You will be able to pick three to five content themes from your customer research and journey stages.
Every December, Priya would sit down to plan next year's posts and start with the calendar. Chinese New Year in January or February, then Hari Raya, then the school holidays, National Day, Deepavali, Christmas. Each got a greeting post and maybe a promotion. Between the holidays, she posted whatever came to mind that week. By March she had usually run out of ideas, and the posts that did get replies were never the holiday greetings.
Planning content from the calendar feels organised, but it starts in the wrong place. The calendar tells you when things happen. It does not tell you what your customers want to read. Your voice-of-customer file does.
A content theme is a topic you return to again and again because it is tied to a problem or goal your customers have. It is broader than a single post and narrower than your whole business. Priya's could be exam stress, budgeting for school costs and study habits at home. Mei Ling, the home baker, might choose planning a children's party, cakes for dietary needs and ordering for big events. Farah's might be dressing for a first job, getting the fit right online, and workwear for hot weather.
Each theme comes straight from what customers say. Priya's exam stress theme is built on the largest group of phrases in her file: "goes blank in exams", "freezes when it counts", "cries before tests". Budgeting for school costs comes from questions parents ask about fees, assessment books and how much tuition is reasonable to spend on. Study habits come from "how do I get him to sit down and do homework" and similar questions.
Go through your voice-of-customer file and the question list you built in lesson 6.1. Group them, and the groups that come up most often become your candidate themes.
Some themes attract people who have only just noticed a problem. Others build trust with people who are comparing options. Others help people who are close to deciding. If all your themes sit at one stage, your content will reach only one kind of reader.
If you took Digital marketing foundations, lesson 2.3, What each stage needs from you, showed that a business posting only "sign up now" messages talks only to people who are ready to buy, and misses everyone earlier. The same is true of themes.
Priya's three themes spread naturally. Exam stress attracts parents early, when they are worried but not yet looking for tuition. Study habits builds trust with parents who are working out what kind of help their child needs. A fourth theme, choosing tuition, helps parents who are comparing centres and close to deciding: what to ask, what a trial lesson should show you, group versus one-to-one.
Check your themes against the stages. If you have nothing for people who are just noticing the problem, or nothing for people about to decide, add a theme that fills the gap.
Use holidays and seasons as hooks for your themes rather than as themes on their own. A Chinese New Year greeting post says nothing about your business that a reader needs. A post connecting the season to a theme can be useful: "How to keep revision going over the Chinese New Year holidays without spoiling them", under study habits.
The most useful seasons for most businesses are the ones your customers live by. A tuition centre lives by the school calendar: the start of term, exam periods, results, the holidays, the PSLE. A baker watches the months when birthdays and festivals cluster and when people plan events. A workwear shop cares about when graduates start jobs and when the weather changes what people want to wear. Look up the dates each year, from MOE for school terms and from the Ministry of Manpower for public holidays, rather than relying on memory.
Mark these seasons on your calendar and ask which theme each one connects to. The season gives you the timing. The theme gives you something worth saying.
A theme that is too narrow runs out quickly. "Fractions in P5" is a good post, but you will struggle to write ten different pieces on it. "Exam stress" can easily hold ten or more: what blanking out looks like, why it happens to children who know the work, what parents can say the night before, how to practise under timed conditions, what to do after a bad result, and so on.
A theme that is too broad has the opposite problem. "Education" or "fashion" could hold a thousand posts, and gives you no direction.
The test is simple. For each candidate theme, try to list ten pieces from your research: questions customers have asked, phrases from your file, objections, stories. If you reach ten easily, the theme is the right size. If you struggle to reach five, it is probably too narrow, and may fit as one part of a broader theme.
Pick three to five themes. Fewer than three and your content will feel repetitive. More than five and you will spread yourself thin, especially if you are writing alone.
For each one, write a sentence on the customer problem it addresses and which stage of the journey it mostly serves. Note the seasons that connect to it.
Priya settled on four themes. Exam stress serves the early stage, study habits at home the early to middle stages, budgeting for school costs the middle, and choosing tuition the late stage. Under each she listed five ideas taken from her voice-of-customer file and question list.
For the activity, do the same from your own file. Start with the groups of phrases that repeat most, check that the themes cover more than one stage, and for each theme write five post ideas that come from real customer words rather than from the calendar.
Choose four content themes from your voice-of-customer file and list five post ideas under each.
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