The 2024 Free Strategy and Content Planner is an easy way to keep your blog goals front and center as you brainstorm content that actually moves your small business from the proverbial point A to point B. Let’s look at the 2024 Free Strategy & Content Planner in detail – and we’ll go through how to use it.
A peak at the pages:
Goal Setting for Content Creators
I hope you’ll hear me when I challenge you to STOP your busy work. Stop cleaning up old posts, stop doing ‘SEO’, stop the mindless posting on SM. But don’t just stop. Stop and then create goals that mean something to you.
After you have goals and strategies, then ask yourself if that busy work is actually accomplishing something important?
Goals are the targets that you aim for. They are personal to YOU. Figure out what is important to you and quantify it. That is your goal.
After you have goals, it’s much easier to figure out the strategies you need to get there.
Below we go through an example from a food blogger. And I share an example of my 2024 goals and content themes. I hope this helps you get the most out of the 2024 Free Content Strategy & Planner and your content!
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Important Pre-requisite to Planning
The first and most important thing about planning your content for the year is discovering your goals. Your REAL goals. And a number of pageviews is not a goal – that is the strategy to get to your goal.
For example, if your goal is $25,000 per month profit, without sponsored posts or merchandise, then you may need to get to 1 million pageviews. Otherwise, sponsored posts, selling classes, writing a book – there are lots of ways to make money other than ad revenue from pageviews.
If you need money and you’re in a saturated niche, pageviews should not be your primary objective!
Step one is to figure out your goals and come up with ways to accomplish them the fastest and easiest way possible. If your plan includes content marketing – which it likely will – then use this planner to help you.
Plan Your Blog Content to Be Strategic (& easier to write)
2024 will be about sharing and word of mouth at WPB. Our content marketing will be edited to be more sharable. And contain intentional CTAs (Call to Actions).
The writing and editing time is my biggest hurdle, as it is the aside to the paying work we do at WPB. So I’ve used this planner to plan out my goals for the coming year and to map out the content that will be needed, doable, and sharable.
I put together the beginning pages of the Free Content Strategy & Planner to help me think through goals, themes and strategies. I go through these worksheets every year to make creating content a lot easier.
These themes are common among most businesses like mine, but how I deliver the content is unique to me! You will discover that your themes might be common, but your USP(unique Selling Proposition) is not!
Let’s go through the worksheets together with an example and you’ll see how easily it comes together.
Blog Content with Strategy
The worksheets start with your USP, your regular content themes, then we research holidays, events and strategies. With all that work done, you can quickly and easily determine the content that you will need. Let’s look at a cooking blog as an example.
Cooking Blog earning $120,000 annually
Goal Setting: Let’s say I have the goal of earning $200k, gross, in 2024. So each quarter I need to make $50k on my blog. Assuming $200k is a reasonable goal for me, I’m probably already making $35k per quarter which is $11,667/mo before expenses.
This leaves me with needing an increase of $5,000 per month. What is the best way to make $5k per month? Let’s talk strategies.
Strategies for increasing revenue from an existing audience can include selling digital products, branded merchandise, consultations, creating events, sponsored work and more.
I decide that I’ll start offering sponsored posts. Because I’m already at $11.5k/mo in ad revenue, I know I have some traffic that sponsors will want to pay for. This is a good year to approach sponsors because I’m redoing my kitchen. Goal: approach sponsors for appliances, home depot, etc.
To accomplish $5k/mo and not overwhelm readers with advertisements, I’m going to aim for a few different sponsorships:
- email newsletter sponsorship at $250ea
- social media sponsorship at $350 per SM Pkg
- post advertorial / on DIY posts at $900+ product per post.
- my goal is less than 3 sponsored posts per month
- to accommodate this frequency, I will have to post 3x/week
NOTE: sponsors are looking for audience engagement over sheer numbers. Numbers can be purchased (easily). And according to the stats in 2023, it is easier to get work as a micro-influencer than a mega-influencer!
To integrate sponsored posts into the content, I will need to create a theme that appeals to different sponsors. Let’s plan!
Unique Selling Points / Benefits
In this section of the blog content planner, you need to identify the thing that makes you different. Of all the food bloggers out there, why would a reader be drawn to YOU, in particular? Who do you identify with? Who is your niche? And how are you different from others?
A USP is marketing speak for authenticity. Since the advent of Artificial Intelligence and AI-content creators, we need authenticity more than anything. And we can tell when something has been thoughtfully crafted vs some content template that has a bunch of keywords stuffed in it.
With personal brands(that’s you) authenticity and integrity are absolutely essential. There may be 1000 different recipes for mac and cheese. But there is only one YOU – empathizing with other moms who can’t get their kids to eat anything but mac and cheese.
There is only one YOU who makes those moms feel heard. You are uniquely qualified to bring some calm into another person’s life. Don’t let fear get in the way of being your authentic self! We need real people online!
TIP: Stay connected with my newsletter for breaking news on AI and the future of blogging.
Once you understand how you’re different, and you have goals in mind, now you can dig into what I call, “Content Themes”.
Blog Content Themes
In this section of our Blog Content Strategy, we identify the content themes that we cover. These themes will be common with lots of other blogs. HOW you cover these themes is part of your USP. That is what makes you unique. But the themes themselves aren’t necessarily unique.
For example, our food blogger is vegan. And she will cover winter ‘comfort foods’ at this time of year, along with all the other food bloggers. But she will cover it with her own authenticity – her beliefs around food and its sustainability, her beliefs around shopping, prices, processed foods and other topics that make her light up.
The food blogger will have the following content themes:
- testing trending recipes
- comfort food
- celebratory recipes
- vegan transformations of old favorites
The content themes will closely relate to your categories or main content ‘buckets’ on your website.
For WPBarista it is
- SEO tutorials,
- Block Editor tutorials,
- Security & Update notices,
- product reviews.
These themes will repeat in some way or another throughout the year. They are the topics that the audience expects from us. What topics are expected of you? Record them in the “Content Themes” section.
Content Marketing Strategies
Content Marketing Strategies can include hyper-targeted content, social media outreach, social media paid campaigns, guest blogging, podcast guest’ing, public speaking, FB group, Pinterest strategies, regular emails, Search Engine Optimization and a lot more.
In our example, we will continue with regular posting, custom newsletters, and growing our FB Group. We will then engage 1 on 1 with the prospective businesses (the ones we want to work with) online. (see this post for a template for contacting prospective sponsors)
For WPBarista, to create shareable content, we are using the following strategies:
- breaking news – newsletter
- updated and appealing incentives for email signups (opt-ins)
- customized messages for LinkedIn and Instagram
- further SEO optimization
Events & Holidays
Using the actual calendar is helpful at this point. Record the major events, holidays or silly things you want to celebrate in your content.
ie: Hamburger Day, Dentist Day, along with Valentine’s Day, Birthdays, St. Patrick’s Day, etc.
Information So Far:
Now you should have prepared:
- your goals,
- your USP
- content themes
- strategies
- your holidays and special days
With all this pre-work done, coming up with the ideas for each month is a cinch! Take a look:
Content Ideas for Quarter 1 2024
I do my content planning by the month. I only publish 4 posts a month but most bloggers will publish far more than that. So add up the number of posts you need, divide that by the number of Content Themes you identified.
In our example, the Food Blogger will have the same themes this quarter:
- Testing trending recipes
- comfort food
- celebratory recipes
- vegan transformations of old favorites
Let’s say that our food blogger posts 3x per week so we need 12 posts per month. We have 4 content themes. 12 posts / 4 themes = 3 posts in each theme.
Now you record those themes in the Monthly Post Generator. And the number of posts for the month in each theme. Our food blogger posts 3 times a week = 12 posts / 4 themes = 3 ideas in each box. Now you have an ‘idea’ for each post for the month. Let’s pretend we’re doing the month of February, based on our four themes:
So under Testing Trending Recipes:
- she’ll gather 3 recent trending recipes from TikTok
Comfort Food:
- not-chicken noodle soup
- Lentil Pot Pie
- Favorite Cheesy Sauce for any casserole
For Celebratory Favorites:
- Valentines day chocolate cake
- Kids vegan valentines treats
- Galentines drink lists and downloadable spirits list from environmentally friendly suppliers
Vegan Transformations
- Mac n Cheesy Sauce
- Not-Chicken Pot Pie – Meatless Monday Recipe for non-vegans
- Week 2 Vegan Menu & Shopping List (*sponsored)
My Content Themes for Jan look like this (Keep in mind I only need 4 posts during that time).
SEO for blog posts
- Post: refreshed Core Web Vitals standards & Biggest Offenders for Bloggers
- promote Image optimization and Core Web Vitals services
- edit: SEO e-book
Block Editor Tutorials
- Review Cornerstone Content & SEO Settings in Yoast’s Plugin
- promote: Block Editor Classes
- State of the Word review
Security & Updates
- security announcement / week
- refresh security checklist
- new blog post for checklist
Isn’t it more doable when you break it down?
At this point most of us start using digital tools to research and save links and photos. Or to do our outlines, drafts and writing. But in case you don’t I’ve attached a post ‘scratch pad’.
TIME SAVING TIP
While you plan out your content, you’ll also have the opportunity to get all your images and quotes done.
While creating content themes (see above 4 boxes), add micro themes that you’ll use each week on social media. It should all relate and flow well together. Everyone should be funneled from social media into your blog.
When you’re creating your post image, also create 1 for IG & Facebook. Create landscape for FB & Twitter. Create square version for IG feed. Create portrait versions for IG Stories & Pinterest. And write out your social media captions if you need to. It’s so much faster if your brain is already on the topic to do it then.
When I started using strategic content, I doubled my email sign-ups!
Be strategic my friends! It works! 🙂
Enter your name & email to get the
Free Content Strategy & Planner for 2024!
Beginner Checklist
If you’re starting out, you’ll love our comprehensive 52 point checklist for your website! Read through once, and then work on items one at a time as it comes up!
Cathy Mitchell
Single Mom, Lifelong Learner, Jesus Follower, Founder and CEO at WPBarista.