Plan for content that counts

There are five steps to content creation, and planning is the first logical step. 📝 A well-thought-out plan for your first Foleon Doc ensures that your content meets its intended goals. In this article, we guide you through the key steps and best practices to consider during the planning stage.

Plan your first Foleon Doc

To help you plan your first Foleon Doc and decide on a suitable content type that drives business results, we recommend asking yourself these six questions.

1️⃣ Which people do you need to involve?

Planning and preparing engaging content involves the expertise for different roles in your team. Even if you're wearing different content hats, it's likely you'll need to work together with other people in your organization. We would recommend that you get them involved as soon as possible. 

• The Requestor — A stakeholder who has a content need.
• The Writer — The one writing and editing the text, or copy, as it's usually called.
• The Designer — The one designing imagery or custom-made templates in Foleon.
• The Distributor — The one involved in getting your content seen by the target audience.

2️⃣ What's the goal of your content?

It's important to clearly define what you want to accomplish with your Foleon Doc. Do you want to reach a certain number of downloads or sales? Newsletter click-through rates? Comments per blog?

Setting a goal makes it easier to create the Foleon Doc and measure the outcome. Here are just a few more examples of some possible objectives:

• Decrease the bounce rate of our digital content by 50% within six months.
• Increase our newsletter readership by 200% within one year.
• Increase the subscribers for our monthly blog by 100% within three months.

3️⃣ What are you going to create? 

Just a few more questions that guide you in the right direction. 😉

• What am I going to create for my target audience?
• Am I creating content for an internal audience, or am I communicating externally?
• What is their knowledge level on the subject?
• Does the Foleon Doc need to inform or sell? 

 4️⃣ How should your reader move through the Foleon Doc?

There are different ways how your audience can move through your Foleon Doc, influenced by how you design the navigation of your Foleon Doc.

• • Linear navigation ➡️
    Your audience would ideally read the content from beginning to end, without skipping around or jumping to different sections. Your Foleon Doc is typically organized in a way that guides the reader through the story or article in a logical order, making it easy for them to follow along and understand the material.
    
  • Non-linear navigation 🔀
    A linear read differs from a non-linear read, where the reader may jump around to different parts of the content, or use links to navigate directly to other pages or Foleon Docs.
    

5️⃣ Which content type will I create?

If you've thought about the questions above, by now, you'll probably have a good idea of what type of content you want to create. 

We provide expertly-designed content templates that you can use to get you off to a flying start — even if it's just for inspiration. 

On the Foleon dashboard homepage, you'll see a collection of professionally designed templates that span multiple content types and use cases:

• Marketing — eBook, Catalog, Whitepaper
• Corporate Communications — Newsletter, Annual Report
• Human Resources — Employee Magazine, Staff Handbook, Vacancy Doc
• Sales — Proposal, Catalog
  ...

You can start from scratch with a blank canvas, but we recommend selecting a Foleon Doc template that fits your story best. 

6️⃣ Where and how can you reach your audience best? 

Creating compelling Foleon Docs is only half the battle. If your content isn’t distributed for maximum reach, it risks getting lost among the many pieces of content that get published. These are some questions you could think about:

• Will you set up a lead-gen campaign where readers fill in a form on a landing page to receive a white paper?
• Are you going to distribute your Foleon Doc on social? 
• Will you reach your audience through paid ads that point to a brochure?
  ...

Get the brand together

Before you start creating content, you want to gather your brand colors, fonts, and visuals — everything you need to make your brand shine. You'll have everything you need to create captivating and consistent content that aligns with your brand identity.

• • Colors 🎨
    Your brand colors are vital in conveying your brand's personality and establishing visual recognition. Identify the primary and secondary colors that represent your brand and note down the HEX or RGB color codes.
    
    
  • Images, GIFs, and videos 🖼️
    

    Compelling images can bring life to your content and evoke emotional connections with your audience. Define a visual style that resonates with your brand. Consider factors like tone, composition, subject matter, and overall aesthetic.

    Collected everything? Upload your images to the media library and keep things organized from the start.

    💡 Have you considered branded icons or illustrations that align with your brand identity These visual elements can add a unique touch to your content.

  • Fonts 🔠
    

    Fonts contribute to your brand's visual identity and can evoke specific emotions or impressions. Establish one font for headings and another for body text to maintain consistency.

    Want to upload a custom font? Learn more in our article All about fonts. 

Got the brand together? 🥁 Perfect! Time to build your Brand Kit.

Build your Brand Kit

Building your Brand Kit is an essential step in the Foleon content creation process. 

With a Brand Kit, you manage your brand centrally, ensuring all Foleon Docs are automatically on-brand. Add your logo, set a color palette, choose typography, and more — helping content creators get off to a flying start.

When you create a new Foleon Doc, the styling settings from the Brand Kit will automatically apply.