We’ve all seen it – the social media or blog post that seems tone deaf to whatever’s going on in the world, that doesn’t seem to be ‘reading the room’.

This is what happens when good content planning goes bad. Three months of posts have been written and approved, loaded into a content management system, and then forgotten about.

Don’t get me wrong – content planning is essential. It’s easy to start posting content for your company or brand, but if you don’t plan it properly, after two weeks you’ll be desperate for something new to say.

However, what many content planners fail to do, is to build in enough flexibility, enough breathing room. Most importantly, they don’t always appoint a gatekeeper to ensure that what’s going out will land well.

The world changes, and it changes on a dime – as this pandemic has shown us. A content plan must be able to pivot with those changes, and must always consider how its messaging will be received on the day it’s due to go out.

That requires that you don’t just do the planning, approve the copywriter’s posts and leave your content management system to do the rest. Here’s where you need an actual human being – someone with the maturity and sensitivity to check that what you’re about to say is relevant and appropriate for the time, and won’t land you in reputational hot water.