Content Planning Prism: A 3D framework for creating content that works
We’ve all been in those editorial or marketing team meetings where you’re planning what content you’ll create for the next week or quarter or year. You’re under pressure to get more leads. There’s an event or a new product launch. Or maybe revenue is down and we just have to just get something — anything — into market quickly.
So we get busy working on another white paper or webinar. Because that’s what people know to ask for and it’s what we’ve always done before. Or, we jump on the latest hot platform — not because it’s right for our business goals or what our audience wants from us — but because it’s trendy.
We focus on the “thing” we need to make rather than the story we need to tell.
No wonder 51% of people in the 2024 Demand Gen Report (DGR) Content Preferences survey said content is too generic and irrelevant. And 55% of B2B marketers said one of their top challenges is creating content that prompts a desired action (CMI/MarketingProfs, B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Outlook for 2025).
What if we stopped focusing so much on the form our content takes, and started putting strategy and purpose first? What if we thought about the function it needs to serve for our audience and our business — what we need to communicate and the experience that people should have when they read or listen or view our content — and then made choices about what, how, where and when?
As with almost everything, from architecture to product design to content, form should follow function. And function has multiple dimensions.
The Chill Content Planning Prism
My Content Planning Prism provides a way to systematically plan content with a “form follows function” mindset. This strategic framework considers three key functional dimensions of your audience’s content experience: intent, information, and interaction.
The business and audience intent — or content mission — informs what type of information and interaction will be most effective.
Likewise, the type of information determines what type of interaction might be most appropriate.
And the nature of the interaction can further guide what, when, where, how, and for whom.
Using this framework as part of your content planning process can help ensure that your business goals and audience needs stay top of mind.
1. Intent: What is the purpose of your content?
Why are you creating this content in the first place? Your business goals could be anything from building brand awareness and creating demand to enabling sales and supporting customers. But to create content that drives the desired action, we have to think outside of the sales and marketing funnel and think about what the audience needs and wants at each stage of their journey and how our content can help them do that. And that means you have to really know your audience:
Who is your content for?
What do they care about?
Where do they spend time?
How do they prefer to consume information?
It’s not just about understanding who they are in business but who they are as people.
2. Information: What is the content of the content?
What are you trying to say? If it’s an idea, is it complex or simple? Abstract or concrete? Novel or status quo? If it’s information, is it visual or verbal? Simple facts or a story? Sequential or all at once? And if it’s data, is it quantitative or qualitative?
Thinking about the job our content needs to do in this way can help determine the most effective way to share the information — so that we don’t just default to a PDF download, which offers many benefits but is simply not a web-first format. (By the way, in our mobile-first world, the “P” in PDF does not stand for perfect; it stands for “pinch and zoom.”)
Sometimes, you can say more by saying less.
Another corporate fave is the PowerPoint slide, especially if you’re creating content for sales. It’s often tempting to put everything there is to say about the product or service on a slide. But sometimes, you can actually say more by saying less.
As Margot Bloomstein explains in her book Trustworthy, sometimes you have to simplify the details so that people can get the big picture and act on it. That means:
Removing overwhelming and distracting details
Packaging the information into a different format
Placing it within a different context
3. Interaction: What is the context and experience?
Content preferences also depend to a large extent on when, where and how your audience is consuming the content. What are they doing? What device are they using? What channel or platform are they on? Do they need to find information fast or do they want a deeper dive?
People have a different mindset when they’re at work than they do when they’re standing in line at Starbucks. They use different devices when they’re at their desk than they do when they’re in their car or out for a walk. And they have a different experience when they have a fast, reliable online connection than they do when they’re on the train or in a hotel room with crappy wi-fi.
That means when you’re planning content for your company’s website, you have to consider how your audience is most likely to access it. Some industries — especially in B2B — are much more likely to see your website on a desktop. While the majority of B2C visitors may be more likely to be on their phone.
Now, a phone is great for a lot of things: like video, podcasts, newsletters and social media. But other types of content and interactions call for a bigger screen and a full user interface. As Jim Macleod posted on Threads, “Many users prefer the desktop experience for certain types of information and activities. Especially if it's something that requires their full attention.” (Jim’s perspective also prompted an interesting discussion on LinkedIn, which is worth a read.)
What’s right is relative
Your audience is not monolithic and they don’t just want or need one thing. Although well over half of B2B buyers seek assets with shareable stats and quick-hitting insights, they also appreciate the ability to expand into relevant topics (DGR). So you have to ask:
What does your audience want or need?
How does your audience engage with your content?
What are your goals and objectives?
By considering all three of the Content Planning Prism dimensions together — and including them in your content planning process — you can make better choices about what content to create for your audience so that it drives a response that supports your business.
There’s no one right way to create and deliver your content. But by being more intentional about both the form and function, it’s possible to create the right content for your audience across multiple dimensions — Intent, Information, Interaction … and deliver on your business and marketing goals.
Cover image: Photo taken at the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum in Seattle, Washington.