Learn how to build a workflow strategy for effective content creation
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Chapter 1
Content workflow is a sustainable and scalable project management process by which content creators and companies turn ideas into easily consumable media that provide real value to the consumer. It includes all the tasks en route to completing quality content, from concepting to defining roles to documentation.
content workflow
content workflow • [kän-tent wərk-flō]
The step-by-step process of taking content from idea to publication.
noun
"After we optimized our blog content workflow, not only did quality improve but we started ranking higher in search"
Synonyms
Chapter 2
Content is rarely a one person job and an effective website content creation workflow typically involves multiple team members from your marketing team. Here's a content management workflow diagram that breaks down the management system for building out solid content.
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Chapter 3
Another way to think of content workflow is as a content management process. To publish content you need a point person to develop and execute a plan; generally project managers or content managers fill this role. A well laid plan will systematically remove friction, obstacles and bottlenecks and help identify opportunities for optimization. A content marketing workflow is even more critical if your team is fully remote.
Without goals you can't reasonably create a content workflow. You have to know where you're heading in order to define the rest for your content marketing team.
Well-defined goals allow you to build a content workflow process that best supports that direction from the start.
Understanding what compelling and SEO-rich content requires, i.e., quality, consistency, topic coverage, word counts and article lengths, for starters, helps you estimate and allocate the appropriate resources.
Be aware of the constraints you're working with as they'll be the limiting factor against which you'll ensure those goals and requirements are achievable.
We'd recommend starting out with a list for each of these three factors – goals, requirements and constraints – to help guide your overall content marketing strategy and workflow.
Create a list of every step in your content creation process – all of them – including:
Once you've identified all the steps your content marketing teams have to take, use a content planning tool to put them in a defined workflow order and build customized content creation workflows that suit your requirements.
Note which steps need to go before or after others to avoid any unnecessary backtracking or revisions and make your entire team aware of the process.
For example, don't translate the piece before the copy is approved, don't get all the graphic design done before the writing is OK'd.
Avoid wasting time by making the approval process part of the entire content process.
Delegation is the name of the game and putting a point person in charge of your content creation workflow is important, as someone ultimately has to be the decider-in-chief to move things forward.
Their roles and responsibilities will evolve around for ushering content efforts along and ticking things off the checklist you previously made; creating content briefs, interim and final approvals, conflict resolution, vote tie-breaking and any other high-level decision-making tasks that need attention.
Of course, allowing too many cooks in the kitchen, or too many team members giving input in this case, can spell disaster.
Ideally, pick one person who will function as a content manager, having the final word on any piece. Include input from 2-3 other stakeholders if absolutely needed.
Cliché alert: teamwork makes the dreamwork and identifying who on your content team can cover all the roles and responsibilities associated with your content operations is vital.
Plus, knowing who you do have also forces you to address who you don't have and take the steps to bring them onboard.
Keep costs in mind here, particularly if you're bringing new people in that require additional resources and training to get up to speed.
No content project is free, nor is the expertise to create it, so try to keep your entire team as efficient and agile as possible.
In other words: multi-task where possible.
Depending on the size of your team and content needs, it's helpful to diagram or map your workflow using symbols to represent key personnel, tasks or phases in the content assembly line.
Use our Diagram Maker to put them in order and draw connectors between them to indicate flow. Getting this sort of bird's eye view of how work gets down helps pinpoint any snags or potential bottlenecks while sharpening your content strategy. You can even build your own content workflow template for future use.
In a perfect world this would be linear and, save for the project manager, avoid circular patterns that have content returning to the same person over and over which could represent poor order or redundancy.
Sounds obvious, but it's important to understand where the lifecycle of a piece of content begins and ends.
Ask yourself where does this content really begin; in the brainstorming phase, as a request from a director or from the SEO or content manager?
Likewise, you should also know when you're well and truly done working on it.
After you schedule your content for publication, do you plan to promote it on social media or other channels? If so, you'll want to add these steps to the previously defined content workflow, especially if they occur for everything your content team creates.
Diagram, diagram, diagram.
Are you sensing a pattern?
Mapping out how a visitor will potentially move through your site helps you improve the overall user experience, giving you the ability to create quality content that better meets the needs and intent of your target audience.
Having an easy to interpret visual diagram allows you to see and optimize the various user paths through your site, page by page.
By diagramming you can find content gaps as well as uncover and fix unexpected dead ends, excess clicks and other navigational issues.
We've already talked about delegating to project managers but you also need to assign tasks to the rest of your team members with an eye towards grouping and reordering tasks where you can.
The goal here is to reduce handoffs between people and make it easier to cover more without interruption; a lean, mean collaboration team.
You'll likely need to play around a bit with the groupings and orderings with some trial and error as things don't always work as outlined on paper.
Don't feel locked into the first plan you create either, a good content marketing workflow is built on flexibility and adjustments. Iterate often until you find a task based workflow that suits your team and content projects
Revisions come with the territory of producing content.
Rarely, if ever, will a first draft be the draft you publish. Therefore you want to make revisions part of your content development workflow.
If the changes have little or no effect on future steps, they can likely be grouped and addressed all at once.
If, however, something needs to be locked in, like copy for a translation, do not proceed to the next steps until it's approved.
If people know to expect revisions, it also helps with managing expectations and establishing more reasonable deadlines for your content calendar.
Chapter 4
How your content teams move through your content creation workflows makes a difference. There are two main approaches, task-based and status-based workflows.
A task-based workflow breaks down a project into a linear sequence of specific tasks, each with a clear description, assigned team member and a due date. Task-based workflows provide a detailed roadmap for completing the project, ensuring every step is accounted for and tracked before the next starts.
In a status-based workflow, the focus is on the current stage of a project rather than individual tasks. Projects in a status-based workflow progress through predefined stages, like "assigned", "in progress," "in review" and "published," offering a more flexible approach to handle dynamic projects and collaborative efforts. This approach is better suited to more experienced content marketing teams who know your process well.
Chapter 5
Building out these content workflows helps expedite website content planning and allows you to get more solid content out in less time. Developing a content marketing workflow does more than save time though.
By setting clear standards, content teams can ensure all content meets the same high bar, strengthening brand reputation and authority in the process.
Strictly defined timelines and using workflow management software prevents missed deadlines, keeping your content calendar on track and publication consistent.
Streamlining content workflows, eliminating rework and maximizing resource allocation saves money and prevents wasted effort.
Consistent communication and feedback loops during content creation catch issues early, allowing you to minimize revisions and nearly eliminate time wasted on backtracking.
Well-designed content workflows incorporate ideation, thereby accelerating content creation and bringing ideas to life faster.
Content project management and concrete content workflow allow content marketing teams to be flexible and scale production to meet fluctuating demand.
Organized content workflows enable teams to manage and make progress on multiple content pieces simultaneously. From blog posts to social media posts to video content, all can be executed at the same time with a plan.
A content marketing workflow alongside proper SEO content planning yields consistent, high quality content that can improve your search ranking; attracting more organic traffic, increasing site visits and conversions.
Chapter 6
The content creation process is made infinitely easier, more collaborative and efficient when you add the right content workflow software to the mix.
Great content starts with research. Whether it's a blog post, video or any other type of content, it's only going to resonate if it aligns with what your target audience is looking for.
All of your content marketing efforts should therefore start with research, specifically keyword research.
Understanding exactly what your audience is searching for and the intent behind it is the best way to craft content that fully answers the query.
After you've dialed in and wrapped up your research, it's onto the next part of the content creation process; getting content briefs together and writing the content.
Outlining in advance is an essential element of your content creation workflow because it gives shape, order and flow to your content, with one section smoothly transitioning to the next.
This is particularly important for publishing blog posts and your content team will no doubt thank you for the direction.
Ever heard the phrase, "we eat with our eyes first"?
It means our perception of quality, of food in this case, is first framed by how appealing and appetizing it looks.
Same goes for content marketing!
Poorly formatted pages with generic design or, worse, layouts from the GeoCities days will feel intuitively off-putting to people. Not only do they not build trust, poor design can actually tank your credibility and authority.
Hence why design should be a key part of your content workflow.
Executing a content marketing strategy effectively requires having your marketing team on the same page at all times and knowing where each piece of content stands in the pipeline.
Content workflow software enables you to centralize communication, share files and discuss content ideas while making sure everyone's roles and responsibilities are being handled from start to finish.
Crucially, they allow you to visualize your whole content creation process, build an editorial calendar and track progress. Often they integrate with other widely used software applications.
Toward the end of your content management workflow is when publishing comes into play.
Since a lot of the digital marketing content you create will be published on your website, a content management system, or CMS, is your go-to for this.
If you're using Slickplan's Content Planner as a project management tool, you'll be able to bring content straight in the most popular CMSs with our plugins.
Chapter 7
What might a typical content creation workflow look like? Here's an example of a common content marketing workflow for writing copy; think of it as a content workflow template. Whether you're creating engaging social media posts or a blog post, this content workflow would still do the job.
Conduct a thorough knowledge hunt based on the instructions and target audience outlined in the content brief.
Develop a clear and organized structure before writing, ensuring a logical flow of information and strong supporting points.
Write the initial version of the content, capturing the core ideas and arguments while maintaining a consistent voice and style.
Have a different team member carefully evaluate the content to ensure it fits your desired tone, brand guidelines and is, of course, accurate.
Edit and refine the content to enhance clarity, strengthen arguments and improve the overall flow and reader experience.
Get final approval from the editor or content manager, ensuring all revisions and feedback have been addressed.
Upload the approved content to your CMS, make it live and available to your target audience.
Strategically distribute content through your channels, i.e., social media and email marketing campaigns to maximize reach and engagement.
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A content management workflow is a set of tasks that a team carries out to complete and publish content on time, whether for your own brand or a client. The process you build ensures efficient content creation and publication.
This will absolutely work for social media content. In fact, when it comes to any particular type of content, a blog post, video, etc., the general outline of your workflow should remain the same. Writing for social media should have a very similar process to writing blog posts, landing pages or any other content projects.
Ideally, yes. Even if it's only a basic content workflow, a small standardized process is better than no process. A workflow is meant to help you efficiently produce quality content and simplify operations for content teams. If you're going to invest time in making content, don't do it without a content workflow.
A content marketing workflow is a repeatable process for producing content regularly. Highly relevant content that's consistently released can become a magnet for organic traffic, helping you scale and grow. Additionally, the content itself can generate income via affiliate links, ads and the like.
By utilizing project management tools, content collaboration platforms and analytics tools, technology can enhance content workflow management through efficient task tracking, seamless teamwork, document sharing and data-driven strategy optimization, ultimately improving overall productivity and outcomes.
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A proven, step-by-step process to get organized and gather content more efficiently so you can resolve bottlenecks and keep projects on schedule.
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Want your content to climb the search rankings? You need an SEO plan. Learn how to build your SEO content plan with our 8-step guide, plus find out which tools to add to your arsenal.
Develop your step-by-step content marketing workflow with Content Planner and transform into a lean, mean content-making machine.
Creating content always felt chaotic before, using Slickplan to build a standardized workflow not only saved us tons of time, it actually improved the quality of our content!
Stephanie Wells, Content Manager at Awmous
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