Content creation.

We all know the dream, right? To create and distribute amazing, engaging content which you’ve been able to develop because:

● There’s easy access to resources
● You’ve got the time you need to produce it
● Internal collaboration is effortless
● You’ve got efficient processes in place

*Bump*

The reality: As content creators, we continue to endure a number of well-known challenges at our place of work; from working to strict deadlines and tackling your sales team’s collateral ‘wishlists’, to creating high volumes of content with what might be a comparatively unmatched set of resources…we’re continuously fighting the good fight for developing worthy, value-rich content for our brands.

Since the beginning of 2020 however, we’ve inherited a few more obstacles:

● We’re still adapting to continuous periods of working from home
● We’re juggling day-to-day liaisons and contact with team members, and trying to keep everything moving like before
● We’re trying our best to stay connected with the wider organisation. Even more effort now needs to go into keeping senior manager levels of ‘buy-in’ stable, so that they keep investing in content

With this in mind, you could argue that content bottlenecks are even more likely to occur right now.

What is a ‘content bottleneck’?

A content bottleneck occurs where demand for content from within an organisation is at a level that exceeds that of the organisation’s actual ability to deliver that content and meet that demand.

There are a number of factors and circumstances lying behind this imbalance in the content lifecycle, and what’s more, the fact that you even have a content bottleneck won’t always be immediately obvious.

What can cause a content bottleneck?

Here are some common reasons as to why a content bottleneck can happen at your organisation:

● Your organisation is, quite simply, demanding the creation of too much content compared to the resource it has available to deliver — so delays occur and fulfilling those internal requests take more time

● Your content strategy isn’t agile enough. It could be that there’s an impractical level of collaboration required, the production process is too long, and/or even that you’re too reliant on IT to ‘unblock’ technical obstacles that are out of your control

● There are content silos present. Content is produced in isolation of other items, meaning there’s more risk of content duplication and missing opportunities for quality control

● Certain assets used in content development and production are not easy to find. It means marketers waste precious time trying to find items, or on recreating something from scratch to replace those assets

● Your organisation is not delivering content that is appropriately formatted for multiple channels efficiently enough.

● You’ve got stacks of old content, ripe for repurposing or refreshing, but lack the time and/or resource to tackle it.

Five things you can do to break down (or avoid) content bottlenecks

Here are some powerful things you can set into motion in order to prevent the likelihood of bottlenecks occurring in your organisation.

1. Examine your content strategy

It all starts with the ‘big plan’. In the context of content creation, this means your content strategy. Whether you’ve got an existing strategy you can reassess and make adjustments/additions to, or you need to create your organisation’s first-ever content strategy, this document is the blueprint for everything that involves creating content for your organisation.

Drafting a content strategy means that you can nail down aspects such as:

● your organisation’s marketing goals and objectives
● the content formats you’ll focus on
● the channels you must publish on
● which topics and themes you’ll cover
● who will be producing what — and when

By really zooming in on these particulars, you’re narrowing down the criteria for what should be produced, and setting a precedent for what falls outside of these boundaries. This allows you to identify and eliminate any ideas, concepts and content submissions which simply don’t fit.

In turn, this reduces the amount of potential ‘in progress’ content that could get stuck in a workflow and slashes the risk of wasting precious resources on briefs, editing, approvals, publishing and promotion.

Try these resources:

How to Develop a Content Strategy: A Start-to-Finish Guide
4 Questions to Help Vet Your Content Ideas

2. Build better levels of collaboration

When you’re developing new content, the likelihood is that it will involve more than one person. It’s therefore really important that all parties can work together in an effective way; each fulfilling their role, as and when needed, so that content creation stays on track.

Often though, problems can occur when roles and responsibilities remain unclear. The good news is that, with a bit of work, you can start tackling this issue head-on and set better foundations for future working.

Define who will be doing what, when, and plot this throughout all of the stages; from the first draft to editing, approvals and publishing.

A word of caution: there’s no use setting out clear instructions for everyone to follow if no one is actually willing to follow it. Take an honest look at the internal stakeholders who are crucial to your content programme, and assess how ‘on board’ they are with helping you to create all this content. If there are doubts, you may need to form a plan on winning them round and revitalising their enthusiasm…

Try these resources:
Roles and Responsibilities Chart template
Editorial Calendar Template

3. Streamline your technology

You’ve got your content strategy sorted and your colleagues are ready to pitch in and do their bit. Great. But what about the digital systems you use to manage through all those pieces of content?

It’s not uncommon for marketing departments to be using a number of different types of software, online documents and communication methods to manage their content operations — but, there is of course an easier, more efficient way to do things these days.

Using a single, centralised platform can bring so many benefits to your team (and the wider organisation). Not only can one system help facilitate better collaboration, it can also provide everyone who needs it with improved visibility and access to the content assets they need. These two benefits alone will save you and your team stacks of time.

As well as the tactical benefits, there’s also this—using one tool provides instant alignment across teams and departments. It allows everyone to work together on the same strategy, in a consistent manner.

And, when you consider that you’ll now have ‘checkpoints’ in your process, where a job doesn’t move on until the previous step is completed, it makes ‘who’s accountable for what’ really visible.

Try this resource:

Helpful Tools to Streamline Your Content Production Process

4. Develop and roll out realistic content workflows

Recent research tells us that ‘lack of processes’ is the biggest reason why organisations don’t take a strategic approach to managing their content. No process — or indeed, too many processes, can really slow down content creation.

This is where content workflows can really help — but they can only be applied if you’ve completed those first three steps we’ve covered above. It’s only with a well-aligned team and integrated technology that you’ll be able to deploy this set of processes.

The purpose of a content workflow is to provide clarity on roles and responsibilities, as well as the actions needed to keep the content creation process moving at pace.

By using content workflows for your blogs, website projects, white papers and case studies, content bottlenecks are far less likely to happen. It entirely ‘demystifies’ the process and grants new levels of transparency that no Google doc or Excel spreadsheet can replicate!

Try these resources:

The importance of content workflows
9 Fixes for Frustrating Content Workflow Problems

5. Examine how your published content is performing

Something marketing teams can often neglect to do — because we’re all so busy trying to get all that new content planned, produced and published — is to track back and take a look at how previously published content has been performing.

If your experiences are anything like mine, there could also be the odd piece which you gritted your teeth on producing at the time — because you didn’t believe it was really what was needed — or that it was even that good.

Wouldn’t it be nice to prove that it didn’t work, so it never, ever happens again?!

You can seek to do this by leveraging and inspecting the data available to you; whether that’s through the use of Google Analytics or the incumbent content marketing platform at your organisation.

Whilst, yes, it is somewhat of a time investment to conduct this kind of exercise, it’s a good use of time when you consider this exercise allows you to determine which content items have:

● Been ‘earning their keep’ (delivering decent levels of traffic, social engagement and/or leads)
● Far exceeded expectations (delivering new highs of traffic, social engagement and/or leads for your organisation)
● Failed to make an impact on your audience (0 — very few views and/or bounce rate: high)

Acting on these results can really contribute to reducing future bottlenecks. This is because knowing what’s working with your readers and what isn’t helps you to make the right decisions for future content. It also furnishes you with solid evidence that can help you push back against new ideas or requests you just know won’t work.

Try these resources:

Content marketing ROI: how to measure your success
4 ways to measure and realize the value in your content

The big picture

What we’re all striving for as content creators/marketers is to give our audiences the content they need and want, at the right time, in the right place.

Our modern, digitally-driven buyer behaviours have placed a relentless pressure on content creators (and marketers) in general. And when the balance between ‘content required’ and ‘resources available’ just isn’t there, problems occur and content bottlenecks happen.

By following at least some of the tips set out above, you could soon be enjoying a smoother, sleeker content creation process.

Maybe ‘the dream’ isn’t so out of reach after all? ✨

Originally published by The CMI.

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