Content marketing includes the entire lifecycle of content, which can get complex within many organizations. Many tactics are time intensive and, all too often, we end up spending too much time on activities that don’t really add value. So, I’m often asked what the biggest time wasters in content marketing are. I’m going to answer that question and then take it one step further with how technology can eliminate them.
Why Are We Still Wasting Time in a Technology-Driven, Modern World?
Technology helps us do so much more, while still being effective. We now have precise directions, answers to questions, and data aggregated in a snap. However, that doesn’t mean we’re still not stuck in a cycle of inefficiency, laboring over manual minutiae.
This certainly applies to content marketing. There are lots of mechanics behind the scenes, but with robust technology that enables content automation, they can be simplified. Your team will then have more time to focus on high-level tasks related to strategy, planning, and the management of content.
It’s time to break free from these time wasters in content marketing and embrace higher productivity with specialized technology that a content marketing platform affords.
Updates and Status Check-Ins
Communication is central to a well-run content marketing operation. Multiple resources are involved in creating a content project. But how much time does your team waste every day just reporting on where they are on a project? Are there long email chains? Unproductive meetings? Or an overall feeling of chaos?
Break free from this cycle by employing an interactive, central content calendar. Powered by content marketing software, a content calendar is the single source of truth for each piece of content. It’s also accessible to all parties so that when anyone needs to know a project’s status, they can look at the calendar.
A content calendar can also automate notifications. It’s a place for communication and task assignment, ensuring that every person understands their responsibilities. A content calendar should be at the top of your technology wish list that will dramatically reduce time wasters in content marketing.
Content Development with No Value
It’s a shame to waste time producing content that has no value for your audience. This can occur for a number of reasons—not knowing your buyer’s pain points, using content formats that aren’t engaging, or focusing on topics that aren’t timely.
So, how do you eliminate the time wasted creating content that doesn’t perform? It’s all about executing a strategy that is backed with data. Content analytics provide you with feedback and insights you need to craft content that resonates and elevates your brand to thought leadership status.
Aggregating and deciphering content analytics can also be time-intensive. So, seek out technology that does the heavy lifting for you. Having a central hub for data with dashboards and the ability to run on-demand reports is vital to making the process more seamless and efficient.
When you have real-time data on content performance, you’ll learn a considerable amount about your audience’s preferences on topics, formats, and channels.
Publication and Distribution
Once content is ready to go, the process of publishing it and distributing it into the world is one of the biggest time wasters in content marketing. When executed manually, your team may spend hours every day on these tasks, taking them away from working on the next content project.
These tasks, however, can be easily automated. Choose a content marketing software solution that offers you the ability to automate publication on your website as well as the posting of content on social media profiles. By letting technology take the lead on these duties, your content workflows will be much smoother.
Broken Content Workflows (Or Lack Thereof)
Content workflows are crucial to higher efficiency and productivity. If yours are broken or nonexistent, you are wasting precious time and could be dealing with a frustrated content team.
Alleviate these pains by developing content workflows that are consistent and repeatable. Your content workflows encompass all the individual tasks that need to occur to produce a piece of content. As you know, there are lots of pieces that go into one project. Without content workflows, there is little structure, which can leave employees in the dark.
Here are a few ways that technology can improve content workflows:
- Content calendars take over as the central hub, meaning you can ditch spreadsheets
- Building a house to consolidate the tenets of content marketing—planning, ideation, and measurement
- Automated notifications to team members regarding deadlines or changes in scheduling
- Production schedule calculations
By using content workflows consistently, you will immediately realize time savings. Plus, you don’t have to reinvent the workflow for every project. It becomes a template within your software so the process stays basically the same but still has the flexibility to change as needed.
Indecisiveness
Indecision halts content marketing. Often, it’s the result of not being empowered to make those decisions. If you run a content team, you need to practice empowerment. If you have a highly skilled team of content marketers, they can’t be paralyzed by decision-making.
Many decisions need to be made on a daily basis in content marketing from choosing topics and themes to deciding what keywords to target, to defining what to measure. Indecision in any of these areas slows down your content generation.
If your team doesn’t have your trust to make decisions, they are probably less productive and less engaged. These feelings can lead to reduced passion for the content and its value. This is a situation you likely want to avoid.
Technology can be the answer to this challenge. When you have a content marketing platform that encourages content collaboration and transparency, decision-making will be much easier and simply part of the content marketing culture.
You Don’t Have Time to Waste
Every minute your content team spends on “the process” of content marketing is a minute they could have spent on creating something great. With the efficiency and automation tools that today’s technology provides, content marketers can spend less time on manual processes, ineffective workflows, and publication. They can also reduce time wasted on content that isn’t relevant and indecisiveness.
See where technology can take your content marketing with DivvyHQ. You don’t have time to waste. Request a demo right now!