How to plan your 2023 content strategy
Malena Gatti | Originally Published December 8 2021
Around this time of year, businesses across all sectors, including the travel industry, should start thinking about their content for the following year. What goals are you trying to achieve? What strategies can you employ to reach those goals? How can your content marketing bolster those efforts?
The ability to craft a savvy, strategic content strategy is a vital tool for any business owner to have in their arsenal. With an intentional strategy, all businesses, organizations, and groups can utilize their content marketing in order to achieve their goals. We recognize that developing a yearly content strategy might not be everyone’s bread and butter like it is ours, and that is why we’ve put together this handy guide to help you navigate the process.
Photo by GLP Films
Step 1: Start with broad goals and work backwards
The first step in developing a content strategy is figuring out why you’re doing it. What is the goal of developing content? Are you trying to grow your business or organization? If so, how? By reaching more people? Obtaining more customers or clients? Building your brand recognition?
The first task here is to decide what you’re hoping to achieve. The second part is knowing who you need to reach in order to achieve it. Who is your target audience?
For a travel trade organization, perhaps it’s local tourism businesses, or perhaps it is the travelers who patronize those businesses. For a tourism outfitter, does the clientele consist of international travelers or domestic tourists? Are they mostly multi-generational families, or young adventurers with their friends?
The most important takeaway here is to be specific about who your target audience is and what you’d like from them, whether it’s sales, recognition or something else. And remember, it is best to target a specific audience rather than trying to reach everyone.
Step 2: Get specific about your goals and how to achieve them
Now it’s time to get specific.
For instance, if you’re a bike-touring outfitter who caters to a younger adventurous crowd, and your goal is to grow your revenue in 2022, how do you hope to achieve that? You could bring a higher volume of tour groups; you could focus on selling higher-value packages to the groups you already have; or you could focus on increasing the size of the groups that purchase your tours. Perhaps it’s a combination of the three!
It’s important to be specific about how you plan to achieve the goals outlined in Step 1, as this will inform the rest of the process.
Photo by GLP Films
Step 3: Brainstorm content ideas that provide value
You now know who your target audience is, and you want them to help you achieve the goals outlined in Step 2. This is where content comes in. Before you can ask anything of your audience, you need to provide something of value to them. Content of value typically refers to content that is, in some form, entertaining, educational or engaging. This is where creativity comes into play!
Below are some questions to ask yourself as you brainstorm content ideas:
What sort of problems does my target audience face? Do I have any solutions?
What subject-matter is of interest to my target audience?
What do they want to learn more about (within my area of expertise)?
How can I help them? What can I offer them?
You should be able to come up with 4-5 broad ideas for content of value for your target audience. To use the bike-touring example from above, some ideas might include:
Beginner tips for those going on their first bike tour
Trip ideas for bike tours in destinations outside of your own
Information about bike gear maintenance
Step 4: Commit to your capacity
There’s a delicate balance to be struck between quality and quantity. Content should be produced with enough regularity to allow for growth but without sacrificing quality. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula for this. It’s simply a matter of being honest about how much content you can realistically commit to doing well over the long term.
Perhaps this means developing one blog post weekly or bi weekly, and 3-4 social media posts each week. Perhaps it means recycling your social copy across platforms. It might require some tweaking to find the sweet spot between what is ideal and what is realistic. Just make a plan, stick to it for a few weeks, and modify as you go.
An important thing to note here is to not only think about frequency, but also platform targeting. Where would it make the most sense for your content to live? If you’re a luxury eco-resort that caters mainly to high-income travelers over retirement age, publishing content on TikTok might not be the best use of resources. Think about meeting your audience on the platforms they already frequent.
Step 5: Plan out your pillar content (yes, with a calendar)
Once you’ve decided on frequency and platform use, and have identified key areas of potential content of value for your target audience, now it’s time to put a plan in place!
Using the calendar system of your choice, plan out specific pieces of pillar content that you’d like to produce throughout 2022. It’s best to start broad and narrow down as you go. For example, the bike-touring outfitter might decide that they want to focus on a different theme or topic area each quarter/season. It might look like this:
Q1/Winter: Fat-tire biking/winter activities
Q2/Spring: Intro to bike touring/biking gear
Q3/Summer: Mountain biking/bike camping
Q4/Fall: Sight-seeing/biking destinations
Now that they have quarterly themes, let’s say this outfitter has committed to one piece of pillar content (a video on their youtube channel or website) per month. Perhaps their breakdown could be:
Jan: Comparing some of our favorite fat bike models
Feb: How to dress for a successful winter biking trip
Mar: Top fat-tire biking trails in _________
Apr: Training plan for your first multi-day bike trip
May: Our favorite biking accessories for a cross-country biking trip
Jun: How-to guide for tuning up your bike before a big trip
July: Our favorite mountain biking trails in _________
Aug: Top camping spots in ______ with mountain biking trails on-site
Sep: Comparison review of our three favorite mountain bike models
Oct: Best mountain biking destinations with fall foliage scenery
Nov: Our bike tour destination bucket list
Dec: Our review of the most bikeable cities
Pending capacity, this could be broken down further into weekly articles, daily social media posts, and more.
Step 6: Schedule time to plan and execute supporting content
Chances are when you sit down to draft a yearly content plan, you won’t be planning out daily social posts for 6 months into the future (at least you shouldn’t!). The content plan might change over time, so it’s best to develop a high-level plan at the beginning of the year, and then schedule time each month or quarter to flesh out the more granular levels of your content.
Our recommendation would be to develop a yearly content plan down to the month — perhaps this is a monthly piece of pillar content or a monthly theme — and then flesh out week to week content for the quarter (this means that when you sit down to develop your yearly content plan, you’d also flesh out Q1’s weekly content). Then, you can think about the day to day social content either at the beginning of each month, or as you go each week.
Step 7: Tie your content back into your goals
Last, but certainly not least, the most important step in developing your content strategy is tying your goals into your content. As you craft your content over the course of the year, remember to include calls-to-action for your target audience with each piece of content you give them.
Perhaps the bike tour outfitter’s July video about their favorite mountain biking trails features some that are included in their tour packages. This is where they can encourage those watching to book a tour to experience their trail for themselves! Perhaps if they’re working toward increasing the size of groups that book with them, their August video about camping spots can include campgrounds that accommodate large groups. It’s vital to always keep your initial goals in mind.
And don’t forget to also look back and review your content performance. Noting which content gets the most traffic, views or engagement can help give you direction on future content strategy so you ensure you’re creating content that resonates with your audience.
Photo by GLP Films
It might feel as if the ever-spinning hamster wheel of content demand is impossible to keep up with — so much so that focusing on content prevents you from doing the actual work that your content is trying to support — but it doesn’t have to be this way. With a proper strategy in place, your content can not only become intentional, but also manageable.
If you’re looking for more hands on help developing content marketing strategy, reach out to us!
About GLP Films
GLP Films (GLP) is an award-winning, full-service content marketing agency that empowers brands to accelerate growth, positive impact, and sustainability through strategic storytelling. Since 2008 GLP has been telling local stories globally through beautifully crafted video, engaging content and communications campaigns, and a people-first approach.
Want to inspire, create change, and embrace sustainability through storytelling? Send us a note at team@glpfilms.com and check out our work at glpfilms.com.