Effective Content Creation Framework for Boosting Marketing Results

What Is a Content Creation Framework?

A content creation framework is a plan that defines your approach to content creation. It will vary between teams and sectors but may include:

• Goals and audience segments
  
• Templates for different types of content
  
• A posting schedule 
  
• Brand guidelines and guidance on tone of voice
  
• Assignments for each team member
  

A content creation framework aims to streamline your content creation and find what works for you. It isn't about creating a formula or repeating your content. Instead, it is there to help you offer customers what they need from your content and keep driving engagement. 

Why You Need a Content Creation Framework

As previously discussed, a content creation framework aims to simplify your life. 

What should include:

• Guidelines on creating the types of content that your audience wants to see
  
• Guidance on approval, review, and amending processes
  
• A suggested timeline for posting and individual campaigns
  
• Information on individual responsibilities
  
• Goals and KPIs
  
• Guidelines for testing and collecting campaign data
  
• Information on your target audiences and their segments 
  

What should you avoid including?

• Overly restrictive templates for content
  
• A rigid schedule that does not account for other work
  
• Too much information on other areas of your marketing strategy
  

Overall, your framework should be clear, concise, and aimed towards content marketing only. 

How to Ace Your Content Creation Framework

Creating a winning content creation plan is a multi-step process that serves your long-term marketing goals. You'll need to consider some factors when crafting your framework to maximize return on investment (ROI), conversions and leads, and workflow. 

These are the most crucial steps towards crafting an excellent content creation strategy and adding value to your customers.

1. Set Clear Goals

Successful campaigns begin with clear goals, and content creation is no different. Although your content creation framework may span months or years, thinking of it in terms of a definite campaign can be helpful when it comes to setting goals. 

Ask yourself:

• What do I want to achieve with my content? It might include brand awareness, lead generation, sales, or boosting customer retention.
  
• How will I measure the success of my content?
  
• What can I realistically manage to produce to a high standard?
  

Lots of content marketing teams use the SMART method to set goals:

• Specific - you can't target every metric with one content strategy. Choose something specific, like driving sales, and try to put a number on it. For example, driving a 30% increase in sales for a year.
  
• Measurable - you need to be able to accurately measure the success of your campaign using web and social media metrics. You should also monitor these numbers throughout the entirety of your campaign. 
  
• Achievable - ambition is the key to success, but don't set yourself up for failure by setting goals your resources will not allow you to achieve. 
  
• Relevant - your goals must apply to your overall goals and product or service. Most importantly, your goals should pertain to your place within the business. 
  
• Time - your goals should have a specified timeline around them. It will help you to create a timeline and a structured working environment. 
  

When setting goals, you invite thoughts and input from all team members and ensure that everyone understands your goals before moving on to the next stage of the process.

2. Identify Your Audience

Aside from your goals, your audience is the most crucial element of your content creation framework. After all, the purpose of the framework is to assist your team in creating content that will speak to your audience and their needs. 

You’ll likely already have a general target audience in mind for your brand. For this step, we will use a CRM system provider as an example. 

This brand will likely have a general outline of its target audience as professionals in sales and marketing. However, far too many people match this description to make marketing to all of them financially viable. 

So, this brand would need to narrow down its audience, eventually reaching the following conclusion:

• Salespeople within a defined radius
  
• Salespeople in the SaaS sector serving SMEs and community organizations
  
• Brands with 10+ clients on their books
  

It is a much easier and more defined set of people to devise content for. This brand can now create targeted, value-adding content more likely to achieve set goals than generic content. 

3. Identify Distribution Channels

Content marketing teams now have a wide range of content distribution and promotion channels. 

Source: statista.com

Some of the most popular include:

• Long-form web content, e.g., blogs and resources
  
• Written social media content, e.g., B2B marketing on LinkedIn
  
• Visual social media content
  
• Video content
  
• Email marketing
  

All of these distribution channels may play a role in your content creation framework. You must identify where your audience spends online and how they want to receive your content. This is because your distribution channels will affect the types of content you produce, the templates and tags you're using, and when and where you share it. 

Consider again the example of a CRM provider. This brand may focus primarily on web content and social media marketing. 

It will then indicate the types of expertise required within the team and the equipment used, for example, SEO tools and templates for long-form web content.

4. Lay Out Content Types and Templates

This section may take up most of your content creation framework, mainly if you work with a wide variety of content on different platforms. 

Templates and pre-planning ideas aim not to make your content repetitive. The idea behind this step is to create consistency in your content creation and ensure that you're always building the type of content that your customers want to see. 

For example, consider a business phone system provider. Having identified target audiences and the right platform for its customers, the brand's marketing team might focus on long-form web and blog content designed to create authority within the industry and answer typical consumer questions. 

This approach is a strong strategy for such a brand, as it addresses a highly technical sector with direct answers and utilizes existing search engine features that favor high-value content. 

This brand might create a framework for creating informative content like “What is a VoIP number?" and "Comparing different VoIP packages." Such a framework might contain key information to maintain consistency across all content of this type, such as word counts, essential sections, and call-to-action guidelines. 

A content creation framework of this sort is handy for teams with multiple content creators to ensure consistency and minimize amends. 

5. Review and Amend the Process

In most teams, as well as being produced, content needs to be reviewed, amended, and approved before posting. This nuance is to avoid mistakes, ensure it serves customers' purposes, and maintain the brand image. 

Your framework should include information on the review process, including who will review each piece, submission timings, amends, and expectations for approval. You should communicate the process for approving content to everyone concerned with the project. 

When content is ready for upload, your framework should set out the process for distribution, including who is responsible and the chain of command for live amends and page testing. 

6. Create a Schedule

There are two reasons for including a distribution schedule in your content framework. 

The first is to streamline your workflow. Everyone in your team should know when content is shared and by whom to avoid duplications or missed posts. It will also help you with long-run content creation because you'll know when new content needs to be finalized and approved. 

The second reason is more applicable to email and social media marketing, but you should consider this for all types of content. There are certain times of day when it is better to release certain types of content to maximize reach and engagement. 

For example:

• B2B emails are typically best sent Tuesday to Thursday
  
• B2C social media posts perform better at lunchtime or after 4 pm
  

You should also keep up with research in this area, as industry consensus does change over time. 

7. Create Your Funnel

Once you have your content plan and goals, you can use your content to create a conversion funnel. If your goal is to increase sales, your funnel will typically have five steps:

• Awareness
  
• Evaluation
  
• Intent
  
• Action
  
• Loyalty
  

Content comes into every part of this funnel. Your framework will set out each funnel stage related to your content strategy goals. From here, you can plan each piece of content relative to its corresponding step in the funnel. 

For example, consider the business phone system provider from step four. At the awareness stage, the content may combine value and sales, identifying pain points and demonstrating how the brand addresses them. These may include difficulty storing hardware, the cost of traditional phone systems, or a lack of support from other providers.  

At future stages, when a lead becomes seriously interested in making a purchase, content can become more informative and take a deep dive into different topics. For a brand like this, content may cover topics such as VoIP and IVR meaning or how to onboard new starters with this new system.

Even after you make a successful sale, content should continue to add value and aim for customer retention.

8. Track Progress and Test

As with your marketing campaigns and strategies, you need to track your progress and collect quantitative and qualitative data to measure successes - and failures. 

For a long-term content plan, you need to consider progress through the lens of your goals. For example, if your goal is to drive traffic to your site and generate leads through SEO and value-added content for “fax services near me," then you'll want to track:

• Sales levels yearly, quarterly, and monthly
  
• Site traffic and engagement levels
  
• Engagement with the same content on social media and email marketing
  
• Which types of content are performing the best
  
• Changes in keyword traffic and density
  

By continually tracking your progress, you'll be able to see whether any of your content is underperforming and carry out testing to find out why. It will help to reduce the wastage of resources and maximize ROI. 

Final Thoughts

A strong content creation strategy is a great way to set and achieve marketing goals. Content marketing is one of the most popular and effective ways of driving customers to your brand and converting leads into clients. But you need to do it right!

Your content creation framework will lay out your content marketing goals, potential topics, and how they relate to your target audiences. By planning for consistency and meeting your customers’ needs, your framework is there to help you meet your goals and maximize ROI on any content marketing strategies.