Ask any marketing leader and they’ll likely say that they wish their teams would collaborate more. In fact, 86% of employees and executives say lack of collaboration is a major cause of workplace failures.
The challenge seems to be most prevalent within large, siloed organizations, which can be highly detrimental as content experiences and campaigns typically require input from many areas of an organization.
So how can you enable better collaboration? The short answer: having the right tools matters. In this post, I’ll define how project management tools introduce an organized framework, collaborative features and automation to break down silos and enhance content collaboration.
Why Use Collaboration Tools?
Project management tools can be a huge help when it comes to content collaboration. The benefits are many and include:
- Clear delegation of duties and responsibilities
- Enabling teams to work together across different locations and time zones
- Acceleration of working across teams and departments
- Increased productivity
- Enhanced tracking and reporting
- Better organization of the content marketing strategy and execution
- Improved collaboration can keep employees happier as well (54% of employees said a strong sense of community kept them at a company longer and collaboration=community)
With the growing trend of bringing content and creative execution in house, and internal content operations becoming the norm, more specialists have to get involved to execute your content marketing plans. There’s a science to content collaboration, and much of it has to do with these growing team that need a dedicated project management software.
Project Management Tools Deliver Transparency and Visibility
With many more stakeholders, you can’t just wing it. And you can’t depend on manual or outdated ways to facilitate collaboration. Spreadsheets and email chains just won’t cut it if you expect your team to improve their efficiency or increase their creative output.
Much of what you can glean from project management tools comes down to transparency and visibility. Here’s what I mean.
Transparency is key to getting your team from being distrustful or confused about objectives. One of the best project management tools for this is a content calendar.
With a content calendar, there are no secrets about what you’re creating and who is responsible for each tactic. It’s all there in a central repository that can be viewed by anyone.
A content calendar also delivers visibility. There’s no more “who’s doing this?” or “what’s the status of that?”
With visibility and transparency with your content calendar, communication is enhanced, as is accountability. It’s an absolutely vital part of your content marketing operation.
Streamlined Workflows
Workflows can either be a detriment or a benefit. It’s all about how they are set up and how easy they are to adjust. And workflows are very intertwined with collaboration—they spell out “how” people should be working together.
And you can’t scale your workflows without project management tools. With a platform like Divvy, you can templatize consistent workflows and automate workflow creation.
One-Stop Shop for Information
One issue that regularly disrupts content collaboration is not being able to find what you need. This quickly causes frustration and keeps people from completing their tasks. With a project management tool that allows for a content asset search, users can find what they need fast.
Your team can spend less time tracking down files, digging through email inboxes or asking for help with this key tool. And this means a more productive workforce as well.
Idea Repository
Collaboration is about sharing ideas, and when you equip more of your team with ideation tools, more (and better) ideas will bubble up to the top. By having a project management tool that includes an idea repository, anyone with the proper permissions can submit their ideas, access the ideas list, and expand them into future assets. When people get to share their ideas, they’ll feel more engaged in the process. And you’ll get perspectives from all different roles and perspectives.
For example, your sales team can submit ideas based on what they are hearing from customers. Or your product marketing team can suggest content ideas about the user experience. With a variety of ideas coming in from multiple areas of your organization, you’ll never run out, which is a big boost for your content planning.
Repurposing Content
Repurposing content is always an excellent idea. You want to get the most out of everything you produce. With the right project management tools like those in DivvyHQ, you can quickly search for existing assets, create a duplicate in one-click, then get collaborative feedback on how to refresh it or spin it to make it new again.
Real-Time Notifications
Your content marketing plan and workflows are always evolving and changing. When one person updates a task, who needs to know? With real-time notifications, those impacted by the change can be informed about when it happens.
Real-time notifications allow greatly enhanced collaboration. There’s no blame game about missed communication or updates. Your team stays in the loop and keeps moving forward on the project.
Dashboard Communication
Project management tools keep everything in one place! You can manage an entire project or campaign centrally without the need for other apps and tools. This enables team members to be able to chat about tasks and challenges right in a dashboard. It also removes the need for floods of emails that may be ignored.
Fewer Meetings
You don’t have to meet to collaborate effectively. In fact, much research has found that meetings are ineffective. Coordinating meetings becomes even more difficult when you have multiple locations to consider.
However, if you have an effective means to communicate and collaborate with project management tools, you can eliminate meetings that are built around status updates or other operational activities.
This way when you do actually meet, you can talk about more important things like how your content performance is impacting your company’s bottom line, or how to improve the thought leadership of your content. More substance, less time spent on logistics.
Project management tools have the capacity to enhance content collaboration. If your team is the plane, then a robust project management tool is your air traffic controller. Ready to infuse more content collaboration into your organization? Request a DivvyHQ demo and let us show you how.