Your team has a solid strategy and is executing your content creation plan for publishing top-quality material. However, is your content production workflow a bit chaotic and unsustainable?
If so, you’re not alone. Larger teams need to pump out an absurd amount of content, making it easy to get a bit off track at any point from ideation to publication.
Plus, you have to factor in that 65% of creative professionals are getting new responsibilities thrown on their plates at the same time. Seventy percent still list speed and volume of work as top challenges. With these factors, you’ve really got a recipe for workflows to go off the rails.
Let’s take a thorough look at what it takes to grease the wheels and get your content production workflow rolling at top speed.
In This Article:
Document Your Content Production Workflow
As Content Marketing Institute’s Robert Mills pointed out, you need to define your workflow “before any content creators’ pens touch paper or fingers hit keyboards.” He’s right.
You can’t see where you’re getting off course if you don’t have a map in the first place. Here’s how you plot your path.
Outline Every Step of the Process and the Roles That Perform Them
A general outline of your content production workflow serves as your foundation. Include every step, along with the roles responsible for each.
While a text document works fine, most people (especially creatives) understand and remember things best with visuals. Consider creating a diagram for an even better overview.
Source: Content Marketing Institute
Create a Content Production Workflow Template
You need to carefully document your content production workflows for each type of content you produce so that everyone involved in the process understands the process. Such documentation is especially important when you outsource any part of production to freelancers or agencies.
If your organization produces a wide variety to different content types or formats, this exercise may seem a bit daunting. This is where a workflow template comes in.
Many of your different types of content will probably follow a similar process. So creating a temple as a jumping-off point can be a big time saver. Need one to get you started? We have you covered. If you want to think through your process from scratch, you can use the following list as a guide and adjust as needed.
Content Ideation
Every piece of content your company produces started as an idea in someone’s head. If you have a dedicated team responsible for developing content, perhaps ideation is part of their workflow. Whether solo or with a group, brainstorming time should be built into your process. Another element of this could be entering ideas into a central idea repository for future review. Divvy’s Parking Lot interface was built specifically for this purpose.
Additionally, each idea should be reviewed and evaluated to determine it’s alignment with your strategy, and whether it should be fleshed out as a future piece of content with a specific goal. It’s helpful to have a “content sandbox” where a creator can jot down ideas and ask others to comment to help drive the content production workflow forward.
Content Request Intake
As a supplement to content ideation, it won’t always be your direct team that is coming up with ideas for new content. Ideally, you would have a simple and transparent process for stakeholders to submit ideas, or requests for content, whether they are inside or outside of the creative and marketing departments. The request should generally be a detailed brief specifying:
- The premise of the idea
- The type of content
- The market segment
- Customer personas
- The channels to publish on
Either here or during ideation, you should clarify the budget, resources, and due date for the piece as well.
Again, your content operations platform can streamline the request and intake process, ensuring critical, need-to-know information gets to the project manager or lead before work begins. DivvyHQ is set up just to do that.
DivvyHQ Screenshot: Content Request Form Example
Research and Collaborate
Building some research time into your workflow will help your producers find information that supports the direction you want the content to take. Original research, such as surveys and studies, can help strengthen your argument in formal white papers. Previously published articles on the topic from respected sources can provide other supportive evidence.
Content collaboration with internal teams can provide valuable insights specific to their fields. Reach out to engineering, product development, sales, and customer support as appropriate.
Additionally, use this time to track down content assets already in your repository that can support your topic. Infographics, images, videos, and other written materials can help drive your points home.
Construct an Outline
Though some creatives prefer a mental outline, effective collaboration requires a formal outline or storyboard to guide the content production workflow. Even for solo projects, this helps reorient you if you lose your train of thought or need someone else to complete a piece.
Create Your First Draft
Using the outline as your guide, create your first draft. Instead of trying to make it error-free, focus on making your point with a well-reasoned yet compelling story.
Refine and Proofread Your Draft
Refine your story, eliminate wordiness, supply additional evidence, and add required metadata. Then, proofread it before sending it to the editorial and compliance teams.
Send the Finished Draft to the Editorial and Compliance Teams
Even if your writers rarely make grammatical or factual errors, it always helps to have a second pair of expert eyes look over their work. This step is especially critical if your company deals with sensitive legal issues, confidential data, or regulatory requirements.
On your content production workflow template, note which teams need to sign off on the content before releasing it for publication.
Approve or Send It Back to the Creative Teams
If everything passes muster, your editorial and compliance teams can approve the content for publication. If not, they need to include detailed notes about what the creative teams need to change before resubmitting it.
Publish the Content and Analyze the Results
Once it clears all the hurdles, publish your content on all the channels where your target audience frequents. Finally, use a robust content analytics solution to monitor how your content performs.
Get even higher ROI by amplifying the reach of your best performers. Revise the ones that don’t quite hit the mark to perform better.
Leverage a Content Operations Platform
With your workflow documentation in hand, it’s time to transition your processes into a content operations platform. This category of software is designed to manage your entire content lifecycle.
DivvyHQ Screenshot – Workflow Builder
Beyond just a content calendar with due dates, this resource provides a user-friendly, central location with the details and logistics of each content piece.
For best results, use a dedicated tool like DivvyHQ instead of standard project management software. Then, the platform can evolve as your strategy does. As you streamline your content production workflows, your entire operation will become more efficient, too.
Take Snafus Out of the Equation
While you can’t achieve complete content production workflow perfection in the real world, you can anticipate many potential bottlenecks. Here are workarounds we’ve found valuable over the years.
Pad Your Content Production Workflow With Dynamic Due Dates
Whether it’s an urgent project that your sales department needed yesterday, or a baby that arrives a little early, you need to build some flexibility into your process. Why not save yourself the stress and pad your content production workflow with dynamic due dates, as a Claravine post suggests?
Relative deadlines give your teams the wiggle room to ensure that each piece of content never gets the short shrift. For example, instead of saying that your teams should complete research on April 20, set the deadline to “two days after the ideation process is complete.”
Designate a Point Person for Each Project
With the many levels of collaboration in the content production workflow, you need someone to ensure that all steps fall into place. Assigning a senior creative to own each campaign, project, and content initiative gives inexperienced team members someone to consult if they have questions.
If one team member seems to struggle with meeting deadlines or something else, the point person can intervene, helping them solve any issues that stand in their way or reassign the task to a person better equipped to handle it.
Content & project managers also:
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- Keep tabs on content requests and assign leads/owners
- Set the strategy and see the content through to final approval and execution
- Track team usage and the volume of work coming in and out of the workflow
These managers are like “air traffic controllers” who guide content projects to a smooth landing (on your website) 😉.
Use Your Content Dashboard To Communicate
One of the most common snafus larger content teams face with content production is missed notifications. Emails and text messages are fine, but if your inbox is like mine, a few can slip through the cracks on busy days.
Instead, as Jonathan Hill advises, use your content dashboard itself to communicate. It’s hard to ignore (or miss) a message that pops up right on the project you’re working on in a tool like DivvyHQ. Additionally, recent integrations with Slack and MS Teams ensure each team member is notified immediately on actionable events.
DivvyHQ Screenshot – Notifications
Set (and Stick to) a Defined Meeting Cadence
Without structure or goals, meetings drain resources and time. When you plan them correctly, meetings can help achieve alignment and remove roadblocks from your content production workflow. Furthermore, you’ll maximize strategic planning resources and build stronger, more cohesive teams and stories.
Meet regularly with your content production team and adhere to a fixed agenda and timeframe. Discuss the latest developments, such as new content requests and current project statuses. This approach keeps your team in the loop (so they can’t say they didn’t see that update via email.)
Need a content planning meeting agenda template? We have you covered here, too.
Give Compliance and Legal Teams Access to the Content Platform
Your company’s compliance division and legal staff have a full plate of work outside their roles in approving content. Simplify and streamline their part in your team’s content production workflow by giving them access to the content they need to review.
That way, your creative teams can message them right on the content dashboard that a project is ready for their review. Instead of shuffling between platforms, stakeholders need only scroll over to the dashboard tab, review the content, and send it to whoever is responsible for publication.
Update Your Content Production Workflow Often
Your content planning and workflow needs to complement each other. As your needs change, update your workflow template to work with your new strategy.
Of course, that’s so much easier when you have a central hub where the entire content production process occurs, like DivvyHQ. That way, your teams can see every update you make to your workflow and adjust it in real time.
With DivvyHQ’s comprehensive content operations platform, you have one digital home for everything content-related. In one spot, you can automate routine processes — including your content production workflow — and concentrate on the creative process itself.
Simplify and automate your content production workflow now. Request a DivvyHQ demo today!
