It’s certainly a team effort when it comes to content creation and management. Marketing leaders also know that content quality depends greatly on the level of commitment and passion of the entire team.
This is especially true as many of your competitors are likely ramping up their focus on content. Recent stats show that 45% of marketers plan to increase their investment in content marketing in 2024.
If you feel that the commitment level to content is lacking within your organization or on your team, you probably need to consider how to better connect others to the value of content. Use the following strategies to get greater buy-in from your whole organization.
Source: Content Marketing Institute
Key Takeaways:
- Teams appreciate the value of content marketing when they can connect to it personally by seeing their role in the process.
- Use technology to encourage a company culture that values content, especially with a content operations platform.
- Stay transparent about goals and feedback to keep content’s value top of mind.
Highlight the Value of Content by Making It Personal
For employees to get more engaged and all-in with content, it’s a smart move to make it personal. Consider each individual’s role. Whether or not they’re directly a part of the content execution team, do they appreciate their impact in creating, optimizing, and distributing content?
For those who provide critical information about your products, it should be particularly personal to them. They’re giving expert opinions that will influence buyer decision-making.
Likewise, it should be easy for those in charge of reviews and approvals to make it personal. They’re putting their own “stamp” on things. However, don’t take it for granted that they feel that way or that they still fully appreciate the value of content.
Making it personal is about accountability, knowing your role, and seeing how it contributes to the overall content operations process. That becomes easier when content planning and execution are in one central spot.
One of the best tools for this is an interactive, real-time content calendar. Such a platform is accessible to all team members, allowing anyone to see the status and context of each project. With this central hub, each person sees and can sense their personal contribution to the value of your content.
Image: DivvyHQ Calendar Interface
Additionally, a single content operations platform lets all team members stay on the same page and collaborate efficiently. This provides access to a 360-degree view of all efforts. A single source of truth that includes every project and its content metrics can make the flow and effect of content marketing feel more real and personal, reinforcing its value.
Involve the Team in Strategic Brainstorming Activities
Brainstorming sessions can run off the rails fast and have team members rolling their eyes. It’s time to evolve team brainstorming with exercises that are inclusive and embrace diverse concepts. By connecting with team members in unconventional ways, each individual will be able to deliver a plethora of ideas for your editorial calendar.
Make regular sessions interactive and even fun. Then, content teams see first-hand how their ideas contribute to the overall content marketing effort and discern the value of their content.
They also will feel a responsibility to ensure that content is of the highest quality. That personal ownership is the connection you’re seeking to make your team even more productive and engaged.
Build the Right Culture
As any brand knows, culture is vital to how a business performs. Creating a content marketing culture is integral to connecting value to content. Most companies that succeed at content marketing have been able to develop such a culture.
Building a content marketing culture means that you’re obsessed with your audience’s needs and delivering content that aligns with those needs. It also involves healthy and effective collaboration that executes on creating compelling content for your audience.
You can only do this by keeping your vision and mission top of mind. That means streamlining workflows so team members can concentrate on the big picture to retain the spirit of your culture.
Technology will be crucial to shaping your culture as well as maintaining it. Therefore, support your team and your culture with technology that houses content plans, content calendars, content workflows, and measurement tools.
As processes improve and content begins to perform even better, your team will embrace the value of content marketing even more.
Be Transparent About Business Goals and Content Marketing’s Role
Image: DivvyHQ Analytics
Goals are essential to any content marketing strategy. They should align with your overall growth objectives. When your team is aware of these goals and understands how content marketing helps reach them, the value of the content they are producing is very clear.
It’s not hard to be transparent with business goals. Bake them right into your content strategy with KPIs you connect to objectives inside your content operations platform. Then, use valuable content to get there.
Share Feedback About Their Contributions
Every employee desires to have consistent feedback from leadership. An honest assessment helps them improve and grow more confident in their skills.
Feedback links to content value as well. When you present different team members with information about how content performed — whether that’s bringing in new leads or getting a lot of shares on social media — the value is intrinsic.
Of course, not all data relates to success. Still, this information provides a learning opportunity.
Learning from campaigns that didn’t perform as you expected can trigger new ideas that lead to better execution or more relevant content next time. Regardless of the nature of feedback, team members can connect value to content marketing through either its performance or potential.
Make It Easier To See and Appreciate the Value of Content
Having the devoted participation of your team for content is absolutely attainable. Much of it comes down to successful content marketing management throughout the entire content lifecycle.
Support these best practices with the robust technology of DivvyHQ’s content operations platform. As a result, your team will have a clear vision of the value of content from each piece’s inception until it drives a conversion.
It’s free to start, so what are you waiting for? Go ahead and check it out! Or feel free to request a demo to get a personalized walkthrough.
