What marketers need to know

The best content creators make it look easy, but behind every slick YouTube video and delightful blog post is a digital content workflow that might involve a few or a few dozen people.

Technology is not yet advanced enough to allow marketers to launch a successful email campaign, YouTube series, or blog with the snap of their fingers.

Until then, it will take extensive planning, teamwork, and a consistent content workflow to keep everything and everyone updated.

In this article, we’ll explore what a content workflow is, why your team needs one, and the steps needed to build the right workflow for your marketing goals.

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Defining roles, goals, and deliverables is critical to an effective content workflow. You also want to create (and stick to) a realistic schedule.

Your content workflow may change depending on the type of content or resources available to you. It’s normal for the materials, people, and timelines defined in a workflow to change depending on the content you create, such as: B. a blog, a video, a live stream or a web copy.

Why marketers need a content workflow

Content workflows ensure that a project starts successfully without any problems. With a content workflow you can:

• Create consistent, current and accurate content.
• Guarantee realistic deadlines and results.
• Proactively plan for common roadblocks in content planning and launch
• Clearly identify how each team member fits into the overall content creation picture

Essentially, a content workflow keeps you and your team on track for a smooth launch. Without a content workflow, you and your team are more likely to miss deadlines, make mistakes, and struggle to work toward your shared goal.

Risks of not using workflows

It might be tempting to just overdo it, especially if you have a small editorial team and a low publishing frequency. I beg you: don’t give in.

I’ve worked in several places where a formal workflow didn’t seem necessary because the team was so small. But as the company grew, new employees became confused and frustrated by the lack of structure and documentation.

And finally, people leave to find a new job, and with them all the institutional knowledge stays.

According to a 2024 study by Marketing Charts50% of B2B tech marketers “create content based on research and website analytics” and 39% “closely follow a content calendar based on campaigns designed to reflect the product delivery schedule.”

If your content strategies involve such cross-functional collaboration, all teams need access to your workflows.

When the product roadmap changes or website analytics takes a sudden turn, you need established processes for communication and course correction. Even in a small team, the alternative is often chaos.

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Content creation workflow: Task-based workflows vs. status-based workflows

Before you learn how to create a content creation workflow, you need to understand what would benefit your team the most: a task-based or a status-based workflow.

Knowing the difference between the two will help you Develop the right workflow for your next project.

Task-based workflows

Each stage of a task-based workflow is a task that must be completed before moving on to the next step. In a task-based workflow, each step is described in detail and everyone working on the project knows what is expected of them.

Here is a simplified example of a task-based workflow:

In this example, each piece of content would be assigned four tasks, ranging from research to publication. Task-based workflows are particularly useful for new content teams because of the detailed instructions at each stage.

Any writer, whether freelance or in-house, would be able to keep the content moving through the workflow.

Status-based workflows

Status-based workflows are often preferred by more experienced teams. In a status-based workflow, each phase is defined by the status and the phases do not contain detailed descriptions or instructions like in task-based workflows.

Here is a simplified example of what a status-based workflow might look like:

In this example, there are four stages or states: Unassigned, Writing, Ready for Approval, and Published. If these stages were integrated into a content workflow, anyone viewing it could see where each piece of content sits in the overall workflow. This can make planning and scheduling large-scale content easier.

Status-based workflows can be easier to track and can be used for a variety of content types. However, it is crucial that your team understands the content creation process and their roles within it.

Pro tip: Popular workflow tools like Asana, Trello, and AirTable have dozens of templates for different workflows. Even if you end up using a different tool, I find it helpful to design a quick workflow and go through it with a few teammates. This is often a quicker way to identify pain points and figure out what works best for your team.

Here’s an example of one of AirTable’s content marketing management templates.

You can see that each piece of content contains the customer personas it is intended to target. If you have a lot of content and a lot of personas, you may want to replicate this in your own workflow.

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Content Strategy Workflow: How to Create One

Follow these steps to create a content workflow for you and your team.

1. Determine your content goals and audience.

Your goals determine the content you want to create and the audience you want to reach. As always, knowing your customer is the foundation of great content.

If you need to create or refine your customer profiles, check out ours Instructions with templates.

Is your goal to create brand awareness? If so, you probably want to create product-focused blogs or engaging social media posts. If you’re working to delight and retain your current customers, an effective email campaign may be a better solution.

You should also set realistic parameters – your content workflow won’t be successful if your goals exceed your resources.

2. Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each member of your team.

Once you know your content goals and target audience, you can decide who on your marketing team will be involved in the project.

For content creation workflows, you need content creators (bloggers, YouTubers, videographers, etc.), editors, and other stakeholders involved in content creation.

Regardless of whether your team uses a task-based workflow or a status-based workflow, everyone involved needs to have a clear definition of their role, responsibilities, and position in the process.

For example, if your workflow is for a YouTube content series, content creators are responsible for creating the content. The editor’s job is to ensure that the content is of the best quality and does not contain errors.

Senior editors or project managers give final approval to launch each episode of the series.

This is also the time to figure out what tools and materials your team will need to create and publish the content.

For example, content management systems like Content Hub are essential for publishing blog posts. Canva and Adobe Photoshop are great design tools.

You also need to consider your budget for tools like microphones and cameras for videos or email automation software for email campaigns.

3. Set content types and output frequency.

Think about what type of content you want to create and how often you want to publish that content. For example, you might want to post YouTube videos once a week or Instagram Reels every other day.

Now is also a good time to create a content calendar to plan your projects and ensure your content is published on time. In the LinkedIn newsletter Marketing Strategies 4 GrowthJoe Kovacs suggests planning a quarter of content at a time.

If you get stuck at this point, Kovacs has some great advice This can help you decide on content types and frequency (he’s talking specifically about scalable content, but I think it’s generally applicable): Center your buyers or customers.

“Your priority will be their problems that you have defined in your buyer personas,” he writes. “Your solutions… (are) the foundation of your content planning.”

4. Develop the content creation process.

Work with your team to consider the different steps that need to be taken to successfully launch your brand’s content. These steps vary depending on the type of content you are creating.

For example, the process for creating and publishing a blog post might look like this:

1. Strategize
2. planning
3. Create
4. editing
5. publication
6. Analyze

These tasks may seem large, but this is where you want to expand. For example, strategizing typically includes conducting content audits, creating buyer personas, and conducting keyword research.

Editing can include implementing SEO techniques or adding images and links.

Each step in the process must be captured so that it can be assigned to the appropriate team member.

5. Document and automate your workflow.

According to a Content Marketing Institute 2024 ReportNearly half (45%) of B2B marketers who use generative AI say they have more efficient workflows.

If you haven’t jumped on the AI ​​bandwagon yet, workflow automation is a good place to start.

Jamie JuvilerEditor-in-Chief of HubSpot’s website blog, used ChatGPT to help him develop a tool called BlogBot that automates a big problem for HubSpot authors: getting our posts from Google Docs to the CMS.

Juviler has what he calls a “light knowledge” of programming, but says that “there is no way I would have developed this tool as efficiently as I did without ChatGPT’s help.”

And without BlogBot, which, no joke, has saved thousands of hours in total, there’s no way HubSpot writers would be able to publish at the scale we do.

Juviler also uses AI to sort, filter and extract data from a database or list. “For example, if I have a list of hundreds of blog posts and want to see which ones would be good candidates for a particular CTA, I ask ChatGPT to select the most relevant blog posts based on the post titles.”

Pro tip: If you use HubSpot (or are curious about it), Workflow automated software This allows users to align the processes of all their teams so there is no confusion or problems with each task.

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The future of workflows

Content workflows are a must if you want to create content regularly and efficiently, with your team informed every step of the way – think of it like a roadmap for seamless content publishing.

And with AI now making its way into chat, it’s easier and faster than ever to create, test, and automate workflows, whether you’re using a free version of Asana or HubSpot’s enterprise customer platform.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in June 2022 and has been updated for completeness.