Your content marketing plan should ensure that every piece of content you post achieves a goal. You want to improve customer experiences by educating and informing them. You also want to use content to establish trust and build credibility.

Well-planned content can do all of that and more if you first create a solid content marketing plan. These are the eight steps to follow.

Step One: Audit Your Current Content

It is important to study the content you have now and what effect it is having on your results. In this case, your bottom line consists of conversions, such as list signups, as well as sales or any calls to action you’ve included.

Step Two: Research Your Audience

Even if you’ve already done some research, you still need to do some research on your audience. The audience may have the same demographics today as they did yesterday, but due to technology and education, their views sometimes change.

Step Three – Understand Your Purpose

In this case, you want to understand your overall purpose, and then how each piece of content you create fulfills that purpose. Start with some of the content you already have. What was your thought process when creating it and how did it fit in with your goals?

Step Four: Develop an Editorial Calendar

A full editorial calendar includes product development, blog content, sales pages, social media content, and more. Include every last bit of content you’ll need for every product or service you want to promote on every site you want to place it on. You can create a master editorial calendar and then separate it into different categories to make it less overwhelming.

Step Five: Develop the Content

Get to work developing the products and content. Well-crafted content will educate, inform, engage, and inspire action. Make sure you can match every piece of content you create, in whatever form, to a reason for existing. Don’t just create text content. You also want to create content in other formats, such as images, voice, and video. The more forms of content you can create, the better for your audience.

Step Six: Promote Your Content

Now you need to promote every last piece of content you post. Promote through social media and other avenues to make sure everything gets the attention it wants. The attention each piece of content receives will mean more visitors, more newsletter signups, and more sales.

Step Seven: Measure Results

It is important to always measure the results of everything you do. The reason is that you can change things on the fly. That’s the great thing about online content marketing: the ability to improve as you go. If something doesn’t work, don’t assume it’s the product or the content. Change little things about the layout and word usage, and try, try, and try.

Step Eight: Refine and Perfect

As you find things that work for you and your audience, your job will get easier and easier. You’ll discover what works for your audience, and you’ll get better at creating and promoting content as you go.