A content plan is the blueprint for your website project. It identifies the objectives and strategies of your site. It defines who the website needs to reach and the information that needs to be included for the site to be effective.
A content plan collects the decisions you made within your marketing plan that will influence the design, tech structure and content of your website. It provides individuals working on the website (who may not have been involved in creating your marketing plan) with the information they need to define the scope of the project.
Content plans typically include the following:
- Purpose -- A description of website goals and strategies. The purpose statement is provided within the context of overall communication, marketing and sales goals developed during as part of the marketing plan.
- Audience -- An overview of customers and how needs of customers then will be addressed by the website.
- Content summary -- A detailed list of content that will be added to the site, where existing content can be found, and what content needs to be created from scratch.
- Sitemap -- The sitemap is a description of how content will be grouped, organized and linked. Sometimes this is done graphically with boxes representing web pages and lines indicating hyperlinks that exist between pages.
- Feature list -- A list of things your website will do. For example, the information you want to collect, if possible, from site visitors. Basically, anything that requires programming.
When creating a content plan, always include your company as a secondary target market. Identify the information you need to obtain from the site and your needs to update the site. For example, if you anticipate adding weekly news, then the functional inventory should include a means of easily adding/modifying/deleting news from the site without requiring ongoing assistance from a web programmer or vendor.
The content plan provides the basis for creating an implementation plan if you're building the website yourself--or the basis for drafting a Request For Proposal if you'll be selecting a vendor to create the website.