As a content marketer, when you take a minute to breathe and think about what is getting in your way day-to-day, what is it? What’s holding you back from achieving your objectives?
There’s probably not one single answer to this question. But there may be a sole solution. When we boil down most content marketing challenges, we often land on some sort of process issue (or a LACK of process issue).
Just yesterday, I was talking with a DivvyHQ prospect and they immediately recognized the power of Divvy just by seeing how we steer customers into developing production workflows for their various types of content. Many companies simply haven’t spent the time to solidify these processes.
Simply put, this lack of processes makes the ecosystem of content marketing harder to execute. By using a digital content marketing management system, you can overcome these operational hurdles quickly. If you haven’t yet had the chance to leverage a system like this, let me paint a more thorough picture.
What Is a Digital Content Marketing Management System?
Think of this type of system as a hub for all things content marketing. It offers organization and alignment across the process. This application is also a beacon of visibility. Everyone knows the status of every project at a glance. Such a solution also streamlines workflows and enables collaboration. Finally, it also serves as a place for tracking and analytics.
If you depend on Excel, Google Docs, or multiple SaaS products to manage content marketing, it’s time to rethink your process.
Key Benefits of a Digital Content Marketing Management System
Let’s look deeper at the impact and advantages of leveraging such a system.
Organization and Alignment
Staying organized is easy when you’re a team of 1 and your scope of work doesn’t require much outside of a task list and some publishing tools.
But trying to organize a large content operation with multiple people who manage a plethora of channels, initiatives and assets every day can be a BEAST. It gets even harder when everything lives in different places. If you depend on multiple tools (spreadsheets, project management tools, publishing tools, etc.) that don’t work together, just attempting to stay organized is likely someone’s full-time job. When you spend too much time on administrative tasks, it leaves less time to innovate and produce.
Organization happens naturally in a digital content marketing management system. You have all the necessary tools in one spot. Think about how much time you’ll save every day! No more searching for a document or email trails on status updates.
Proper organization inspires better alignment as well. Your content strategy is part of the hub. Having it so accessible and seeing it come to life provides clarity for all stakeholders.
Visibility
How about never having to hear again “What’s the status of that?” So much time and effort go into status updates — emails, chats, phone calls, weekly meetings all about status! What if you could eliminate that with transparent visibility?
It’s possible with a content marketing platform. Every project is viewable from a master content calendar. Real-time dashboards also provide insights. No matter what role you play in content marketing, there’s a view that gives you the information you want.
Streamlining the Process
Content marketing is no different from other activities in your business. Yes, it’s creative and doesn’t follow a “traditional” process. You can still streamline and automate it.
Even if you think you don’t have a content workflow, you do. It’s just not one that’s supporting you. It goes back to having the tools in the right spot.
Spreadsheets, shared documents, and review meetings are probably part of your process. You know it’s not efficient.
What can take its place? A solution that lets you design workflows, simplify the approval process, and automate distribution.
Collaboration
Content marketing is a team effort. That team also includes those outside of marketing. Your subject matter experts (SMEs), leaders, and other departments can contribute, too.
Collaboration may be a pain point now. It’s true for in-office and remote staff. You can be beside someone or 100 miles away and still struggle to collaborate.
The breakdown often happens because you don’t have a way to engage. A content marketing application provides that space. You can share ideas in one central hub. And other team members can look over your “virtual shoulder” to see what you’re working on and contribute where applicable.
Tracking Performance
Analyzing the performance of content should be a priority. You likely do this now but the process of aggregating data from multiple sources is likely cumbersome. You could be spending hours on manual tracking and creating reports. These efforts keep you away from high-level work, like acting on the insights.
A content marketing management system provides you a single view. It collects data from multiple sources in one system. You can also create reports based on a variety of factors. Getting the data should never take precedent over understanding it.
Must-Have Features of a Digital Content Marketing Management System
To gain the benefits above, you must have the right features. Here are the must-haves to consider.
Content Calendar
A content calendar is where organization and visibility begins. It’s a full view of every project. It’s the place to communicate your content plans.
The ideal content calendar is more than a spreadsheet. It’s a dynamic place for activity and tasks. Many teams can use it. In short, it’s the visualization of your content plan.
Plus, it eliminates ambiguity. Statuses are clear and available to all. It’s the new “status meeting” without the meeting part.
Content Workflows
A content workflow describes the series of tasks across the lifecycle of a project. It’s both tasks and a process. When you define these well, you remove inefficient behaviors.
It’s the answer to chaos. Projects have lots of roles and steps. When you optimize this, you can produce more content. Content doesn’t get stuck in review purgatory. Remember, consistency matters in content marketing. Regular publishing receives a boost from workflows.
Content Automation Functionality
What can a digital content marketing management system do for you? Well, it won’t write a blog post for you (yet), but it can take a lot of admin work off your plate.
Seek out automation tools like:
- Task automation
- Automatic notifications for content calendar updates
- Reporting with preconfigured dashboards
- Content and social publishing to streamline distribution
Collaboration Tools
How can you make collaboration easier? Proximity doesn’t matter. Rather, what’s vital is your hub and its toolkit. It breaks up the silos that often exist.
You can collaborate on the content calendar. Use project management tools to manage projects centrally. Another key feature is an idea repository. This element makes it easy to brainstorm and get unique ideas across departments.
Content Analytics
Finally, content analytics is the last piece of the puzzle. Now you can tell the whole story of content performance. All your data is in one spot. You can run reports in a click, sharing those with all parties.
Having this function inside your content marketing system closes the loop. You’ll have access to analytics that can then improve future projects.
Try DivvyHQ Today — Voted the Best Digital Content Marketing Management System
DivvyHQ offers all these benefits and features — and even more. See how it works today by trying it for free!