Manage the Workflow to Supercharge Your Content Marketing

Content is an extremely powerful marketing tool. Online blogs and articles can be used to update your readers, clients, and customers – and provide important information about a brand, product or services. In order for your content marketing to be effective, however, it needs to be produced regularly and on time.

Even with a dedicated marketing and content team, measures need to be taken to ensure that the content you produce is the best it can be, released on time, and designed to attract as many new readers and customers as possible. To achieve this, you should optimize and define your workflow. This will allow you to achieve the very best results for your own business website, or the websites and social media accounts of your clients.

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Understanding Content Workflow

Your content workflow is a list of tasks that your content management and production team will need to complete for every one of your clients. Workflow also lists the tasks involved with creating different kinds of content, whether it’s a web page, a white paper, an email campaign, or a blog post. Your content workflow will determine how your content is not just delivered, but how it is approved, reviews, created and sourced.
At first glance, your content workflow might seem vague – but you’ll already be working with one, whether you realize it or not. Take a look at the following example of what a workflow might include, and consider the aspects of you and your team’s work that relate to each point.

• Outline

An outline is the spine of your content. It will explain the avenues that you intend to explore, and the points you wish to made. It may provide basic information and statistics that should be used.

• Writing

This is the second step. The spine of the article will be fleshed out with actual content, and an article, blog posts, email, or white paper will be produced.

• Review

The review process looks at what has been written and involved spell checking, source checking, and readability analysis.

• Editing

Editing is the process of amending any errors, whether they are factual or grammatical.

• Approval

The approval step is when an editor decides that the content is ready for the client or website.

• Publish

This is, of course, the final step in the workflow, and it involves delivering the content to your client and publishing it on their website or other platforms.

When you outline your workflow like this, it becomes easier to assign tasks to individuals. This example workflow might include a content strategist who comes up with the outline and a copywriter who then writes it. An editor might be used for the editing process, and a web expert used to publish and finalize the content.

In other workflows, a graphic designer might be involved to create imagery that will be used alongside the content, or a subject matter expert might be used to help developed the outline of the article.

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Why Define Your Workflow?

You might ask – why even define the workflow in the first place? Well, if you leave a workflow undefined, it can be hard to keep track of multiple, or large projects. When you have a number of clients who all require different kinds of content, a well-defined workflow helps you ensure you always have the right people on the job.

Projects can become mismanaged, take too long, and even just get stuck when you don’t define your workflow and ensure you have the right people on the job who are working on a timeframe. People on your content team, for instance, might be waiting on an outline or information from one of your experts – and somebody in the graphics team might not even know what kind of imagery they need to create. Without a workflow, the whole process goes up in the air, and efficiency is damaged.

When you define a workflow, you allow your team to:

• Break down the entire content creation process into small and easy-to-manage tasks.
  
• Identify every stage of a piece of content’s development, and know what stage it is in at any moment.
  
• Identify all of the steps that must be met and fulfilled before the content can reach the approval stage.
• Know which individual is responsible for each step, and the time frame in which each person will need to have completed that task.

By ensuring that everyone knows who is responsible for what, you can ensure that your company’s content production process works like a well-oiled machine. Not only that, but a well-defined workflow can help project managers identify who is doing a great job, and notice those who might not be pulling their weight. This is a valuable tool when attempting to improve efficiency and ensure

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Here’s How to Define Your Workflow

Now you’ve decided to define your workflow, you need to know how! Identifying your content workflow is about identifying which individual on your team is responsible for what. This can be split into three distinct tasks.

• Identify the Roles

First of all, you need to identify the roles involved in your process. Creating quality content requires more than just an amazing writer, you’ll need a whole team of people who are involved in the creation, formatting, editing and publishing process. Your team might include content strategists and writers who will work together and possible subject-matter experts who will help the writers produce accurate, factual and engaging content.

Marketers might also work with the graphics designers and business owners, to ensure that all content is pitched in the right way.

• Identify the Tasks

Once you have identified the people on your team, you need to identify the tasks that they are responsible for. Identify each role and then define the task for each individual as much as you can. By ensuring every member of staff fully understands what is expected of them, you can avoid unnecessary editing and questions, and general confusion during the writing process.

For instance, when you tell a member of staff that they need to ‘approve a first draft’, you should explain exactly what that means. Does it mean checking facts and spelling/grammar? Does it mean checking the readability? List everything you require from every member of staff and you can ensure that they perform their work to the highest of standards.

• Identify Deadlines

Finally, remember to identify strict deadlines. Telling your team that they must complete a project ‘as soon as possible’ just isn’t good enough. If your team is busy, then they might consider it less important, and suddenly, ‘ASAP’ becomes ‘two weeks from now’.

By introducing strict deadlines, you can ensure that your workflow remains logical and repeatable. Each stage will be completed in a set amount of time, allowing you to deduct how long it will take to complete one project or multiple projects. This allows you to properly plan for the future, know how many clients and projects you can take on with your current staff.

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Use Software and Online Tools

Online tools can help project managers ensure that their workflow is smooth, and content producers are working to the highest of standards. From human services available online, to tools and apps, it’s possible to create better quality content that is Google optimized, and designed to drive as much traffic as possible for your clients.

• Spreadsheets and Organization

Some online tools make it easier to manage your content and can help you define your workflow using easy spreadsheets and tables. Take CoSchedule, for instance, which considers itself one of the best marketing calendars available online. You can get started for free, and access a content hub that allows you to see what content needs to be written, the progress of content that is currently being produced, and when you should expect your content to be completed.

This tool allows you to manage your entire inbound marketing process in one place, making it an extremely valuable tool to manage your content workflow.

Trello is another tool that makes it easier for you to collaborate with other professionals. This online tool allows you to post new tasks, and communicate with every professional responsible for a section within your workflow. You can sign up online, and create a new system that allows you to post new projects, and see how the projects move along as each step is completed. You can also schedule appointments and create deadlines, ensuring that every member of your team has the information and resources they need to do their work to the highest of standards.

• Human Editing Services

Online editing services provided by professional writers and editors can be hugely valuable. Bigassignments is one such service, which has a team of writers, proofreaders, and editors who can ensure that all content you produce is of the highest standard.

Other writing services include Academized, a website with a large number of professional writers and editors who can provide editing and editorial advice at an affordable rate

These human services provide a service that builds on many online tools that use algorithms to provide assistance with readability, spelling, and grammar.

Similarly, Paper Fellows or Oxessays makes it possible to consult writers and editors to learn about how you can improve your content. This is a great addition to your content workflow, adding an extra stage where you can consult with experts as and when you need to. Paper Fellows is an online community where you can discuss your content and other matters with experts from all over the world. It also provides plagiarism and grammar guides, which are an essential part of creating quality content.

• SEO

Search engine optimization is an increasingly important part of content marketing. If your content has not been optimized with keywords, then it can be difficult for search engines to place you in the appropriate search results. By using online SEO tools, you can help your content creators make content that is recognized by Google, Bing, and other search giants.

Buzzsumo is a great online tool that allows you to analyze content that performs well and even shows you how your competitors are performing. You can use an instant search to see the last 12 months of data, view how many times your content was shared on social media, and explore other insights that will help your writers continue to improve their optimization skills.

If your team helps clients through WordPress, then Yoast SEO could be useful, too. This WordPress plugin makes it possible to see how well your content is optimized before you post it. You’ll be given information about your keyword usage, as well as meta information and images. Yoast is a fully functional and extensive app that is trusted by businesses all over the world, and it can become an integral part of your workflow.

• Social Media and Marketing

Social media and marketing is another key part of your content workflow, and there are numerous apps you can use to improve these areas. Edgar is one such online tool which is designed to massively improve your social media performance. The online app allows you to manage all your social media with consistency, ensuring that every posted on each platform is consistent and portrays the same message. This can be useful for professionals in your content workflow who deal with outreach and marketing.

Post Planner offers something similar, allowing you to maintain consistency across all your social media platforms, discover the best content for the audience already following you, and predict how well a post will perform before you post it. This takes the guesswork out of your social media campaign and ensures you’re always as effective as you can be.

Then there’s MailChimp. This is a popular email system that allows you to send out customized and well-designed emails to a large number of subscribers. You will also receive information about how well your emails perform, how many people open them, and how many emails simply bounce back. This allows you to improve your email list and ensure you’re only sending material to people who respond to it.

Finally, consider using Buffer. This is an online tool that helps you manage all your social media accounts, and ensure that you’re putting out the right content. It will help you increase traffic, and improve engagement with you or your client’s fans and followers.

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Assigning Content Managers

Finally, remember to assign content managers to oversee each project. Having somebody available to track progress and keep in touch with every member of your team will ensure that everything stays on track. Your content managers will manage your workflow and make sure that the system you have put in place continues to work as seamlessly as possible.

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Your Workflow Defines Your Success

By incorporating all these online tools, defining your workflow, and then ensuring that everybody understands their deadlines and rules, you can ensure that your content marketing operation runs smoothly at all times. This ensures that you can keep your clients happy with the progress being made, and it also means the content you produce will be of the highest quality.