Top Productivity Tips For Your Content Marketing Specialist
Discover ways to help your content marketing specialist be more productive so you can grow your business and establish your brand.
In order to build a sound content marketing strategy, your content marketing specialist must adapt to new expectations and roll with the punches daily.
Producing blog posts is just the start. These talented individuals are also responsible for planning and researching content topics, editing fresh pieces of content writing, and creating content for their company’s social media accounts. In order to accomplish all of this, your content marketing specialist needs to be skilled at multitasking and staying organized.
In this article, we’ll share some of the top productivity tips for your content marketing specialist.
Overview of Content
- Create a Detailed Content Marketing Strategy
- Include Best-Practices in Your Content Marketing Strategy
- Develop a Content Marketing Calendar
- Organize Content Resources
- Repurpose and Reuse Content
- Work Smart With the Right Productivity Tools
- Outsource Your Content Marketing Tasks
Create a Detailed Content Marketing Strategy
Having a plan in place before starting any content creation is essential. When a business fails to have a clearly defined strategy in place, it will struggle to create content that works for them. In addition, your content marketing specialist will be under pressure to piece together relevant content day after day.
For these reasons, it’s time to get a clear strategy in place. And, if your content marketing strategy is outdated or vague, consider revamping it.
Here’s how you and your content marketing specialist can get started:
1. Define What You Want to Achieve From Your Content Marketing Efforts
Some questions you can ask are: What types of content would you like to produce? How often should you post new content on each channel? Do one-off articles or continuous series fit your company’s style more? These questions help define your goals so you know exactly where you’re going with your content marketing process.
2. Identify Who Needs to See Your Content
Knowing your target market determines which distribution channels you should have your content marketing specialist use most frequently. It may even influence your choices for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes. Will you choose organic or paid? What will suit your content marketing strategy?
3. Create a List of Potential Keywords That Describe Your Products and Services
Keywords are crucial for SEO because they drive traffic to your website. Take some time to have your content marketing specialist research and decide on the types of keywords that fit your company best. Once you identify these terms, write them down along with synonyms and related phrases.
4. Set Aside Enough Budget to Cover Your Content Marketing Expenses
A good rule of thumb is to allocate 10 percent of your total annual spending to content marketing. That means if you spend $100,000 per month on other costs, you should allot about $10,000 towards content marketing.
5. Decide How Much Time You Can Realistically Devote to Producing Quality Content
Small businesses in particular see business owners wearing multiple hats to curb costs. The truth is, some days are better than others. Content marketing requires dedicated time. You should have your content marketing specialist commit to at least two hours every week to creating high-quality content.
Include Best-Practices in Your Content Marketing Strategy
Being comprehensive in your content marketing strategy is crucial for achieving success.
Here are a few more ideas you can use to build your strategy.
Give Team Members Defined Roles in Your Content Marketing Strategy
Everyone, especially your content marketing specialist should be involved in the process and must agree upon the type of content you’ll be publishing and the frequency with which you’ll release it. Social media content marketing is a team effort and everyone needs to be on the same page in order for it to work well.
Develop a System for Tracking Progress
Whether you decide to track everything manually or automate the process using software, having a way to measure content marketing success is important. Tracking metrics gives you insight into your content marketing campaign effectiveness. Metrics can also serve as a guide for future campaigns.
Be Consistent to Build Trust Among Consumers
When someone sees something regularly and consistently across multiple platforms, it puts them at ease. They then feel comfortable sharing personal data because they trust that they will only receive valuable and consistent information.
Develop a Content Marketing Calendar
Creating a content marketing calendar (aka content calendar) is the next step in your content marketing strategy. A content calendar lets you and your content marketing specialist organize and execute your content marketing plan in an effective and timely manner. It shows you how your material will be arranged over a given period of time.
It’s a tool for determining what material you should publish and in what sequence. The goal is to attract visitors who will be interested in what you have to offer and can include anything from company website articles to social media postings.
Whether you manage a firm blog or simply have a moderately active social media presence, an effective content marketing calendar gets you organized and aids you in obtaining outcomes from your content marketing plan.
Like with creating a content strategy, information is key. Here are some points to consider when creating your content marketing calendar.
Step 1: The “Who” and “What”
Start by defining the scope of the projects in your content marketing calendar.
What kind of information do you want to share with potential customers? This could include:
- Company history
- Current news about products and services
- New developments within the organization
- Events related to the business
- Promotions
- Sales opportunities
- Customer service issues
- Industry trends
Next, you’ll need to determine which types of content are most appropriate for each category. Some examples might be:
- News releases
- Blog posts
- Case studies
- Infographics
- Videos
- Slide decks
- White papers
- Social media updates
- Press releases
It’s important to note that not all categories require equal amounts of effort when producing content. You can structure your time around these needs.
Your posting schedule will also affect how your content calendar is structured. Are you posting once a week or multiple times?
Step 2: The “How”
Now that you’ve determined the purpose of your content, you need to decide on your distribution destinations. Will you post it directly to your site, or do you intend to use third-party platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.? If so, you’ll need to consider these factors:
- How often will you update your content?
- What platform will you target?
- Where will you place your content?
- Who will see your content?
If you opt to go through a third-party platform, you’ll likely need to register with their system. Once registered, you’ll be able to access features such as analytics tools, reporting capabilities, and other helpful resources.
These options allow you to track performance metrics, measure results, and provide insight into user-behavior patterns to identify areas of improvement.
Step 3: The “When”
Frequency and timing come next. Do you want to maintain consistency throughout the year, or would you rather vary by publishing different types of content at various times of the year? Both these approaches come with pros and cons.
Consistent publishing cadence helps build trust among users but it takes longer to establish relationships. On the flip side, having regularity allows people to anticipate upcoming events and prepare accordingly. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference. Whatever approach you take, remember to always keep in mind the overall goals of your content marketing campaign.
Now you are ready to populate your calendar.
With the information you have compiled you can identify what days of the month and week to publish your content.
Related content for suggested reading you may enjoy: Editorial Calendar vs. Content Calendar: Here’s Why You Need Both!
Organize Content Resources
You can build on these steps by creating a resource center. This will increase productivity and simplify the overall content marketing process.
A resource center is a website within your website that houses all of your content. The demand for these is growing as more companies shift to a more consistent content marketing model. This more consistent model includes the introduction of blog entries, videos, podcasts, eBooks, SlideShares, and other content.
A resource center helps you and your content marketing specialist manage all this content in an orderly way so nothing slips through the cracks.
By creating a user-friendly library, organized by topic, your site visitors can better navigate your content. The benefits of a resources center will be felt by both the content marketing specialist and site visitors. It will help you better understand what content has already been created.
This leads to our next productivity tip to help you be successful, as a content marketing specialist.
Repurpose and Reuse Content
An excellent way to make the most out of your existing catalog of content is to repurpose and reuse old content.
Content repurposing takes your existing content and changes it into new formats which can be used for various purposes. If you’ve ever created infographics, presentations, spreadsheets, or videos before, you may already know how powerful this can be.
By taking your blog posts and turning them into visual presentations, infographics, or videos for sharing on social media platforms, you extend the life of your content and refresh its relevance. After a while, you will be able to assess and rank the more popular content and then work to optimize this for a greater reach.
Updating an old blog post or product description with fresh data can be really effective. You can even repurpose this content by converting portions of your posts into Twitter-friendly quotes to use for building your following.
Webinars are a great option to repurpose into a blog or vice versa. The blog provides all the meaty content, while the webinar provides a greater chance to capture leads. If you are covering an interesting topic or including special guests, webinars can be an effective tool to share your expertise.
If you’re worried about sounding like a broken record, don’t be!
Repurposing and reusing old content will keep things fresh for your readers without giving them more of the same old thing.
Work Smart With the Right Productivity Tools
Thanks to the ever-rising popularity of content marketing there numerous productivity tools that can help you manage the workload of you and your content marketing specialist, all while making the most of your content writing efforts.
Here are some of the best tools for you and your content marketing specialist to consider.
1. Google Keep
There are many note-taking apps out there, including Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, or Springpad.
Google Keep, however, is one of its top competitors because it’s free and has several unique features setting it apart from other similar apps. It allows users to store notes in color-coded categories which can be shared across all devices where they have access to Google Drive or Gmail accounts.
Also, while most other note-taking apps allow people to take photos then attach them to particular notes, Google Keep users can do this even if they don’t have a data connection on their device at the time. This makes it great for taking pictures on the go.
Tip: Taking notes is a great way to help you capitalize on your content marketing efforts so using an app like Google Keep can help you and your content marketing specialist stay organized and manage this process more effectively.
2. Feedly
Content curation has become extremely popular in recent years because it allows people to discover interesting ideas they might not have otherwise found. They can then share them with their target audience via social media which helps improve brand visibility.
A great example of a powerful content curation tool is Feedly which pulls information from sites like YouTube, Twitter, Google Reader, and others and then displays them in a single interface that users can follow.
3. Sendible
To better engage with your target audience, it’s important to have a strong online presence. Thanks to tools like Sendible, social media management has never been easier.
Sendible is a social media management app where you can organize, track, and analyze your social media in one place. If you want to stay ahead of the competition when it comes to content marketing, this tool can definitely help.
Outsource Your Content Marketing Tasks
The most straightforward way to increase the productivity of your content marketing specialist is to outsource some of the time commitments.
Working with a content marketing agency to complete some (or all) of your content tasks is an excellent way to maximize the skills of your content marketing specialist and your overall marketing roadmap.
Final Thoughts on Productivity and Efficiency
There are a variety of productivity tips for your content marketing specialist, but the most important is to have a clear strategy, create an editorial and/or content calendar, and stay consistently focused.
This will ensure you’re not wasting time creating blog posts with no audience in mind or constantly scrambling for topics to write about. It can also be helpful to outsource some of your work so that you don’t get burnt out trying to do everything yourself.
Partner with WriteForMe for Your Content Marketing Needs
If you need more ideas on how to use these techniques or want an expert opinion on what works best, contact our team at WriteForMe.
With WriteForMe, you will have access to a team of content marketing experts to help you and your content marketing specialist create a content marketing strategy based on your organization’s unique needs. A content marketing agency has the expertise and resources to create, edit, and optimize high-quality content that resonates with your audience.
We pride ourselves on being able to efficiently provide high-quality articles while still maintaining all the necessary SEO requirements—plus we’re happy to take care of any outsourcing.