In the battle for customer attention, many marketing departments struggle to produce enough content. With these tips you will be able to ramp up your content production without the quality suffering.
Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, plus landing pages for advertisements, a company blog and now it has occurred to the boss that you could also “do something with this Tiktok”. More and more channels with more and more competition require more and more content. The biggest challenge for marketing teams is to manage all of this without any loss of quality. It can work with these tips.
1. Put the right team together
A good team that works together optimally is the basis for every success. For content production to function, different roles have to be filled:
Project management: For a strategic approach, someone has to take over the planning, control and coordinate processes and ensure quality assurance.
Production:Texts, pictures and videos don’t just fall from the sky, of course, they have to be created. This requires specialists who not only understand the graphic or textual craft, but also have in-depth knowledge of the respective topics. Especially when companies serve many different subject areas, it can make sense to hire freelancers with the appropriate specialist knowledge for production.
Analysis: The analysis of the content creation is divided into two sections. Before the actual content production, a target group analysis as well as topic and keyword research is required. After publication, success measurement and reporting follow.
But those responsible shouldn’t dream of the egg-laying woolly milk sow. The all-rounders that are so popular in job advertisements and that cover all these competencies do not exist. At least not if the quality is supposed to be right in the end. Rather, what is needed is a team in which everyone can play their own strengths to the full and all requirements are covered.
2. Establish a workflow
Good planning is half the battle, as the saying goes. And it’s even easier if you don’t have to start from scratch every time you plan. A clear workflow must be established so that content production can run smoothly. Then everyone involved knows who has to do what, when and how. A workflow for frequently required content such as blog posts should first be developed. This can then be expanded later and transferred to other formats or special cases. A lean workflow should clarify the following questions:
- Who is primarily responsible for the different elements?
- Who issues approvals and approves results?
- Who carries out the various tasks and is responsible for which sub-element?
- Who needs which information?
In addition, workflows should be checked regularly and optimized if necessary.
3. Define style and quality guidelines
While it takes some time to create style and quality guidelines, they will save you a lot of time later. This can be used to record the tonality in which communication is to take place, whether the target group is being used or not, which color concepts should be used in which areas, which requirements are placed on the formatting and much more.
Such guidelines also help to inform external freelancers about the requirements and to avoid unnecessary correction loops.
4. Working with templates
Most of the time is wasted in content production, with recurring formats having to be created from scratch every time. At the beginning this can still be useful to test which format and which design works best with your own target group. Once you have found your recipe for success, you should record it in templates for the various content formats. But that doesn’t just apply to pictures or videos. Blueprints can also be developed for texts that record how a particular genre should be structured.
5. Create an editorial plan
With an editorial plan, the productivity of all team members can be easily channeled, as everyone involved can quickly see what needs to be done and when. Content can be planned months in advance, for example, in order to cater to seasonal events or to be able to implement large projects well in advance. The editorial plan determines which content is published when on which channel, which material is required and when the respective deadlines are.
6. Evergreen content and user-generated content save work
Content doesn’t always have to be new or homemade. Evergreen content is a great way to use successful content over the long term. Such permanently successful content only needs one time to be created and can then be updated and replayed at regular intervals with little effort. They ensure constant traffic and thus also strengthen the ranking in the search engines.
User-generated content virtually outsources the creation of content to its own target group. Whether comments on social media platforms, photo challenges or unboxing videos: user-generated content offers customers the opportunity to be active and heard, and at the same time serves as authentic and trustworthy access for others. Of course, campaigns with user-generated content also have to be planned, moderated and evaluated, but the actual production effort is greatly reduced.