Marketing

Content Management Workflow 101

Every person in your office likely has their own workflow — how they tackle new projects and meet role requirements. When you rely on a team to create content together, managing your team’s content workflow is essential for meeting deadlines with minimal stress and disruptions. 

Even if your team already churns out excellent website content, workflow management can improve efficiency and keep your team moving forward. Discover what content management workflow can do for your business below!

What is content workflow?

Content workflow is a series of tasks or steps your team takes before publishing content. Like any part of your business, it can be managed and made more efficient once you understand how it works.

A content workflow is based on three key factors:

• People: Your team or the people who produce and evaluate your marketing content.
• Process: The steps you need to create your content. At the most basic level, these steps include planning, creating, publishing, and analyzing results. 
• Tools: Everything your people need to complete their processes.

The benefits of managing content workflow

Content workflow can be inefficient when left unchecked. Poor workflow will cost you time and money that could be spent creating more content and improving your business. 

By managing your content workflow, your entire office can benefit from:

• Streamlined productivity: Content workflow assignments tell your staff what’s expected of them and in what timeframe. This confidence allows them to focus on their work and spend the allotted time doing anything to make their contribution the best possible. 
• Better outcomes: As your team settles into a routine in creating content, you’ll have fewer questions and errors, resulting in streamlined, quick results. 
• Reduced resources: With an optimized process, you can spend less time and money on longer projects and fixes down the road. A content management workflow can also include automation, which lets your team focus on other tasks with the same results.  

4 steps to creating a content workflow for your team

Managing content workflow starts with four simple steps.

1. Determine your content type

Before you can design a workflow for your content, you must know what kind of content you’re creating! Deciding on a content type is simple, especially if you have an established brand with existing content. 

Complete a content analysis to evaluate your current standing. Does your website cater to long blog posts with emotional language or short, snappy videos that get to the point and encourage your viewers to buy? Review your portfolio and establish your goals from the beginning. 

Consider your staff’s strengths and play to them. If you have excellent graphic designers, infographics may be your way of drawing attention. Also, think about your audience and what kind of content will appeal to them. Creating buyer personas can give you a clear view of what you need from your content.

2. Break down the tasks needed to complete your content

Once you understand what content you’re aiming for, you can break it down into smaller tasks and design the workflow for your team to follow. 

Creating any piece of content involves a lot of steps. Even a simple blog post involves brainstorming, research, writing, editing, formatting and publication.

Breaking down all these tasks at the beginning of the process can give you a realistic idea of your content’s timeline and when you can expect to put it out for public consumption. It can also help you understand how to distribute the process among your staff.

3. Assign tasks and deadlines to staff

The team creating your content is an essential part of the content workflow. The most helpful steps for your team are stating what you expect from their assignments and giving them time to complete their tasks.

When assigning tasks in your workflow to various team members, ensure they’re working to their strengths. You have strategists, content writers, editors, marketing managers and similar positions for a reason, and you’re sure to get the best results when people feel confident in their role. 

4. Use tools to manage content workflow

Once you’ve created your team’s workflow, you want to ensure content stays on track wherever possible. Having tools available to assist team members can help, as does investing in a content management system (CMS).

A CMS is a software application that helps a website keep track of its content, from the first draft of blog posts and product pages through publication. With a CMS, you don’t need to know HTML coding or extensive web development skills to keep your website looking its best — although those skills will certainly help.

Most operations use a combination of people and software to manage workflow. Whether you’re new to producing content or a seasoned professional, a CMS can help you further manage your online presence.

Tips for managing your workflow

As you establish your team’s new workflow, keep these steps in mind to ease the transition for you and your employees: 

• Be flexible: In the beginning, you’re sure to run into some challenges regarding time management and adjusting to new systems. Accept these as part of the process and be willing to adjust your expectations to fit the new reality.
• Document everything: If you decide to change your strategies in the future, it can be helpful to understand how your current process functions. Documenting every step of your process gives you more options for moving forward when concerns arise.
• Work with a professional: When you aren’t sure what your next move should be with your content workflow, you can work with a professional agency with years of experience.

Evaluate your website with GradeMyWebsite

Before you get started on building your content management workflow, you need to evaluate your site’s standing. GradeMyWebsite makes it easy to check your website for: 

• Traffic
• Keyword density
• Links
• Metadata
• Social metrics

If you want to see how your content ranks and find ways to improve it, we can help. Try our free tool today! 

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