fancy or intricate. Think hard about what you’re trying to accomplish with your content, and be realistic about what is possible. You might consider goals like the following:

• Increase website traffic
• Increase social media engagement
• Increase new client signups

How can a content plan help achieve these goals? With SEO knowledge, you could write blogs that rank well and bring lots of organic traffic to your site. Or, maybe you’re a social media wiz better suited to create content that garners attention on Instagram.

Once you’ve chosen where to focus your efforts, make sure you can track and measure how each piece of content performs (IE social post, blog post, etc). That way, you know what’s helping you meet your goal and what isn’t. 

Thorough Audience Research

As the name suggests, audience research means gathering and analyzing information to understand your audience so you can create content that resonates with their way of thinking and meets their needs. Here are some common methods for conducting audience research:

• Client Feedback: Besides listening to your current clients, you can gather valuable insight from reviews, surveys, and questionnaires.
• Monitor Social Media: Review comments, hashtags, and other measures of engagement – social media tools can help you uncover other insights your target audience cares about.
• Website Analytics: Dedicate time weekly or monthly to analyze web analytics to see what resonates with visitors. For example, if your blog post about yoga for better sleep has more engagement than other blog posts, you can create content around this. How about an Instagram reel featuring a pose to help followers relax at night?

Audit of Existing Content

Auditing your content is critical to creating a useful content marketing plan. By reviewing everything on your website (blogs, pages, etc.) and your social media content, then going a step further to analyze performance, you have a basic understanding of what’s been working and what hasn’t and where to start.

Regular content audits help you stay agile. You have a finger on the pulse of what matters to your audience – it may shift over time! Here are step-by-step instructions to get you started:

• Step 1: Categorize Existing Content – Document everything you have posted on your website, social media accounts, newsletters, and videos. You can track this with a spreadsheet or content management system.
• Step 2: Analyze Performance – Look for patterns after reviewing engagement (likes, shares, comments, views), email marketing analytics, and SEO rankings. Note the high performers and use them as inspiration for future content. Consider eliminating content that consistently underperforms.
• Step 3: Review Content Quality – Does your current content still reflect your brand? Are there broken links or typos anywhere? Do you have new offerings to promote or others that have been discontinued?
• Step 4: Discover Gaps & Opportunities – Once you’ve completed your audit, this is a time to see what you can add (or subtract) to your current content marketing strategy. From there, watch your business grow!

Established Content Calendar

Consistency is key when it comes to content. If you can maintain a routine publishing schedule, you can reach your audience regularly and stay top of mind. Keeping a tight schedule also helps you stay on track with the content plan you worked so hard to create.

Here are some best practices to help you get organized:

• Plan Monthly & Weekly – Create a monthly content calendar and input the regular days and times to publish social media posts, blogs, newsletters, etc. At the beginning of each month, fill out your calendar with topics and post details to make things easier for yourself and ensure continuity.
• Create a Content Library: To keep your peace of mind, build a collection of content for future use so you’re not scrambling to find relevant topics. This will save time and reduce stress.
• Leverage Content Planning Tools: These will save you time by allowing you to schedule posts and analyze your results – we’ll dive into this more soon.
• Always Analyze & Adapt: Trends and upcoming events may influence your content topics, but your schedule should stay relatively consistent. However, you should pay attention to days and times that posts get a lot of engagement and when they fall flat. Try to understand if it’s the content topic or if you should adjust when you publish. 

4 Steps to Develop a Content Plan for Your Wellness Niche

Whether your business is niche or broad, understanding your audience is critical. What are their needs, interests, hopes, and fears? Build content around these topics.

The more you can speak to and resonate with your target audience, the more successful your content plan will be. Let’s unpack the steps required to develop an effective plan for your niche:

• Find Content Ideas Through Research
• Consider Content Types and Formats
• Keyword Research and SEO for Local and Online Businesses
• Create, Curate, and Maintain Content

Step 1: Find Content Ideas Through Research

Establishing your brand by creating unique content is a little more challenging for niche wellness businesses, but rest assured, there are many ways to find ideas for your content including the following:

• Brainstorming Sessions: Create a unique list of ideas that you’ll refine later. If you’re working with a team, ask members to brainstorm beforehand and see what happens when you all come together.
• Client Feedback: Feedback is such a gift! Listen to your clients and implement their suggestions in future content creation.
• What Are Your Competitors Doing?: Follow your competitors’ blogs and social media accounts to see what types of content get the most engagement (or the least), and create better, more helpful versions yourself.
• Stay Updated on Industry Trends: Build credibility by sharing the latest and greatest ahead of the competition. This will keep your clients engaged while attracting new ones.

You can also use tools to generate ideas, but we will discuss those later in the section about helpful tools.

Step 2: Consider Content Types and Formats 

By now, it should be clear that you must find topics that resonate with your target audience to build trust and connection (and, ultimately, success). However, the format also plays a significant role.

For example, some concepts are best covered visually in a social media post, while others are most engaging in video format. If you want to go in-depth on a topic, write a long-form blog post.

Here are some other ideas for inspiration:

• Expert Advice: Lean on your expertise and passions. If you own a yoga studio, a blog post or video breaking down the elements of a yoga class for a beginner can go a long way with prospective clients. It may give them the confidence to sign up for a class, even if they’ve never done yoga before.
• Testimonials: People love hearing about success stories – how about an interview with a current client on your website that you can later share across multiple platforms?
• Interactive Content: Engage your audience with quizzes or assessments related to your niche offerings to help them identify which is the best match for them.

Step 3: Keyword Research and SEO for Local and Online Businesses

Keyword research in the context of SEO means identifying words and phrases your target audiences use when they search online. Optimizing a piece of content around one of these phrases is a fundamental concept of SEO.

Using keywords relevant to your target audience helps your website content rank higher in search results.

Whether you have a brick-and-mortar studio or an online business. Here are some best practices to get started with SEO:

• Leverage Keyword Research Tools: Give yourself the gift of time by using tools to help you confidently identify your target keywords.
• Think Like Your Target Audience: Imagine you’re one of your clients – what do they search for? Where? Give it a try and see what insights you gain.
• Consistently Monitor & Updates: Things change quickly in today’s world. Optimizing a page for a keyword once won’t be enough. SEO requires regular maintenance.

Step 4: Create, Curate, and Maintain Content 

In addition to creating website content around topics relevant to your target audience, some maintenance is required to ensure accuracy and helpfulness.

For example, a blog post about the average cost of a reiki session will only be helpful to the reader if it contains current information. Outdated content loses trust and credibility with readers.

Although it sounds like extra work, it’s actually far more efficient than creating new content every time something you’ve written about changes.

Here are the best practices we recommend to keep your content up-to-date:

• Keep track of your website content referencing statistics, costs, and other time-sensitive elements so you don’t have to comb through your whole website to find it.
• Include the publish date on your blogs so you know how old something is. Even evergreen topics that age well should be updated every couple of years.
• Trends change! If you write trend blogs, refresh those posts yearly instead of starting from scratch.

Additional Tips to Perfect Your Plan

As a business owner, you have a lot on your plate. It’s very common for folks in your shoes to let things like content marketing fall by the wayside over time. Doing so only hurts your business. How can you prevent this?

• Dedicate Time: Is there a slower time during your work days? Use those blocks to focus on content marketing and resist procrastinating.
• Hire a Content Marketing Specialist: If you have the resources, hire someone to take care of this for you – your investment will pay off, and you’ll enjoy the benefits of having an expert on your team.
• Reward Yourself: When you adhere to your content planning calendar, treat yourself to a beverage at your local coffee shop. This will keep you motivated and help you meet your overall business goals.

Content Planning Tools

In addition to helping you save time, content planning tools can help you keep your goals aligned and streamline your processes while ensuring you’re sharing content consistently.

After you’ve started using these tools, you can also track and analyze your performance to identify areas for improvement. Here are some highlights of our favorite tools:

• SEMrush: This comprehensive SEO tool offers various features, including keyword research, Google Ad Optimization, and competitive analysis. Some of the features are free for your use.
• Hootsuite: This robust tool for social media marketing allows you to publish and schedule social media posts at optimal times but, unfortunately, no longer offers free features.
• Moz: This tool is similar to SEMrush, but the simpler user interface and ease of use make it a good choice for small businesses, although the features are less advanced.
• Answer the Public: This versatile tool is for keyword research. It helps users optimize their content by tracking, collating, and alerting users to what is currently being searched on Google, in addition to other offerings.

Visit Our Blog for Expert Advice on Content & Marketing Strategy 

Creating and maintaining a strategic content marketing plan may seem daunting, but it’s a powerful tool for growing your wellness business. By following the steps outlined in this guide—setting clear goals, understanding your audience, auditing existing content, and staying consistent with a well-planned content calendar—you’ll be well on your way to building a content strategy that drives traffic, engagement, and conversions.

For more expert tips and advice to grow your wellness business, visit our blog.