Business owners are flocking to the promises of Content Marketing. Being able to take control of your reputation among a targeted community is too much to pass on. Software developers and cement salesmen are now sitting next to writers, graphic designers, and videographers in companies all over the world.
But Content Marketing isn’t highly developed as a business discipline, and you can excuse some business owners if they find it a bit…well, inefficient. A great idea strikes the CEO, and she passes it to the Marketing Head who farms it out to a freelance writer who has to go through a few rounds to get it right. Then the editor comes in and changes the tone, the SEO team crams some keywords in, and your legal team is creating a storm about sharing too much proprietary information. In the end, you have something that doesn’t resemble at all what the CEO had in mind and, more importantly, doesn’t connect with your readers.
And that’s just on the creation side. How many articles are sitting on the back corner of a corporate website, never seeing the light of day? How many comments go unanswered and leads uncaptured? The creative flow of ideas gets diverted and stopped and split so many times that there isn’t anything left at the end of the pipe.
Anyone who has tried to manage the Content Marketing process would agree that it feels like one part marketing, one part ego management, and one part cat herding.
Especially for the diligently-minded CEO who is used to streamlined processes, trying to tame this one is a challenge. How do you make sure nothing leaks out of the Content Marketing process?
Strap on a long list of rules and checklists to a group of creatives and they will feel like their basic human rights have been violated. Leave them to their own devices and you may never see any results.
You need to keep the creative flow moving, and find out where the leaks are coming from.
Creating Workflows that Actually Work
Quality workflows can help a creative process like Content Marketing, but they have to be more than just a document sitting in a file created a few years ago.
Let’s take the example of a company that is trying to build content around some key SEO terms.
- The workflow starts with someone initiating a request for a particular article and writing a short brief
- The request goes parallely to the SEO expert (who creates a list of high-priority phrases) and the Social Media team (who can start putting together a distribution plan)
- Then the editor tightens up the brief and assigns it to a writer, who creates (in his opinion) the single best article ever written on ‘targeted business analysis measurement’
- The editor rips it to shreds and sends it back to the writer who makes the needed changes
- The editor adds an image and passes back to the SEO expert who checks that all the terms and tags are correct
- It gets a quick approval from the marketing head and is scheduled
- The social media team is notified and places the article in the right platforms and forums to attract the best audience
- Any comments are sent to the editor for attention
No more lost emails. No more wasted time. Everything in a smooth flow.
Find Your Own Flow
Workflows aren’t one-size-fits-all. You may want the customer-support team to start the workflow based on the kind of questions they sort through. Or you may have additional people that need to sign off on the content and proofreading before it gets published. Whatever flow you create needs to be easily edited and customized to your situation.
Using a platform like Kissflow Workflow to automate your Content marketing workflows. It builds an easy-to-understand pipeline that plugs the leaks and delivers a final product that everyone can be proud of. Create your own custom flow and see how much more efficient you can be.
