Plan months’ worth of content in 60 minutes (or less)!

When you think about what to publish on your website, is it on the same day? Or do you plan your content ahead? Writing on-the-spot has a few problems. Sometimes, whatever you do, you can’t seem to come up with a topic. You just sit there and stare at your screen. Today that’s exactly what we are going to tackle. We explore why’s and how’s of content planning and give you some tips how you can plan content for several months ahead in less than an hour.

Writer’s block and other problems

If you write your own content, you probably know what’s so-called writer’s block. You spend so much time staring at your screen without an idea what to write about. Then, you open your internet browser in hopes that you’ll catch some idea on today’s topic. However, that just turns into an hour scrolling your Facebook page, watching cat videos or something of that sort.

Does that sound familiar?

If it does, it may be the time to start planning your content. It's not guaranteed that creating content that was planned ahead will always go smoothly. But having a plan certainly helps a lot.

Why do you need to plan your content ahead?

There are tons of reasons to plan your content. First, thing about your audience. There are probably someone who bets on sports, someone who plays casino games not to mention all the different types of poker players you can have.

You have to decide which are your target audiences and make sure that you have something interesting for all of them. So, planning content guarantees you stay on course.

It’s time-saving!

And when you know the topic you are going to write about, you can start writing instantly. Even if you start with ”Webster’s dictionary defines tournaments as”. Even if later you will edit 90% of what you’ve written..

It's a much better alternative than just sitting there clueless.

Plan months’ worth of content in 60 minutes (or less)!

We usually have content fully planned for at least 2 months ahead. However, besides a few gaps we have a schedule for around six months up to a year. Whether you start a new affiliate website or already have one including traffic and audience, you must plan your content.

So how do you do it?

First, you need a calendar.

Open up an Excel sheet (or Sheets on Google Docs). Name the first column Week (or Month, based on how heavy or light is your content schedule). Set next columns (but no more than 3) for names of your articles.

First your sheet should look like:

Week No. -> Article 1 -> Article 2 (depending on how many articles per week/month you plan).
Week No.1 -> Empty -> Empty

To start, make 12 weeks each with empty slots for article names. Also, you might want to color code your weeks by month or season or some other period. We color code by four seasons.

Once you do that, add significant occasions to the calendar (Week 1 (New Year), Week 7 (St. Valentine’s day.)) and so on.

Now, think of several different things your audience would be interested in. Just brainstorm for 2 minutes. Go on.

What have you got? Tournaments, slots, cash games, satellites, football, U.S. gambling legislation. Great. That’s enough for now.

OK. It’s time to start filling up the calendar. Don’t worry if you leave gaps now. Schedule a time to come back to your sheet regularly and it will fill up pretty quickly.

Keep in mind, not all topics will make the cut. It's alright. But for now, just try to come up with as many article topics as you can.

To come up with your first topic, take one thing from the list you made before. Let’s say tournaments. So, your first article could be Tournament tips. And all you do now is play with it.

• Now, make the topic narrower:

Top 10 Tournament tips for beginners
Top 3 Tournament tips for mid-stakes players
Satellite (6-max, turbo, super turbo) tournament tips

• Vary the depth and format of the topic:

Quick satellite tournament tips
Complete guide to tournaments
Your tournament checklist

• You can add time frame:

Best Tournament tips to kick off New Year or
Our top tournament tips of the month

• Switch between positive and negative

Top 10 things you need to do in tournaments
Top 10 things you have to stop doing in tournaments

As you see, we made a quick list and already we have plenty of topics from one main topic – tournaments. Now do it to other main topics and start filling up your calendar. Pretty quickly you will have several months of content planned.

Surely, nothing’s rock solid. You can always change your initial plan. And you should. Based on what’s going on in the world, what keyword data is showing, etc. But for now having a content plan for a few months will definitely be handy.