How is Building a Content Strategy Like Plotting a Novel?

I recently graduated from a year-long Novel Incubator program, where I spent twelve months with nine other novelists workshopping and revising our novels, and received really quality craft teaching and guidance. We studied everything from high-level structures like Hero's Journey and Save the Cat, right down to scene structure, and how every scene should create tension, reveal character, and drive the plot forward.

Many of us rewrote our novels (I did twice!) because we had fundamental issues with higher-level elements. I'm at a point where I've now gotten the narrative arc correct, what my character is after, the hurdles as to how she's going to get it, and the right plotting and pacing.

With all that planning and big picture stuff in place, I can now write scenes that are much more impactful, that are richer and deeper in tension, that fit with the overall plot structure, and that further the story and what I want to say. They're also easier to write now that I have everything planned and outlined.

But if you wanted to write a novel, you wouldn't start with the individual scenes without thinking about plot, character, voice, themes, or story arc. You could probably cobble something together, but they wouldn’t be coherent or aligned, or tell the story you want to tell.

Yet that's how many of us try to do our author marketing, or bookstore marketing, or literary non-profit marketing. We think about what posts we need to make today or what newsletter we need to write today, and what we can just get out there today, without doing the work on the bigger plot, narrative, and story first. (I do this too, don't worry!)

Don't Start with Scene; Start with Strategy

When I work with authors or literary organizations on their content marketing, we don't start with what to post today. Instead, we take a few steps back to build a simple strategy first, much like a novelist would spend time planning out their plot, characters, and other elements.

First, we start with your goals and what you’re trying to achieve in your marketing efforts. This is like your plot — where do you want to go and how do you create a journey to take you there?

Then we determine who your ideal reader or target audience is, so that you can speak to them more directly in your marketing efforts. These are like your characters — and I go so far as to create named personas so that clients literally have characters to talk to!

Then we pick key topics you’ll focus your marketing on. Don't post about everything in the universe, but pick two or three things that will further your goals and that your target audience will gravitate towards. These are like the themes of your novel, where you typically pick two or three things you want the story to include and speak about.

We also talk about branding, voice, and style. As a writer, you make decisions about narrative voice and writing style, too — it's no different here.

Then we figure out which channels (like social media or newsletter) are going to be the best places for your marketing efforts based on where your target audience is. This is kind of like setting: Where does my target audience already hang out and where can I meet them?

Now, with all of those elements planned out, we put it together into a detailed content calendar that shows why you're creating this piece of content, what you're creating content about, who you're creating it to, and where and when you're posting it. This is essentially taking all the elements of your story and putting it into an outline.

Once you have this detailed content calendar or outline, it's very easy to go through and create content that's tailored to your audience, aligned with your goals, and that tells the story you want to tell. It's like writing those scenes: they're easier to write, and you know what you need to include to align it with your greater plot and story.

To build on this idea, in the next section, we’ll examine the five Ws of a marketing strategy.

Hi! I’m Jessica, and I help literary businesses, organizations, and authors build and execute their marketing strategies. If you'd like to learn how to do this 👆, come work with me!