Core values should be at the heart of every content marketing team. Teams can accomplish great heights when working towards common goals together.

Whether you’re building a new team or improving workflow, honing in on your content marketing team’s values is worth its weight in gold.

In a fast-paced, competitive industry like digital marketing, talent alone won’t separate you from the crowd. It’s really the commitment to professional principles behind the scenes that turn heads. How does your team promote collaboration? How do they resolve conflicts? What do they ultimately stand for?

These guiding principles go far beyond forging your brand identity, workplace culture, and public perception. They even enable you to choose content experts who also reflect your beliefs. Great minds think alike, after all.

Are you ready to make your mark on the industry? Consider these core values to comprise a high-performing content marketing team.

What Are Core Values?

When it comes to content marketing, core values are sets of deeply-rooted beliefs, ideals, and ethics that content professionals live by. They’re the guiding principles we rely on to find our way, shaping our behaviors, motivations, aspirations, and perspectives. Organizations can—and must—have them, same as people. Without them, it’s all too easy to get lost in the digital abyss.

Established values play a big role in the success of any business. They direct the company’s mission, strategy, and company culture. They also serve as guides when recruiting new candidates, resolving problems, and managing priorities.

For example, does crafting great articles take priority over meeting deadlines? What codes of conduct do you expect from your team members?

1. Aligned Quality Standards

The digital content marketing space requires frequent delivery of high-quality products and services. Ensuring the team is on the same page is pivotal to delivering exceptional results. There are many ways leaders can achieve this, including:

• Setting content marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics from the jump
• Helping new team members unlearn practices that don’t align with your company
• Providing the right resources and training for everyone to meet company standards
• Giving constructive feedback for employees to fully grasp what’s expected of them
• Consistently evaluating quality standards and adjusting when necessary

2. Shared Vision, Mission, and Goals

Nothing beats a content marketing team with goal-driven strategies and clear-cut agendas. Without them, plans fall by the wayside and people lose momentum. How can you measure success without defining what that even looks like?

Each team member will have a different role, so it’s imperative to establish unified goals. These will serve as a compass for designing foolproof strategies. It’s hard to hit the ground running without knowing where you’re headed. If everyone is aiming for the same direction, the process of getting there gets that much smoother.

Build a concrete game plan by using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-related) goals. Setting unrealistic objectives is akin to not having goals at all.

3. Effective Communication

It’s no secret that effective communication is key to building a seamless system and stronger relationships. This is especially true for digital content marketing organizations with a lot of moving parts.

Clear communication must be maintained not just inside the department, but also throughout the entire company—and to your clients. Failure to do so welcomes dissonance. Even simple misunderstandings can blow up into bigger issues, wasting time, effort, and money.

A great line of internal communication may involve holding weekly meetings or developing a project monitoring tool to keep everyone in the loop.

Beyond the content marketing team, you also need to develop excellent communication channels with your clients and their target audiences. Remember, they are fundamental to your growth—so be sure to nurture lasting relationships with them.

Start off on the right foot by initiating meaningful conversations from the get-go. Discuss their goals, devise content strategies that fulfill their demands, deliver timely reports, and address their feedback. You are teammates working together towards a common goal, after all.

4. Integrity, Trust, and Transparency

Marketing efforts are a series of moving parts. It is crucial that each team member trusts one another and vice-versa.

Where integrity and transparency exist, mutual support flourishes. This is a key ingredient to empowering content professionals to fulfill their commitments with confidence. This level of support also makes them more willing to ask for help rather than sweep their concerns under the rug.

You can’t fix a problem you don’t know exists. Communication is a win-win.

5. Support and Collaboration

The digital content marketing industry is a highly collaborative space. Every team member must strive to work harmoniously with other members, much like cogs in a clock.

Employees are more productive and feel more connected to the organization when they are part of a team that supports each other. Additionally, it becomes easier to generate solutions for current issues or deliver the necessary work on schedule. For example, collaborative brainstorming for content topics brings together a pool of resources and talented individuals to contribute and build on each other’s ideas.

Internal cooperation also translates to high-quality work and an efficient workplace— which undoubtedly impresses clients. When the team puts positive synergy at the heart of the workflow, it uplifts not only the employees but also the entire organization

6. Individual Accountability

One of the factors that elevate content marketing teams from good to great is the reliability of their members. Can each individual accomplish their content assignments within specific deadlines and parameters?

Accountability is an important core value because coworkers should be able to count on each other to complete any task entrusted to them. Even one person’s delay can cause a domino effect that drags the entire group down the slump. Constructive content marketing teams keep these weak links at bay.

In the same breath, be careful not to fixate on achieving perfection. It doesn’t exist. Pretending that it does will only alienate your staff—making them too afraid to try at all. Growth starts at the end of your comfort zone; the same goes for your bottom line. Approach individual’s shortcomings by calling them to attention (respectfully), emphasizing the learning curve, proposing solutions to prevent it from happening again, and moving on.

7. Clearly Defined Role Boundaries

Just like any company, a content marketing team must function like a well-oiled machine. Every person needs to have a specific area of expertise and responsibilities.

Unfortunately, more often than not, internal issues like tight deadlines and insufficient manpower may blur the lines. These typically occur in start-up companies with more fluid work dynamics. This is precisely why there should be no room for ambiguity in a growing organization. Otherwise, you’re setting it up for failure.

A study found that organizations with high role clarity yield increased work satisfaction and performance—while the opposite results in employee stress, demotivation, and job insecurity.

Without clearly defined roles, overlapping tasks, overstepping boundaries, and burnout are bound to happen. Expect operational inefficiency to dominate should the team fail to address this.

Here are some tips to avoid or manage ambiguity at work:

• Start by crafting an organizational structure arranged by hierarchy
• Make an employee handbook, detailed job descriptions for each position, and a list of requirements and deadlines
• Have at least one person committed to strategy-building, content development, editing, design, social media promotions, data analytics, and so on
• Familiarize new recruits with expectations of day-to-day activities and those from their new colleagues
• Don’t take on more projects than the team can handle
• Provide incentives to supplement long working hours or new work demands

8. Flexible and Adaptable

Digital content marketing is an ever-evolving industry. Every organization in this sector must keep up with developing trends, technology, and competition—and these are just the tip of the iceberg.

Here’s the good news: the secret to success in the content marketing industry is to embrace change. It’s a superpower, not Kryptonite. Staying on top of emerging opportunities gives you a leg up over the competition and keeps you relevant.

Powerful teams are aware of when to change copy, frequency, channels, and approaches. They accomplish all of this without straying too far from their initial goals.

• Research new industry updates
• Attend seminars and subscribe to credible sources of information
• Keep an eye on changes in Google ranking factors
• Constantly optimize your content marketing team’s best practices
• Adapt to what currently appeals to the market
• Create a vast network within the space and consistently engage with clients, their customers, key opinion leaders, and businesses.

9. Positive Attitude

Conflicts, obstacles, and issues are inevitable in the workplace. There will be times when the company will experience downturns, difficulty in reaching content marketing ROI, budget constraints, challenging clients, and more.

In these moments, what will set an excellent content marketing team apart from the rest is how they approach adversity. Optimism is a powerful core value that solidifies teamwork and resilience. Make bumpy rides far more manageable with a productive, win-win mentality!

Positive thinking helps you manage conflicts like a champ by focusing on mutual benefits. Forward-thinking attitudes look past limited resources, competitive threats, and other ensuing issues. This mentality opens doors to a more collaborative environment. You’re all on the same team, act like it—even when things get hard.

10. Effective Leadership

They say great power comes great responsibility. It’s true; supervising a company is as demanding as it is rewarding.

A diverse content marketing team needs a leader to bring the group together. As the captain, the leader propels the team forward. It’s no easy feat—but as we’ve said, great responsibilities yield grand rewards. We think it’s worth it.

One of the key qualities of effective leadership is decisiveness. Great leaders make hard decisions based on calculated risks. These choices must be supported by a concrete plan of action while staying true to the team’s core values. Leaders should exercise self-assuredness while remaining open to better suggestions from subordinates.

Furthermore, they know how to motivate the team and run the organization with maximum efficiency. In the same way that accountability for mishaps should be enforced, wins must be recognized as well.

Practice positive reinforcement by giving credit where it’s due. A pat on the back goes a long way in encouraging individuals to keep up the great work.

11. Team Camaraderie

Did you know that some of the most successful CEOs consider camaraderie a competitive advantage?

According to a Gallup study, stronger friendships in the workplace increase employee engagement by a notable 63%. Moreover, those who consider their coworkers as friends are more likely to perform better and stay at the company.

A successful digital content marketing team promotes work-life balance and encourages team members to bond outside of working hours. When coworkers are familiar with one another, they can better function as a unit. Here are some tips to cultivate genuine friendships at work:

• Conduct team-building exercises and workshops
• Create non-work-related channels where members can discuss their personal lives
• Have lighthearted chats during lunch or breaks
• Host celebrations in the office, like birthdays or a company Christmas party
• Make everyone feel like they belong
• Discourage office gossip and negativity

Partner With WriteForMe to Expand Your Content Marketing Team

It’s paramount to work with a content marketing team with core values that reflect yours. Having aligned principles paves the way for a seamless working relationship and successful collaboration.

Choose a top-tier team like WriteForMe to build content marketing strategies that breathe life into your company’s core values and business objectives. At WriteForMe, we produce high-quality content designed to resonate with your market and exceed your digital content marketing goals.

Ready to send your business growth soaring?

Schedule a meeting today to get your free content marketing playbook! It’s a detailed proposal packed with insights, opportunities, competitive analysis, and a six-month roadmap specifically tailored to your business. Let us show you what we can do!