Designing a content material workflow might not be essentially the most thrilling a part of content material advertising—nevertheless it’s vital to success.
Content material workflows inform who wants to finish what process at any given second, all whereas making certain the content material is correct, in alignment along with your technique, and optimized for distribution. Merely put, they’re the key to any high-performing content material program.
Let’s take a look at how one can create higher workflows in your group.
Why Efficient Content material Workflows Matter
A workflow is a collection of steps by which you arrange your content material in order that it strikes seamlessly by way of the manufacturing course of. Naturally, your workflow will rely upon many components—together with the related events concerned within the content material creation course of, the scale of your staff or firm, and the scope of the mission.
As a content material marketer, you might be juggling a number of tasks without delay, so workflows might help preserve you on observe. They will additionally align expectations between contributors and assist overcome frequent content material roadblocks, like a prolonged stakeholder evaluation.
However to craft workflows successfully, you want the suitable instruments and folks in place, plus an understanding of how completely different dependencies will have an effect on the general course of. You need to proactively iron out a high-level workflow for all content material when constructing your technique after which a extra granular workflow for every particular content material asset.
Including workflow administration instruments to your MarTech stack might help enhance accountability and eradicate course of redundancies. What’s extra, they allow you to solidify and doc content material workflows, giving full transparency into the processes wanted to get tasks from ideation to distribution.
Constructing Environment friendly Workflows
Workflows are on the core of assembly your content material technique objectives, whether or not that be driving visitors from natural search, producing income, or something in between. General, purpose for consistency and construction amongst workflows for various belongings, with some flexibility relying in your content material objectives.
When constructing environment friendly workflows, begin with these 5 steps:
1. Select the suitable author for the job.
An excellent content material author will produce work developed with well-defined objectives. Contemplating your finances, establish anyone in your staff or exterior to your organization who understands your viewers, goals, and model’s wants. It’s possible you’ll wish to discover a freelancer or contributor with a background in your business or rent a author with a robust background in a particular format or channel. Bear in mind: Excessive-quality, audience-driven content material will assist drive effectivity.
Instruments like Contently might help you construct your artistic dream staff. Our Clever Expertise Suggestions characteristic matches content material entrepreneurs with award-winning freelancers who’re proper for any job based mostly in your content material technique. Contently additionally assists with contributor staffing, administration, invoicing, and cost, so you may focus your consideration on telling nice tales.
2. Incorporate subject material specialists into your workflow.
Some content material belongings, particularly these written for extra skilled or educated goal audiences, ought to have a layer of evaluation from a topic professional (SME) to make sure accuracy, which builds model credibility.
In my very own expertise, I’ve discovered that involving an inside professional provides a way of consolation when publishing content material on a very advanced or delicate subject. SMEs will also be useful in content material creation, whether or not you interview them for podcasts, flip a dialog right into a weblog put up, and even leverage them for influencer advertising. Plus, involving inside SMEs is a wonderful strategy to construct cross-departmental relationships and rapport throughout the group.
However SMEs who don’t give you the results you want straight or acknowledge the worth of content material could hesitate to speculate time in content material creation. That is the place solidifying a workflow, establishing clear deadlines, and articulating your objectives from the get-go might help.
With Contently, you will get inside or exterior SMEs to evaluation content material, whether or not they’re a person on the platform or not. With the usual or off-platform tabs, you may e-mail the Contently hyperlink to an SME for evaluation contained in the platform. Without having for a login, this off-platform step permits your entire edits to stay secure in a single place. This offers a transparent deadline, lets you observe a mission’s progress, and maintains model management of your deliverable.
3. Embrace consistency and accuracy.
For readers to view your model as a thought chief, it is advisable to create factually sound content material. Offering incorrect or outdated info can harm your credibility. One answer is to embrace fact-checking as an ordinary apply in your workflow, ideally within the early phases of evaluation.
Consistency inside the evaluation cycle itself can also be important. It confirms that voice, tone, and model fashion throughout your content material belongings are aligned. Instruments or supplies like fashion guides could make this simpler, too.
Contently’s integration with IBM-Watson helps our shoppers keep a constant model voice all through the content material they create. Utilizing this machine studying algorithm, you may assess how carefully your content material aligns along with your model’s tone. Illustrated above, you’ll see the objectives of The Content material Strategist, rating a chunk for the publication’s ideally suited tones of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness.
4. Get your authorized staff on board.
Determine upfront what tasks will want an extra layer of evaluation past the SMEs concerned. Together with your authorized staff in your workflow as an additional precaution might help shield you from authorized hurdles you might face by publishing sure content material belongings.
A senior govt or your PR staff could must evaluation content material the place, as an illustration, your model is taking a stable stance on a delicate subject. Take into consideration the potential ramifications of publishing a chunk of content material and work backward when establishing your workflow.
With Contently, that is the place the off-platform characteristic can come in useful, particularly in case your authorized or PR staff is working outdoors of the Contently platform. Within the screenshot above, you’ll see a spot to pick out the off-platform approver. You possibly can even add this contingent evaluation to a workflow template if it’s a repeatable process to avoid wasting time on future deliverables.
5. Doc your workflow.
Keep organized by documenting the steps of your workflow earlier than the content material creation course of begins, so you may focus extra on the standard of your content material and fewer on operations. The Contently platform lets you create workflow templates for repeatable duties.
Workflow documentation additionally makes the modifying course of absolutely clear to all key stakeholders, who can then issue their particular duties into their to-do lists as they juggle a number of obligations.
Leverage mission administration software program or different instruments to set deadlines, create duties for key gamers, and notify staff of missed deadlines. For instance, Contently lets you create workflow templates that auto-populate dates based mostly on the beginning date of a mission.
Content material Planning and Workflows With Contently
To drive leads to advertising, you want nice content material. However it’s exhausting to get there with out first establishing the suitable steps and processes. Efficient workflows can solely make your content material manufacturing that a lot stronger.
Within the Contently platform, you may construct “good workflows” that guarantee compliance and course of adherence, with automated notifications to maintain writers on observe. You can even create an individualized workflow for every mission you create, with clear visibility for everybody concerned in editorial processes and procedures.
With our know-how and freelancer community, you may flip round content material rapidly and simply with the suitable instruments, dashboards, and stakeholders to drive measurable outcomes.
Request a demo to discover how Contently might help you create a content material workflow that drives effectivity.
