2024 Content Cafe: Planning Content With a Notion Template

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to making your business more visible online, there are some basic digital marketing steps you don’t want to skip. Keep reading to see how my Notion template can help.

Coming up with a marketing plan is not a one-time task. It’s a constant cycle of:

• testing out methods you think will work
• gathering and evaluating the results
• eliminating what doesn’t align with your goals
• staying persistent with the methods that yield positive results

As a creator, freelancer, or entrepreneur, you have to be willing to stick to a plan but also change with the times. This means staying up-to-date with trends happening within your niche or industry. It also means breaking up your larger marketing strategy into smaller, time-oriented milestones. 

A successful digital marketing strategy requires flexibility, as well as structure.

In this guide, I explain how to plan and organize your digital content for a year full of growth for your personal or collective brand. And I explain how to use my Notion template to make it all happen.

Let’s get started!

Where Do Entrepreneurs Go Wrong With Marketing?

As a business owner, the way your products and services are portrayed online in 2024 is completely up to you. Your branding, copywriting, and customer service play a huge part in this. So do content writing and marketing. Before I share one of the best ways to keep your content organized throughout the year, let’s look at what not to do.

Marketing Mistake #1: Paid Content Only

You rely on paid content/ads without gathering valuable information from your organic content performance. An effective paid advertising campaign requires an understanding of the types of content that get audience members engaged in the first place. This means starting with unpaid advertising AKA organic marketing.

Marketing Mistake #2: No Content Calendar

You don’t write down the majority of your content ideas because you expect them to live in your head until you’re ready to bring them to life. All of a sudden you realize your social media accounts look like a ghost town, but you don’t have any posts in the roster. Then what happens? Social media users who aren’t yet familiar with your brand may choose to spend time with other accounts that are more up-to-date, even if you offer higher-quality products and services.

Marketing Mistake #3: Single-Use Content

You’re afraid of being repetitive. You use each content idea only once, instead of repurposing content between your blog and social media channels. You end up spending more time coming up with new ideas, rather than tweaking existing ideas and formatting them to fit the culture of each social media platform.

Marketing Mistake #4: Empty Website

You don’t have a blog within your website. Instead, you rely solely on social media, which leaves your fate in the hands of the Instagram gods, as I like to say. Your website isn’t full enough to help search engines understand why your website exists and, therefore, which search engine users to connect you with. Another way to put it: You’re giving Google no reason to move your website closer to page one in Google Search.

Marketing Mistake #5: Too Many Apps

You house your digital content ideas in too many places at once (i.e. the notes app on your phone, Google Docs, Instagram drafts, TikTok drafts, etc.). What you could do instead is use a single organizational tool that stores all of your content information in one place. Prime example: Notion.

Using Notion for Your Content Marketing

One of the best ways to keep your content organized throughout the year is with Notion. Notion is an organizational software that allows you to build pages, tables, and databases from scratch.

Entrepreneurs find Notion helpful for planning their business systems, storing contact information, and managing projects, among other functions.  

In this case, I’m showing you how to use Notion to plan and organize content so you can continue to build your audience. Using Notion – the free or paid version – is a great way to lay out your content ideas before you need to post them.

You can download Notion as an app on your phone, tablet, or computer, as it’s available for iOS and Android.

Notion is:

• free
• highly customizable
• easy to use at home, in the office, or on the go

This is exactly why I created a template for you to download today. It’s called 2024 Content Cafe, and it’s a one-stop shop for creating SEO-friendly content.

2024 Content Cafe Notion Template

Why did I create this awesome Notion template? Because digital marketing is changing in 2024.

It’s becoming more competitive, as the power of the internet continues to rise. Our world is becoming more modernized and internet-centric each day.

With this in mind, here’s what I suggest you prioritize: Place long-form blogging at the center of your content marketing strategy. I like to think of blog posts as skimmable thought processes that live on your website. You own your website, hence, you can remove, edit, and lengthen those thought processes at any point in time.

When you plan a simple, yet, value-packed blog post within 2024 Content Cafe, you can then repurpose it into short-form content for your various social media platforms.

*Remember, focusing solely on social media is risky, because at the end of the day you do not own your social media platform; the app does.*

How to Use the 2024 Content Cafe Notion Template

After (1) visiting the shop and (2) clicking the “duplicate” button at the top right corner of the template, you’ll be able to customize 8 separate pages:

1. ICEE Soup
2. Competitors
3. Targeted Keywords
4. Content Calendar
5. Content Templates
6. Brand Bank
7. SEO Tasks
8. Engagement Tasks

Let’s break down what each of these pages involves!

ICEE Soup

ICEE Soup is honestly just a chance for me to create a silly pun. No one likes the thought of icy soup. The idea is polarizing, because soup is supposed to be hot. (I guess technically it would be a Playa Bowl, right?)

ICEE Soup is polarizing

This is the first concept I want you to consider when planning your content for 2024. Don’t be afraid to be polarizing. This means allowing your brand to stand out from the crowd by boldly demonstrating your opinions within your niche/industry, as well as your broader worldview.

Don’t be controversial just for attention’s sake, but do be clear about what your brand represents and why you offer your specific products or services. Inevitably, some people on the internet won’t like what you have to say, but don’t take that as discouragement. Instead, take it as a sign that you are clearly communicating yourself through your blog and social media channels.

ICEE Soup has variety

ICEE Soup is a pun, but it’s also an acronym. It stands for inspire, create, educate, and entertain. This sums up the second objective your content should be achieving. Posting only one type of content all the time would be boring for you and your audience. You’ll avoid this by posting a mix of content that does the following:

• inspires your audience to take action
• creates brand loyalty
• educates your audience on a problem and solution
• entertains your audience through authenticity

Continually cycling through these four categories prevents your online presence from feeling overly sales-y. The key is focusing on what you can offer your audience members, instead of assuming they should hand over their credit cards right away.

Each of the four ICEE Soup ingredients has its own tone and angle, but they all work towards the common goal of building familiarity and trust.

Competitors

After identifying what you want your brand to put out into the world, you’re one step closer to adding ideas to your content calendar. But first, take some time to research your competitors.

Competitor research is an important project to take on when you’re first building your brand and content strategy. But it’s also an ongoing project, no matter where you are in your business.

Reading what your competitors write, watching the videos they create, and listening to what they have to say is going to help you create your polarizing ICEE Soup content. It’s also going to keep you up-to-date with important conversations and trends within your industry.

An added bonus of tracking and researching your competitors is that you’ll have a go-to place for you to engage with other accounts on social media. We’ll touch on that in the “engagement tasks” section of this post.

Here’s where you’ll go to familiarize yourself with your competitors’ content marketing strategies:

• Blog
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Pinterest
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Email newsletters

Yes, keep a close eye on your competitors, but do not plagiarize or steal their content under any circumstance. But you already knew that!

Targeted Keywords

In 2024, you’re gonna want to get on Google’s good side. Specifically, start writing long-form (500+ words) blog posts about keywords people are already searching for.

Targeting or pinpointing keywords is the perfect way to create content with intention. Conducting keyword research helps you understand what search engine users are looking for and what kind of questions they want your blog and social media posts to answer.

Keyword research tools save you from having to come up with content ideas off the top of your head, since what your ideal audience wants is already laid out for you.

I’d say creating meaningful and SEO-friendly content isn’t impossible without keyword research tools like Ahrefs, Moz, Answer The Public, etc. However, it’s a heck of a lot easier with them.

Another way I like to explain this is: Your blog content needs to be both robotic and human.

how to create robotic and human content

Robotic Content: SEO-based, so it’s easy to plan and aligns with real-time web data

Human Content: Covers topics that people care about and that represent your brand well

With both elements in play, you get to build a blog that keeps you competitive, visible, and trustworthy within your niche.

Here’s the reality of marketing without SEO-friendly content: Google might not understand what to do about your website.

When your website doesn’t contain the keywords and topics that reflect the needs of your ideal customer or client, Google has little reason to bump you closer to page one.

Another way of saying this: Google decides not to show the reader your website within the results page, because your website doesn’t seem to match the search intent.

Think about this.

People have to learn, discover, or memorize your web address. But they don’t have to learn the questions they already have in their minds. They’re already asking specific questions because they’re a part of their reality.

This is why for every blog post you write, you should have one targeted keyword.

Content Calendar

Hey, entrepreneur, riddle me this: Are you happy with the amount of content you’re posting on a regular basis?

You might be frustrated by your writing pace simply because you haven’t given yourself any deadlines.

So, no, you’re not a bad writer. You just need a content calendar to stay organized throughout 2024.

You can look at what you want your content to accomplish throughout the entire year, but you don’t have to put pressure on yourself to have all the details planned out. Split up your content plan by quarters. At first, you focus on January through March (quarter 1), then you move on to April through June (quarter 2), and so on.

If you feel like certain pieces of content are going to take longer to complete, then write down short-term due dates so that you know what you need to accomplish on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

When filling in your content calendar, keep in mind events, holidays, and launches that are relevant to your business.

A full content calendar informs the order in which you’ll write your posts. This prevents you from jumping around randomly from project to project.

how your content calendar helps your audience

You’re not the only one who benefits from using a content calendar. Your audience does, too.

The familiarity established through regularly scheduled blog posts allows the reader to eventually make a decision: “Should I invest my time, energy, and money into XYZ business or not?”

When a reader understands that you’re actively involved in their same thought processes and conversations, they’re more likely to become first-time and repeat customers. On the other hand, when you don’t keep yourself accountable with a content calendar, the relationship-building process can potentially slow down.

Content Templates

The upfront work of creating templates is like writing an instructional manual for yourself. Over time, sticking to your own rules and standards becomes a no-brainer. Templatized writing elevates your brand, as it supports consistent communication.

Consistency and repetition are good for everyone involved.

Get this: It takes the average mind 7 — some say 14 — times to memorize a single message, so don’t be afraid to repeat yourself or create some overlap within your content.

In addition to the templates included in 2024 Content Cafe, here are more smart ways to templatize your blog content writing process.

7 ways to use templates for writing blog posts

1. Choose your minimum requirements for keyword metrics like monthly search volume, keyword difficulty (competition), and click-through rate (CTR).
2. Conduct keyword research on a monthly or quarterly basis. Record your preferred keywords in a Notion table or Google Sheet.
3. Design blog post formats that match the search intent of your chosen keywords. Prioritize the listicle (“best”) and instructional (“how to”) formats.
   • Someone searching for a product rankings will click a post named “best xyz products.”
   • Someone searching for ideas or instructions will click a post named “how to “ or “easy steps to.”
4. Convert your chosen keywords into blog post titles, aligning with the listicle or instructional formats. Include numbers, scroll-stopping language, and concise formatting.
5. Organize your titles in a marketing calendar, alongside complementary social media posts. Keep in mind events, holidays, launches, etc.
6. Batch write the posts in date order, according to your marketing calendar. Plan to add internal links over time, as you publish more related blog posts.
   • Batch writing is dedicating a day or a few hours to writing, instead of switching between different types of tasks.
7. Analyze your website traffic and keyword data over time to identify ways to improve your blog content strategy. Incorporate outsourcing, as needed.

Brand Bank

Branding should 100% be completed before moving on to content creation. This brand bank is a representation of a creative process that’s already been completed. It’s a place for you to quickly copy and paste elements of your messaging that show up frequently in your content.

4 Elements of Your Brand Bank

• emojis: emoticons that add imagery to your tone of voice
• headlines: frequently used phrases containing 3-10 words each
• statements: key points comprised of 1-2 sentences each
• hashtags: improve searchability on social media platforms

The four elements above are not the main event; they’re meant to complement and energize your writing.

Staying on-brand within your written words includes what you say and how you say it (i.e.  tone of voice). I’ll use some of my favorite small business owners as examples.

If I sold organic superfood desserts out of San Diego, I’m likely not going to research the keyword “Dallas brunch spots.” I’m also not going to write a blog post titled “How to Start a Cattle Farm.”

If I taught private drum lessons, I could write “5 Easy Steps to Assemble Your First Drum Kit,” instead of

“5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Play the Drums.”

If I owned a window repair business, I could research keywords like “home maintenance” and “energy efficient windows.” If I’m known for my approachable and funny tone of voice, I could use the blog post title

“3 Quick Ways to Clean Your Windows When You’d Rather be Watching Lord of the Rings,” instead of “How to Clean Your Windows.”

Each of the above blog posts or social media posts should come with their own emojis, headlines, statements, or hashtags (wherever it’s appropriate).

So before you hit publish, refer to your brand bank to ensure that you show up in front of your audience without confusing or repelling them.

SEO Tasks

The practice of search engine optimization (SEO) goes beyond creating Googleable content. There are many ways to improve your SEO outside of using keyword research tools to select important topics.

You might not have known that SEO requires frequent checkups on the back-end of your website. (I could have listed this as marketing mistake #1.)

Now you know you can give your website the best possible chance of being found by your ideal audience by managing on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO.

Here are just a few examples to get you started: 

SEO tasks to add to your marketing strategy

• Remove or replace broken links.
• Add your business address to your website footer.
• Update your Google Business Profile.
• Add alt descriptions to images throughout your website.
• Add your business mission and a call to action (CTA) to your Instagram bio.
• Contact blog owners for link building.
• Install the Yoast SEO plugin onto your website.
• Add internal links between related blog posts.
• Place relevant keywords within your homepage copy.
• Work with an SEO-friendly ghostwriter.
• Check Google Analytics and Google Search Console frequently.

When you’re creating content on social media, do not post and ghost! Engage with your audience and other brands through social media, before and after publishing your content.

There’s no right way to do this, but let’s take a look at my approach.

I believe that one of the best ways to come up with blog post topics is to conduct research while you’re engaging with other accounts on social media. Let’s take Instagram for example.

Here’s how I gather blog post topic ideas while leaving a good impression on other Instagram accounts.

conducting blog post research through instagram comments

1. I create my graphic or video.
2. I write my caption. (Alternatively, my caption was pre-written during a batch writing session.)
3. I open Instagram on my laptop, since it’s easier to type on my computer than my phone.
4. I set a 15-minute timer, and I leave value-packed comments on as many relevant posts as possible.
   • If a comment is more than a few words or emojis, and it reflects my brand’s personality, then it’s value packed.
   • If a post is somehow related to my audience’s thoughts or questions, then it’s relevant.
5. Each time I leave a comment, I copy and paste it into my Google Doc called “Instagram Comments.”
6. Next to each comment I write myself a note, basically a summary of the message being shared in the post.
7. After the 15 minutes are up, I close Instagram and my Google Doc, knowing I’ve interacted with ~10 accounts. (Ten is the typical amount I’m able to complete in 15 minutes.) This means I have ~10 comments and ~10 ideas for new pieces of content, whether it’s for my blog, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

As a result, my comments have been getting plenty of likes and responses. They’ve even been getting pinned by the original poster, so that my comment shows up at the very top of the comment section, right below the caption.

And a step further…it’s helping me get more follows.

The point of this process is to engage with your industry peers and ideal audience on an ongoing basis. 

Instead of your business being an island of one, you’re learning what real people are having conversations about in real time. You’re building your business through social connection.

Access the 2024 Content Cafe Notion Template

Ready to see what all the hype is about? Downloading my Notion template could not be easier.

1. Click the button below.
2. Tell me which email address to send the template to.
3. Once you open up Notion, click the “duplicate” button at the top right-hand corner.
4. Edit the template to your heart’s desire!

2024 Content Cafe v. Marketing Mistakes

Remember the 5 marketing mistakes we looked at earlier? Good news — the 2024 Content Cafe Notion template helps you avoid them all!

1. Paid Content Only

The targeted keywords page reminds you to use relevant keywords. The brand bank page helps you incorporate hashtags. The content templates page reminds you to use engaging graphics, images, and audio. All of these combined will increase the reach of any given post.

2. No Content Calendar

The content calendar page has multiple views, allowing you to filter the calendar by different types of content, as well as publishing status.

3. Single-Use Content

Use the content templates page to plan out social media video scripts and/or captions that relate to each blog post.

4. Empty Website

Instead of having a website that only has a homepage, about page, and contact page, you’ll have a blog that keeps your audience learning, growing, and subconsciously preparing to become a hot lead.

5. Too Many Apps 

You can use the 2024 Content Cafe Notion template as is, or you can add more pages to accommodate the specific needs of your business. No more scrambling to put the pieces of your content together!

Wrap-up: Planning Content With a Notion Template

Whether you’re just starting your blog for the first time or you want to build upon your current content strategy, KQ Writing Studio is here to help your small business build an audience that’s excited to pay you.

This is why I’m sharing this Notion template and the other resources throughout this blog. It’s all about taking a long-game approach to marketing by writing content that’s on-brand, Googleable, and reader-focused.

Remember — keeping yourself organized and ahead of schedule with 2024 Content Cafe will boost your:

• brand awareness
• lead acquisition
• audience building

Your competitors aren’t slowing down in 2024. Why should you?

P.S. Feel free to share this blog post with a freelancer, entrepreneur, or content creator who might need it.