Streamlining and Scaling the Content Marketing Process

Although content marketing is an integral part of most digital marketing strategies, it is also one of the most delicate and challenging ones. There is so much to do and think about, and if you do not have a framework in place to guide you, you are unlikely to see the results you want.

To make sure content marketing is working for you, you need to make it fast and efficient, so you provide effective and helpful content that readers will love and share.

1. Define Everyone’s Roles

Most businesses have a content marketing team in place if they are doing content marketing. For the team to be effective, everyone should know their roles and what is expected of them. Depending on the size of the team, some roles might overlap, while some might be handled by only one person.

The main aim of doing this is breaking down the project into roles that can be delegated to the people responsible for certain parts of the project.

For example, you might have a team leader who chooses the topics, a writer who writes the articles, and a social media manager who is responsible for everything to do with social media posting and promotion. Although there are a lot more roles in a content marketing team, the main idea here is that responsibilities and roles should be clearly defined.

2. Define the Process

Although everyone might know what they need to do, they may not know when they need to do it. A clear process outlines who is responsible for what and when they need to have it done. It also needs to outline the process of getting a piece of content published.

For example, the content could pass through a research stage, a writing stage, thorough proofreading, copyediting, formatting and publishing, then promotion through social media.

Each of these stages needs to be completed by specific people at specific times if the team wants to keep everything organized.

3. Streamline Lines of Communication

Some lines of communication can become bloated, especially in teams, and defeat their whole purpose. For example, it is easy to have an email chain that is 40 or even 60 chains deep, with almost every chain having a few people referenced and replying to it. This is highly inefficient, and teams must find ways to communicate effectively and cut out the bloat.

Using communication features like “rooms” that discuss just one single aspect of a project is a good practice, as you invite only people who are required for that conversation. Also, you can find information about a single topic easily. For example, if content needs more context, it is easier to find it in the writing room than going through hundreds of emails to find the required changes.

4. Use Editorial Calendars Liberally

If you want your content writing team to be productive, it would be useful to have an editorial calendar. This is a calendar that outlines all the content you need to complete and publish in a given timeframe. Having a calendar gives you more control as it lets you know in advance what you need to have done by a certain date. This way, you can prepare in advance and are ready when the publishing day comes.

An editorial calendar is also very important in helping you stay focused. It shows intention, and when you have something on an editorial calendar, that increases the chances of getting it done. An editorial calendar also takes the stress out of trying to figure out what you need to write when a deadline is looming since the team just needs to work on what is already on the calendar.

5. Getting the Most Out of Your Content

One mistake a lot of new content marketing teams make is trying to put out more content. They believe that if they double the content they publish, they will double the number of visitors and readers. While that may be true, it is not a good use of time. Instead, why not try to make the content you have go even further?

Instead of spending time writing new content, you could use that time to ensure the content you put out in the first place is of the highest quality and then spend the rest of the time promoting that content. There are four main ways of doing this, including having a sharing schedule for your content.

Because of how fast social media moves, it is unlikely that everyone in your target audience will see your content the first time you post it. 

Reposting it after some time, say 3 to seven days, gives your audience an opportunity to see it. Just ensure the period between reposts is long enough to avoid spamming.

Second, you could build an email marketing campaign to get your content directly in your audience’s hands. An amazing email marketing program not only brings in traffic; it can also be an excellent way of increasing a blog or website’s readership.

There are various tools that can help you manage your email marketing campaigns, including helping you schedule content and collect and handle contacts. PieSync, for instance, is an amazing platform that helps you integrate various multi-channel marketing platforms, such as by syncing between Autopilot and Mailchimp This ensures you get the most out of your content marketing efforts.

By doing this, PieSync helps businesses better engage with their readers and customers at the right time through highly targeted marketing campaigns.

Third, you could repurpose various pieces of content to create new content. For example, articles can be remixed to create video content or podcasts. The possibilities here are endless.

Lastly, dedicate some time to promoting the content. Content marketing teams know it takes a lot of time to create good content, so if they do not spend enough time promoting it, it is unlikely to reach its full potential.

To conclude

Content marketing is an excellent way of reaching your audience, giving them information, or even telling them about your products and services. Because of how essential it is to many business’ digital marketing efforts, it is important that it is done right. Streamlining the process and making sure content goes as far as it should are all good ways of ensuring this happens.

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