How to Develop a Content Marketing Process for Your Team

Original, engaging content is key nowadays in any marketing plan. But developing that content, targeting an audience, and achieving a return on your investment takes work. It’s not something any business should just “try” to see how it goes; rather, it’s something that requires time, effort, a plan and even a schedule to really pay off. It also often takes more than one person to really commit to a content marketing strategy. But before you build that team and start creating content, spend some time defining your strategy.

Define Your Audience

You can create all the content you want, but if you’re not considering your target audience before hitting publish, it may all be for naught. So start the content marketing process by defining your audience, and not just their demographics (males or females, age, location, education level, etc.). After all, while demographics are a good starting point, your company should also consider what those people need help with and how your company can address those issues through the content you create.

Send out surveys through email, and take polls on your social media sites to further define what industry-related topics your clients and potential clients are most interested in. This can help you moving forward as you decide what kind of content and stories to publish.

Decide on Your Goals

Next, decide what you want this content to achieve for your company. While it can teach and inform your clients, for the company it also can do everything from provide you with qualified leads to driving enhanced customer service. Your goals will not only determine your strategy moving forward but also help you figure out the kind of people you need on your team.

Build Your Team

Your content marketing team will vary in size and in skill set depending on your company, of course, but in general, the team should offer a variety of resources. While one person can focus on defining and monitoring the audience, another can track how well your strategy is working, while others can act as editors who oversee the content producers. While their professional backgrounds may vary, be sure the content producers have a very strong writing background, because good writing, no matter what the content, matters.

Train the Team and then Brainstorm

Once the team is assembled, it’s time to make sure everyone is on the same page. That means developing an editorial stylebook (including punctuation rules, approved sources to use, etc.), writing guidelines (such as formats for blog posts, for example) that fit your brand, and a social media policy. The team can then work together to further define their individual roles. One person should take the lead in what kind of content will be published, but everyone on the team should feel welcome to offer ideas and suggestions for content moving forward.

Create Editorial Calendars

Chances are your content marketing efforts are published on a variety of properties, such as email blasts, podcasts, blogs and your social media networks. With so many places to keep track of, and so much content to produce, the easiest way to stay on track — and even ahead of schedule — is to develop editorial calendars. These calendars can be built by someone in a lead editorial role, but again, other members of the team should feel free to at least offer suggestions regarding the content as well. Of course, research into the industry and what the audience is looking to see from your company should always be considered.

The calendars should not only feature when a blog post will be published but also when that content is due to the editor as well. This way the editor will receive the material in advance and have time to edit it before it goes live. The calendar should also mention where that content is being promoted, because promotion is key to any content marketing strategy. Say a blog post goes live on Monday; shortly after, the calendar should mention that it should be posted on Facebook and Twitter as well, for example.

Another thing to consider in building editorial calendars is how content can be repackaged into a variety of formats. A blog post packed with photos, for one, can also be turned into a photo album on Facebook or Google+. A podcast may be posted to the company website, but a transcript can also be quoted on the company Facebook page as well. All of these steps should in some way be documented on the calendar so that the team knows what’s ahead, as well as who is responsible for each piece of the content marketing puzzle.

Reassess Regularly

So your marketing strategy is now in place, and you’re regularly developing and promoting content — but the work doesn’t end there. Someone on the team should continue to listen to the audience through social media, as well as doing research to see how their needs/wants are evolving, so your content can evolve too.

What potential clients care most about can also easily be seen on your social media properties. What content is being viewed and shared the most? Do your customers prefer graphics to text-only updates? Which blogs have the most comments on them? Tracking all of this can help determine your future content going forward, which will help keep your content marketing sustainable.

A good content marketing strategy takes teamwork, but once that team is in place and due diligence has been done into your audience, you’re on the right track. And no matter what your company or your goals, there are only two things that really matter: Creating quality content that your audience wants to read, and then promoting it to make sure your target audience is seeing it in the first place.

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