Content marketers have the exciting, yet-often-challenging role of generating a healthy amount of relevant content for their audience. It’s certainly a team effort when it comes to content management. Marketing leaders also know that the quality of the content depends greatly on how committed and passionate the team is, and that includes the entire ecosystem of those that contribute to content. But if you’ve ever felt that the commitment level is lacking in your team, perhaps you’ve wondered how you can better connect your team to the value of content.
You may have significant buy-in on the value of content marketing from leadership, but that doesn’t mean you need to stop evangelizing the power of content to help your company grow with more leads and conversions. According to research, content marketing produces over three times more leads than traditional outbound marketing, while costing 62% less.
When your team is committed and appreciates the ability of content to move the needle, it also makes the content marketing management process must less chaotic. When all team members are on the same page and able to collaborate efficiently on a single content marketing software platform, they’ll also have access to a 360-degree view of all efforts. When you have a single source of truth that includes every project and the content metrics associated with it, content marketing sells itself.
However, you may still have doubters (haters, even?) that don’t totally commit to content marketing. Here are some strategies to help connect your team to the value of content.
Make It Personal
For employees to be more engaged and all-in with content, it’s often a smart move to make it personal. This can play out in multiple ways, depending on the person’s role, your company’s culture, and other factors.
First, making it personal to that person depends on their role. Are they part of the content execution team? Do they know the value of their role in creating, optimizing, and distributing content? For those who provide critical information about your products, it should be personal to them because you are asking for their expert opinion.
Other team members in the ecosystem may be in charge of reviews and approvals. For them, it should be easy to make it personal as they are putting their personal “stamp of approval” on things, so accuracy and quality are key.
Making it personal is also about accountability and knowing your role. That’s made easier when content planning and execution are in one central spot. The best tool you can use to present accountability and assignment is a content calendar.
With an interactive, real-time content calendar, it’s accessible to all team members so that anyone can see the status and context around each content project. With this central hub, each person sees their personal contribution to a project.
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 ideas. By connecting with team members in unconventional ways, your team will be able to deliver a plethora of ideas for your editorial calendar.
By having regular sessions that are interactive and even fun, content teams see first-hand how their ideas contribute to the overall content marketing effort. They also will feel a responsibility for ensuring 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 the business performs. Creating a content marketing culture will be integral to connecting value to content. Most companies that find success with 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 content collaboration to execute on creating compelling content for your audience.
This culture is supported by having the right technology that houses content plans, content calendars, content workflows, and measurement tools. Technology will be crucial to shaping your culture as well as maintaining it. As processes improve and content begins to perform, your culture will embrace content marketing even more.
Be Transparent About Business Goals and Content Marketing’s Role
Goals are essential to any content marketing strategy. They should align with the company’s overall objectives related to growth. When your team is aware of these goals and understands how content marketing can be part of reaching them, the value of the content they are producing is very clear.
The more that your team understands the realignment of goals and new opportunities for the business, the more likely they will see their involvement in its success. Being a marketer is innately tied to growth strategies. And it’s typically important to other stakeholders as well, from sales setting it as the highest priority, to other groups like product owners and customer service.
It’s not hard to be transparent with business goals. They should be baked right into your content strategy with KPIs tied to objectives and the use of content to get there.
Share Feedback About Their Contributions
Every employee desires to have consistent feedback from leadership. Feedback helps them improve and grow more confident in their skills. Feedback is linked to content value, as well. When different team members are presented with information about how content performed—whether that’s bringing in new leads or being highly shared on social media—the value is intrinsic.
Not all feedback will relate to successes. But feedback is also a chance for learning. Learning from campaigns that didn’t perform as expected can trigger new ideas that lead to better execution or more relevant content next time. Regardless of the nature of feedback, it is crucial to team members connecting value to content marketing.
Having the devoted participation of your team for content is absolutely attainable. Much of it comes down to successful content marketing management—the entire lifecycle of your content. By using these best practices supported by robust technology, your team will have a clear vision of the value of content. See how it can come together with DivvyHQ. It’s free to start, so why not check it out?