If you don’t have a process to rely on, your content projects will be delayed, your publishing schedule may be ad-hoc and the content itself could be inconsistent and poorly executed. It also means the content won’t help you achieve any business goals or the needs of your audience, so any resources you’ve spent creating content are wasted.
If you’re a small (or one person) team, it may seem like you don’t need a process at all. But here’s the problem with that: without a process, there’s a chance your content isn’t serving its purpose.
Creating a process, collaboratively
By creating a solid content creation process it ensures that every person on your team knows:
· The goals they’re working towards
· Tasks they need to complete
· Time allocated for them
· Any due dates
· Other team members they depend on
· Where each piece of content lives.
You will create your content production process by defining each of the six factors involved:
· The goal
· The tasks
· The roles
· The order
· The timeline and due dates
· The content inventory
Let’s look at each of them in more detail and go through the actions you need to take for each factor.
The goal
If your content is not mapped to your business goals and audience needs, no process can help you move your business in the direction you want.
When each piece of your content has a defined goal, you have the power to measure its performance and optimise your future efforts. Knowing whether your content aims to increase your search rankings, brand awareness, lead generation or anything else of importance to your business helps you make an actual difference with this content.
The tasks
Not knowing the tasks involved in content production can delay and derail projects with content never getting published on time, or at all. When you set aside the time for writing and editing, but not for design and revisions, you will suddenly need extra time from others that simply may not be possible. This results in delays and lots of frustration.
The roles
Each of the tasks should be assigned a person who is responsible for getting it done. If it isn’t, more than just your deadline is at risk as it becomes a ground for blame-shifting and unhealthy team relationships, which can carry long-term consequences.
The order
If the order of tasks in your process is broken, you will have people waiting on each other to finish tasks, instead of maximising their time and working simultaneously whenever possible to shorten the production process.
The timeline and due dates
This is the final building block for an effective content production process. It’s what glues all the pieces we mentioned into a repeatable process defined by dates and milestones.
The content inventory
Content inventory responsibilities must be defined so you never misplace a piece of content. Just like responsibilities over tasks, each team member should be certain about their role in the content inventory.
Wrapping it up
This 6-step process will get you on the path to creating high-quality content without delays, pushbacks, misunderstandings and frustrations.
Before you dive into these steps for your upcoming piece of content, the best place to start is to look at your most recent content and audit your actions that led up to it.
Take note of:
· Any delays that happened
· Anything that was put on hold because it depended on another team member
· The state of your content inventory and any fixes to it you had to make after publishing that content
· Any occasions where ownership over a task wasn’t clear
The list that comes out as a result is your set of weak spots. Now, set aside several hours with your team (or for yourself if you’re on your own) and go through the six steps with these weak spots in mind. Complete all the tasks and document everything you discuss.
And then, you’re ready to implement your new process for the first time and grow it into a challenge-resistant process.