Content production planning can help you develop a process that ensures you create high quality content and deliver it on time. An effective content production process helps your content team work together smoothly. Your content production process keeps every team member on the same page. In this article, you will learn what content production planning is and how to plan content production. You will learn all about the content production process, how to create an overall content strategy, the best content production system to use, and how to get your entire creative team on board.

What is Content Production?

Content production is a type of system or process that you take to create information in a visual or text format. For example, you can choose to output information through videos, books, blogs, or infographics. The content production process includes what message or information you want people to understand and what you want them to do with that new knowledge. Before moving along in the content production process, you must determine what kind of content you want to publish.

There are three main types of content. Of course, there are many other types of content; but, in this article, you will learn about these three types of content that are relevant to content production.

Cornerstone Content

Cornerstone content is content which purpose is to increase website traffic and brand awareness by showing viewers what your company has to offer them. This type of content needs to be very relevant to your business goals. Essentially, you want to make a memorable first impression on people. Show people that you are an expert in your industry and that you know what you are doing. The main goal of cornerstone content is to make a positive first impression. Therefore, this type of content should be free and easily accessed by people. If you want to create amazing cornerstone content, you can follow an easy 7-step guide to assist you in your goals

Or, if you are not sure where to begin, you can always turn to a business, like SEO Design Chicago, that specializes in helping businesses create interesting and effective content creation.

Gated Content

Gated content is content that requires users to complete a form in exchange for access to the information. This is where the name “gated content” gets its name from. Essentially, the content or blog post is locked up behind a gate, the gate being the form you must fill out. Forms might ask you to fill in your contact information, or subscribe to the website. Examples of gated content include articles, videos, and white papers. Content is only defined as being gated content if you can only access the information after filling out a form.

There is another type of content called, ungated content, that has a form available to fill out; but, filling out the form is not mandatory to access the content. People often get confused between the two types of content because they both have forms involved. Businesses often choose to publish gated content so that they gain user information to reach out to them in the future. However, David Meerman Scott, content marketing expert, found that ungated content is downloaded much more than gated content. The reason behind this fact is most likely because people find that filling out forms is a hassle and they do not want to give out their own information.

Evolving Content

Evolving content is content that is regularly produced and published. Basically, evolving content is any type of content that you publish on a routine basis, like a series. Examples include a series of blog posts that are all related in some way, routine news reports, or a video series with multiple episodes. You choose to produce evolving in addition to other types of content because you want to stay relevant to your viewers. If you just produce one or two blog posts about a certain topic that is extremely relevant to your business, you will not have much of an impact on your target audience. However, if you produce a blog post series that contains several different blogs on your topic, you will always stay fresh in your audience’s minds.

Content Production Planning: Content Production Process

No matter which type of content you are creating, this is a streamlined process to create workflows. Planning your content production will make creating and uploading content easy to do. Content production planning helps you establish a strong, effective workflow, which will help you manage all of the different content you intend to publish. If you create a plan with solid goals, you are ten times more likely to succeed over those who skip the planning stage. You can plan every aspect of your content strategy, from your content ideas to your video content and social media.

If you want to grow your business, follow these tips for content production planning.

Make the Content Your Top Priority

This point might seem like a no-brainer; but, it is the key to creating successful content. For something as important as the content for your business, you do not want to make it a last priority. If you treat your content as an afterthought, you will start to see negative effects on your business. For example, you will fall behind on projects, blow your budget, create poor, subpar content, and not meet your business goals. If you don’t want those things to happen, make the content your top priority.

Create a Content Workflow

A content workflow outlines and establishes the steps that you and your team must complete in order to efficiently create good content. A typical content workflow has these steps: research, write, review, revise, approve, upload to CMS, review the web page, and publish. You will get a more in depth description of each step of the content workflow in the next section. Make sure all the tasks are assigned to relevant team members. Each person responsible for a particular stage should meet deadlines consistently.

Create a Style Guide

A style guide provides guidelines for how you want your brand to be represented. Basically, a style guide outlines how you want people to perceive your business through the written and visual content that you decide to publish. This point is similar to the first tip. You must have a clear guideline to state what you want your content to be and how you will create the desired content.

A style guide will help your content be consistent no matter who created that particular blog or website page. Brand consistency is very important because you want your business to appear well thought out and cohesive. When people look at your business page or social media, you want them to be able to tell that everything belongs together. You want to create and maintain a strong brand reputation. As a result, people will respect your company and listen to what you have to say.

Although every business is different so there might be some minor discrepancies, the following steps are typical in the content production planning workflow.

Research

Research is always a good place to start creating written content or other content assets. You want to be highly informed on the topic before forming a plan. In this stage, you will want to find out and discuss the goals for that specific page or content. Ask yourself, “What do I want people to be able to take away from this new information?” A simple way to stay organized is to put all of your research together. The information that you find out will consist of various facts, quotes, statistics, any other kinds of information that will prove useful to you in the future. When you do the research first, you will have a better idea on how to approach achieving your goals.

Write

After the research stage is complete, you can actually start producing content. Just remember that you might not all of a sudden know what direction you want to go towards. It might take you some time to develop creative ideas. Creating content with interesting titles and headings, informative descriptions and links, and enticing calls to actions will take some time. But, don’t worry. This is why you create a content production planning workflow. Establishing a solid workflow gives you a solid place to start. If you create a strong content production planning workflow, you will make the content creation process much easier.

Review

No matter what you are doing, always review your work. You never want to send something for publishing without looking over your work, making sure it is just how you envisioned it to be. It’s not enough for you to just check your content that you created. Show your work off to other people too. Everyone has different opinions and pieces of advice. The more people that review your work, the more feedback you will receive.

Revise

This step is pretty self-explanatory. Once you and other people have reviewed the content, you need to make adjustments based on the feedback. During this stage, you might have to go back to those who gave you product feedback and ask for clarification. A helpful tip is to write down the feedback during the review process so you can solely focus on revising the content. As stated before, you will most likely need to review the revised content again before moving on to the approval step.

Approve

After you are finished with the review and revision processes, it’s time to send your content off to be approved by your superiors.

Upload to CMS

Now, upload the content to your content management system. Here, you will add any links, photos, files, or metadata that go with the content.

Review the Web Page

After uploading the content to the web page, you want to review the content yet again. Make sure the format is the way that you intended it to be, check if the links work, and look over anything else that might have gotten messed up in the upload process.

Publish Your Blog Post

Finally it is time to publish the content onto your live website.

Create a Content Marketing Strategy with SEO Design Chicago

Now that you know all the various steps that go into the content production planning workflow, you have two choices: you can either choose to tackle content creation on your own, or you can turn to content creation services, like SEO Design Chicago, for assistance on creating unique, enticing, and creative content that will keep your customers coming back for more. We are a full-service digital marketing agency. Our content team can help you with everything from creating a content calendar to posting your completed content on social media. We make the entire process easier.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What’s the difference between cornerstone content, gated content, and evolving content?

Cornerstone content is designed to increase website traffic and brand awareness by showcasing your expertise and making a strong first impression – it should be free and easily accessible. Gated content requires users to fill out a form (like providing contact information) before accessing the content, which helps businesses collect lead information but may reduce downloads since people find forms inconvenient.

Evolving content is regularly produced content published on a routine basis, like blog series or weekly reports, that keeps your brand fresh in your audience’s minds. Each type serves different purposes in your overall content strategy, and most successful businesses use a combination of all three.

2. Why is content production planning so important for my business?

Content production planning establishes a streamlined workflow that helps you create high-quality content consistently and deliver it on time. Without proper planning, content often becomes an afterthought, leading to missed deadlines, budget overruns, poor-quality content, and failure to meet business goals. A solid content production plan keeps your entire team on the same page, ensures brand consistency, and makes the content creation process much more manageable. Studies show that businesses with solid planning and clear goals are ten times more likely to succeed compared to those who skip the planning stage.

3. What should be included in a content workflow?

A typical content workflow includes these essential steps: research (gathering facts, quotes, statistics, and defining goals), write (creating the actual content with engaging titles and calls-to-action), review (having multiple people examine the content for feedback), revise (making adjustments based on feedback received), approve (getting final approval from supervisors), upload to CMS (adding links, photos, and metadata), review the web page (checking formatting and functionality), and finally publish. Each step should have assigned team members with clear deadlines to ensure smooth progression through the workflow.

4. How do I create an effective style guide for content production?

A style guide should outline how you want your brand represented through written and visual content, ensuring consistency regardless of who creates the content. Include guidelines for tone of voice, writing style, visual elements (colors, fonts, imagery), formatting preferences, and brand messaging. The style guide helps maintain brand consistency across all content, making your business appear cohesive and well-thought-out.

This consistency builds trust and helps establish a strong brand reputation, making people more likely to respect your company and listen to what you have to say.

5. Should I choose gated or ungated content for my business?

The choice depends on your goals, but research shows ungated content is downloaded much more frequently than gated content. Content marketing expert David Meerman Scott found that people often find filling out forms a hassle and are reluctant to share their information. However, gated content can be valuable for lead generation if you’re offering high-value resources like detailed white papers or exclusive guides.

Consider using ungated content to build trust and awareness first, then offer some premium gated content for serious prospects. You might also consider “ungated” content that has optional forms – accessible without filling out forms but with the option to subscribe for additional benefits.

6. How often should I publish evolving content to stay relevant?

The frequency depends on your resources and audience expectations, but consistency is more important than frequency. Whether you publish daily, weekly, or monthly, stick to a regular schedule so your audience knows when to expect new content. Evolving content like blog series, weekly industry updates, or monthly reports keeps you fresh in your audience’s minds and demonstrates ongoing expertise.

Start with a realistic publishing schedule you can maintain long-term – it’s better to publish quality content weekly consistently than to publish daily for a month and then stop. Monitor your analytics to see what frequency generates the best engagement from your specific audience.

7. When should I consider outsourcing content production vs. doing it in-house?

Consider outsourcing when you lack internal expertise, struggle to maintain consistent quality, miss deadlines regularly, or need to scale content production quickly. Professional content creation services bring specialized skills, established workflows, and can often produce content more efficiently than building an internal team from scratch. However, keep content in-house if you have the necessary skills and resources, need very specialized industry knowledge, or want complete control over the process.

Many businesses use a hybrid approach – handling strategy and planning internally while outsourcing specific tasks like writing, design, or video production. Evaluate your budget, timeline, quality requirements, and internal capabilities to make the best decision for your business.