Content marketing is an organic way for marketers to create owned assets and increase views through quality publishing and composition. Not to mention, less of the budget burned on traditional marketing efforts.
But executing a content marketing strategy can be overwhelming. A content management workflow is a game changer to perfecting your content marketing strategy.
Imagine the ideal outcome from your content marketing efforts. Then map out the steps to get there! This is your content management workflow. This involves every step from the planning phase to the distribution phase.
By creating an efficient content management workflow, you can maximize the efficiency of your marketing efforts, saving overall time, money, and resources.
Here’s a quick rundown of a good content management workflow from Megan Minns to get you started –
Quick Takeaways:
- Good planning leads to consistency
- Every strategy is unique and should fit to your business’ needs and goals
- Content management is crucial to staying organized and up to date with your content publishing
So what does a content management workflow look like? It’s a pretty straightforward plan of attack:
- Deciding what content fits your brand and strategy
- Assigning and distributing workload
- Creating quality content
- Using a software / calendar to map out publishing
- Distributing across different platforms
- Maintaining and adapting
Let’s dive into it:
Deciding what content fits your brand and strategy
Content marketing in 2022 looks a little different for every business. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy for everyone (wouldn’t that be nice). This means that you have to be particular about the content you’re focusing on.
What’s done well for you in the past? What are your competitors doing that seems to be going well? What kind of content do you like to read? These are all important questions to ask yourself when considering a content marketing strategy.
What’s done well for you in the past? What are your competitors doing that seems to be going well? What kind of content do you like to read? These are all important questions to ask yourself when considering a content marketing strategy as a whole.
What specifics should you consider? Well, there’s two big things to give you a “North Star” so to speak:
Buyer Personas
Buyer personas are what your ideal customer looks like, their interests, their hobbies, generally speaking who you think you should be marketing to.
Your buyer personas should be your main reference point in deciding what content to produce, assuming that you have identified who or what they are based on market research and customer data.
SEO / Keywords
Having a healthy content marketing strategy depends on knowing how your organic search rankings perform. Be honest, when was the last time you clicked the seventh link down?
You need to talk about the stuff that matters to your target audience. Look to others in your industry for guidance on what to focus on. Your enemy is your best friend in this case. You should be covering all the topics they are, but better.
So now that you have an idea of what you want to write about, you must consider what methods of writing or creating will reach your audience the best.
Content Types
Blog Posts
Blog posts are one of the biggest methods of content marketing. Blog writing brings customers onto your site that might not even know they need your service or product yet.
It’s like door-to-door selling but your prospects are the ones knocking, not the other way around! Use blogs to entertain and inform your audience about information relevant to them.
They aren’t quick to write but are a great long-term marketing investment. In fact, CoSchedule.com says
Further research from content marketing software specialists estimates that the average blog post takes around 6-7 hours to write, edit and publish; promoting a piece of content on social media will take around 2 hours; this includes writing the promotional posts for your social channels.
Don’t be alarmed though! This is a case of time and effort = yield, trust us!
Video Packages
Videos can showcase your product or employees in a way text cannot. Things like testimonials or introductory videos of your staff builds credibility with site visitors.
Creating good video will come at an expense. Ideally, you’ll want to:
- Hire a professional company to shoot the videos. You might think any video is better than no video at all, but a poorly made video could actually hurt your credibility
- Show the product from every angle and make sure to highlight its best features if you’re in a product industry
- Employ someone to actually be in the video and talk the customer through the product or use an employee that your clients would be working with
Case Studies
Researching out case studies is an easy way to build credibility and inform your audience about relevant topics. Oftentimes you can accomplish one in house, or you can hire an expert to conduct one and write it out for you.
Social Media Posts and Graphics
Graphics and platform-specific posting is tricky, but not impossible. Make sure whomever is creating this content is familiar with basic design principles as well as the product or service you are selling.
A good social media team and campaign goes a long way in 2022!
Assigning and distributing workload
A good plan won’t accomplish much without people to execute it. Take it from communications and marketing experts, making sure your people and you are on the same page is super important.
Think about what you have to work with in terms of your writers or content creators. Who has an eloquent tone? Who looks most confident in front of a camera? Who is ALWAYS on social media? Wielding your marketing talent is important and knowing who is strongest with different forms of content can save you some headaches down the line.
Writing quality content and doing it consistently can be challenging. If you find yourself burning to midnight oil all to often to get blogs out week after week, it might be time to hire some help. You might look into hiring experienced content writers or a content marketing agency to do the research, writing, and publishing.
Creating quality content
Above all else you need to focus on the quality of your content. The more you publish quality content, the more your readers will want to come back to see what else you have to offer.
The key to creating quality content is to focus on relevant information that your prospective customers really care about. An easy way to do this is to write about their problems and how to solve them.
Say you sell couches. You’d write articles like How to Pick the Perfect Couch for Your Space or 10 Ways to Know It’s Time for a New Couch. These topics are a great way to reel in a sales qualified lead that you might not have with just paid advertising. This lead is much more likely to convert than someone who stumbled upon one of your ads a week after they bought a new couch.
When maintaining your blog, it’s important to follow these rules to give you the best shot at SEO rankings. Playing this one by the book is important as browsers are picky about what gets put at the top of search results and what goes on page 4.
Check out some of our insider trick to writing the perfect blog post:
Plus, a summary of the must do’s:
- Aim for longer articles
Google likes articles with some substance to them. Too little words might keep your hard work from topping the search page! An ideal range is 1,000 to 1,800 words.
- Stay focused on keywords
By understanding the terms most relevant to your topic and audience, you can successfully optimize for search. If your company sells couches, words like couch, living room and interior design, are what you want to focus on.
- Have a compelling meta description
Source: Kinsta
Hook, line and sinker! Having a succinct, direct and eye-catching description under your article will help reel in clicks.
- Internal Links
Internal links are hyperlinks in your blog content that link to other pages within your domain. You should include 1-2 internal links in every blog post.
- Call to Action (CTA)
The CTAs is where you direct your readers to their next step. A good CTA can increase conversion rates by 121%! Optimize your CTA to increase interaction with your brand and promote sales.
The internet is a distracting place, so you really have to lay out the next step for your viewer plainly before they move on. Imagine someone reading your blog about couches and totally missing the fact that you sell them! Then they leave your page and Google “couches near me” and click on the first sponsored ad from Raymour and Flannigan… The horror!
Create a distribution plan
Content isn’t worth much sitting in your drafts folder all day. Once the content is created, it’s time to schedule it out using a program or calendar.
How often should you be sharing your articles?
The more often you publish blog posts the better they perform, so the short answer is as often as possible.
There are a few other factors to consider as well when it comes to publishing places other than your website.
Twitter timelines move a mile a minute, so you can easily share multiple times a day without dominating someone’s timeline. If you’re creating videos to push out on YouTube, you might be uploading less frequently because of the time it takes from ideation to creation.
On slightly longer-form platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, once a day is plenty. Remember: when you spend the time creating an online community of people interested in your product or industry, you’ll reap the benefits in views and engagement.
Use services like MailChimp and Constant Contact to create subscriber lists out of customers and prospects that visit your site. Then you can share your content directly to their email as often as you see fit. Read more on email marketing to find the best method for your business.
Distributing across different platforms
Creating a great video or case study can take a decent amount of time. To capitalize on the time and money spent creating content, you should be sharing it everywhere you can! Way more people will see your case study if you publish it on your website, LinkedIn and promote it on Twitter.
The first thing you might try is a social media audit. Where does your company have a voice or a community?
By maintaining your social media presence, you are creating an avenue to get your content in front of more prospects. Social media is the land of sharing! Say a handful of your followers repost your content. You just contacted hundreds of more people without having to lift a finger.
Social media also offers interactivity online. A comment section is the modern-day coffee house. It’s an ideal online space for your community to discuss ideas and connect with each other.
Some metrics to measure the success of your social media: how many followers you are gaining and how often posts are being engaged with.
Engagement is any comment, like, or share of your posts. The more engagement your posts get, the more likely it is that social media platforms will promote your content. It all always comes down to understanding and mastering the algorithms.
Maintaining and Adapting Your Strategy:
When creating your content marketing process, you have to define your key performance indicators (KPIs) and be sure to measure them at every turn!
Examples of KPIs include:
- Sales team productivity
- Customers generated from content marketing vs. traditional marketing routes
- Time and money spent content marketing vs. paid advertising
KPIs are driven by things like traffic, conversions, and your overall SEO rankings. KPIs keep your content management workflow on track to crush your marketing goals.
By taking a step back and analyzing how your content workflow and production efficiency is doing in relation to your KPIs, you can gain insight into your successes (and failures!).
With insight, you are better equipped to see what things are working, and what strategies should be reconsidered or tweaked so that your content marketing is thriving.
Wrap Up
Content management workflow really comes down to quality planning and understanding of your goals. The content itself is the hard part, and keeping it moving and efficiently through your process will keep things running smoothly for your marketing team.
Now that you have the knowhow, it’s time to go build your content management workflow strategy!
Do you want to use some of the marketing strategies seen here on MIG’s site but need some help or advice? Marketing Insider Group has a team of 35+ experienced writers ready to produce content for YOUR business. Check out our weekly blog content service or schedule a free consultation.
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