Do deadlines give you anxiety? That’s a normal reaction, especially if there aren’t processes and tools in place to help you meet them. Enterprise content teams often have high throughput goals, managing lots of projects for various products, brands, and locations. So, how are those content publishing deadlines working for you?
If your team is coming off the rails and tasks are piling up, it’s time to rethink your content workflows (or create them!). Until you have visibility and a solution that manages your schedule and tracks your processes, hitting content delivery deadlines may remain an elusive goal.
In this post, we’ll discuss the challenges that content teams face with consistently hitting deadlines and how to resolve them.
The Demand for More Content Increases Content Delivery Deadlines
Your audience is hungry for content, and your team is responsible for cranking it out to influence buyers at every stage of the funnel. In 2021, overall B2B content consumption increased by 9 percent. C-level leaders increased their content intake by 15.8 percent.
Based on this data, your content team needs to develop more content. Another takeaway from the research was that ebooks were a key format for B2B content. Those assets require more work than a blog, with more contributors and longer timelines.
Because of this increase in demand, your content publishing deadlines are growing. If you haven’t defined efficient workflow processes, you face challenges in publishing content on time.
So, what are the biggest content deadline challenges?
6 Content Delivery Deadline Challenges Derailing Your Efforts and How to Solve Them
A well-defined strategy and consistent execution are the keys to solid content marketing results. Without regularly publishing content, you affect its potential to drive results. Your search engine rankings will decline. Your website will look forgotten, and you’ll have nothing new to share in email marketing or social media. So, what are the causes of missed deadlines?
Source: Content Marketing Institute
You Lack a Defined, Documented Content Strategy
If you haven’t defined or are not following your content strategy, you’re likely setting your team up for failure right out of the gate. And not to mince words, but this deficiency falls squarely on the shoulders of leadership.
Without a defined and documented strategy, content producers simply don’t have the direction or execution plan needed to know what to do, or when things need to be completed. They have no vision of goals, audiences, content types, publishing frequencies, and more. You’ll be in an endless, chaotic loop, and nothing will get executed on time.
How to solve this:
- Develop and document a content strategy, and stick to it.
- Distribute the content strategy to all important parties so everybody’s on the same page.
- Revamp your strategy at least annually to account for new channels, trends, learnings from content analytics, and product updates.
You Aren’t Using a Dynamic Content Calendar
Do you have publishing frequencies defined for each content channel or owned content property? Have you mapped out the publishing schedule of content assets for your upcoming campaigns? Do you know the status of every current content project?
If you answered “no” to any of these questions, then you probably aren’t using a dynamic content calendar. This tool is crucial for proactive planning and tracking of your entire content operation, including campaign and project deadlines and production task deadlines with assigned responsibilities for each team member. It should be viewable by everyone so everyone is on the same page.
Dynamic means that the calendar is a “living” space that updates when you complete tasks or make any changes. When changes occur, the system sends notifications to users via email or within the platform. It’s one of the most valuable components of content marketing software, and it’s a feature specifically designed to help you meet deadlines.
How to solve this:
- If you don’t already have a content calendar solution, get one.
- Choose a calendar solution that fits the scope of your operation and has all the necessary functionality that you need.
See how our content calendar works in the video below.
Your Workflows Aren’t Defined
Each type of content needs its own workflow. The tasks required to publish a blog article look much different than a video. Without defined workflows, there’s no accountability or system to track status. If you only had one or two contributors, it might not matter, but you’re an enterprise team.
Leaving workflows up in the air gives your team license to do their own thing. Projects will fall through the cracks, and you’ll miss crucial deadlines.
How to solve this:
- Document your workflows, including every task required for each type of content.
- Identify who is responsible for each task or step in the workflow.
- Define how much time each task should take.
- Configure workflows in a content marketing platform.
You’re Hitting Too Many Roadblocks
Roadblocks can occur for several reasons. The most common are a lack of resources and projects held up in review. The first issue is addressable with more headcount or outsourcing certain needs.
The second is more complex. Depending on your industry, legal and compliance may need to review content. There may also be other reviewers like SMEs (subject matter experts) and those within your team.
How to solve this:
- Include all stakeholders in the content collaboration workflows.
- Set expectations about response times with all reviewers.
- Identify major barriers to on-time review and strategize on how to overcome them.
You Don’t Have a Central Hub for Projects & Production Data
Spreadsheets can do many great things but are not sustainable for content operations management. Even if these documents are on a shared drive where multiple contributors can work on them, they are still just rows and columns.
A spreadsheet isn’t going to notify your team when things change or become late. Moving to a central management hub is critical for meeting content publishing deadlines. It provides visibility, clarity, and transparency across the enterprise and helps keep team members accountable for their personal to-dos and deadlines.
How to solve this:
- Deploy an enterprise content operations platform (a.k.a. content marketing platform).
- Ensure it has all the features that will support meeting content deadlines.
- Use the platform consistently and measure its effectiveness.
Your Timelines Aren’t Realistic
Understanding how employees perform against deadlines is valuable data. Even if you address all the challenges above, you may still miss the mark because timelines aren’t realistic. So, you must consider your resources and their workloads. Further, some formats require a lot of research before they even start.
DivvyHQ Analytics example – On-time completion report
How to solve this:
- Determine from data how long it typically takes to complete specific types of content assets or tasks.
- Understand the workload of all resources, some of which may not be part of your content calendar (e.g., meetings, special projects, etc.).
Meet Content Publishing Deadlines with DivvyHQ
Your best course to meet content delivery deadlines is with the DivvyHQ platform. It has all the features you need to organize and manage projects. Explore how it can boost your content production by starting a free trial.