1. take your time. don’t rush it in 1 day! a solid, year-long plan should take you up to a month, or at least 2 weeks to plan correctly.  you can do it in 1 week if you really push hard.  yes you can do it in the big picture over coffee, but to really cover all your bases takes time that even a long lunch won’t cover.

2. develop your goals and write them down. make sure they are clear and understood by everyone involved in achieving and crushing the goals.

3. stay focused on doing the research related to the topic. use data to determine which topics to cover, what kind of content similar to it gets the most shares, comments, likes, followers, retweets, etc.  measure the potential audience sizes with tools like google adwords keyword planner, moz, semrush, etc.  use content research tools like google trends, buzzsumo, buzzfeed and reddit to discover communities of related topics that you can reach with well produced, relevant content.

4. design your content strategically.  Address, with each piece, an answer to the question that the headline suggests.  In short, make sure that whatever the person came to the page looking to find, is on the page.  build your content architecture in silos, solar systems, intergalactic cluters, scattershots, sniper sites, or any shape you choose, just as long as you build them with a clear path to the money site / landing page / where visitors sign up to the event / customers take action for the product/service via a clear CTA to be seen above the fold.

4a. build up a list of content freelancers. Make and keep an updated roster of at least a few of each of these types of professionals:  content writers, infographics artists, video makers, audio producers, ebook publishers, etc.  you can certainly find them on fiverr, upwork, 99designs, as well as other marketplaces and online communities.

Create

5. create the content correctly.  Produce the materials (articles, infographics, ebooks, videos, podcasts, etc) according to these guidelines and the technical requirements necessary to publish the materials.

Implement

6. Implement distribution. Get the content published, re-published, linked-to, liked, commented, reviewed, shared, etc. This is the most time-intensive part of the work, and the one where you have to apply the greatest care to make sure everything gets out properly, on time, without any incidents, and with fast replies to any inquiries or issues that might pop-up.

6a. build up a list of freelance distributors. Make and keep an updated roster of at least a few of each of these types of professionals:  bloggers, social media marketers, content website publishers, podcasters, vloggers, influencers, seo specialists, sem / adwords / ppc specialists, facebook ads specialists, amazon ads specialists, pinterest ads specialists, instagram ads specialists, etc.  make sure they publish in places that are relevant to the topic you are promoting. you can certainly find them on upwork, fiverr, seoclerks as well as other marketplaces and online communities. make sure they give you their analysis, estimates and reports so that you can compare their forecasting and performance and see how it impacted the campaign.

7. Monitor the data. See what’s good, bad and ugly about the performance of the works. Tweak where possible. if something is bad or unoptimizable, dump it. if something’s working well, find ways to reinforce it in the same materials *if it will help*, and find places and ways to repeat it elsewhere.

8. Analyze and Report Results. After all is said and done, do a final crunch of the numbers, a solid and present the findings to the relevant people.  make sure to cover wins and losses, good and bad, things learned and actionable to-dos to improve from that point forward. keep a critical eye on any paid campaigns, as they will cost you real money per click or visit or sale, and that can add up pretty quickly and get out of hand fast, if you neglect it. basically, always know what your spend is, and what your ROI is. if you’re losing money on ads, you’re doing it wrong.  so make sure you know the data so that you make sure any optimizations will pay off.

9. Rinse & Repeat wherever possible. if the effort is worthwhile and may be done again, do it again, whether to reinforce the existing topic coverage, or for a different topic.  Success breeds success.  So when you have something good that you are doing, and you have no reason to stop, keep doing it!

10. That’s it! Good luck!