Being a content specialist doesn’t mean that you have only one task to do, which is to write a piece of content. Content planning tasks and collaboration Effective content collaboration and communication are vital elements of a successful content creation process, especially when it comes to the planning stage. As part of the research, we interviewed more than 1800 respondents and discovered the most time-consuming and most challenging tasks of content marketing specialists at this stage. Below you’ll find 6 steps of the planning and ideation process and our recommendations on how content producers should organize their working processes to perform their tasks effectively and solve challenges they’re facing at each stage. Step 1 – Defining the ROI and goals of a content campaign Team player to work with: Content Strategist / Project Manager Quantifying the return on your marketing activities can certainly be tricky, especially when it comes to content. A content strategist or a project manager is the one who knows the goal of a campaign and can help a writer define the key content marketing metrics for it. Step 2 – Understanding who your target audience is Team player to work with: Content Strategist This is one of the first and most important steps in your content marketing workflow. Collaboration between content and PR is especially valuable at the brainstorming stage. Pro Tip: Create a calendar, which both you and an editor can edit. Pro Tip: Don’t get caught in a trap by focusing too much on the creative element and make sure that your content meets your SEO recommendations.
The content creation process is about endless collaboration and communication. Being a content specialist doesn’t mean that you have only one task to do, which is to write a piece of content. Writers have to cooperate with a number of other specialists, such as PR managers, editors, SEOs, designers, and marketing managers. It can be a real hassle to coordinate efforts with all those team players.
At SEMrush we wanted to figure out the biggest challenges of content specialists. To shed some light on the current state of content collaboration and identify the most complicated tasks of content practitioners, we conducted research in partnership with the Content Marketing Institute. It’s interesting that all of these tasks aren’t performed by a single person, but often require the collaborative efforts of different team members.
The research insights helped us to discover that better collaborative workflow may be one of the most important elements of a digital content marketing strategy.
We used the results of this study to identify the main bottlenecks for content marketing specialists across different stages of the content lifecycle. In this article, we describe the planning stage and explain how collaboration with other team members can help content producers do their job effectively.
Content planning tasks and collaboration
Effective content collaboration and communication are vital elements of a successful content creation process, especially when it comes to the planning stage. As part of the research, we interviewed more than 1800 respondents and discovered the most time-consuming and most challenging tasks of content marketing specialists at this stage.
Below you’ll find 6 steps of the planning and ideation process and our recommendations on how content producers should organize their working processes to perform their tasks effectively and solve challenges they’re facing at each stage.
Step 1 – Defining the ROI and goals of a content campaign
Team player to work with: Content Strategist / Project Manager
Quantifying the return on your marketing activities can certainly be tricky, especially when it comes to content. The reason is that it can be difficult to focus content specifically on sales. In fact, the definition of ROI may vary in different companies based on their business goals and content marketing KPIs, such as website traffic, conversion rate, engagement, downloads, etc.
A content strategist or a project manager is the one who knows the goal of a campaign and can help a writer define the key content marketing metrics for it. It’s interesting that when we asked about the most challenging aspect of being a content strategist, “developing an ROI plan of a content campaign” was the second most popular response, accounting for 25%.
At the very beginning of the planning stage, a content strategist and project manager explain to a writer the main goal of a campaign, providing them with direction. By knowing campaign goals a content producer can craft their piece of content accordingly, set the right tone, and create an effective and powerful message.
A strategist helps to define which metrics really matter for that specific campaign. Instead of trying to track all possible metrics, which can be counterproductive, it’s worth focusing on a few relevant metrics. When you know exactly what results you want to achieve, it will be easier to define and measure the ROI of your content marketing efforts.
Pro Tip: To ensure that content performance can meet the expectations of your content strategist or project manager, ask them several vital questions before you start writing:
- What are the main goals? Why are you writing this piece of content (new clients, registrations, payments, etc.)?
- What metrics are you going to monitor?
- Who is the target audience and what are their interests?
In order to not forget or lose this valuable information, use a calendar, where you can add tasks, organize deadlines, and set goals for each piece of content.
Step 2 – Understanding who your target audience is
Team player to work with: Content Strategist
This is one of the first and most important steps in your content marketing workflow. By knowing your target audience and their pain points, you can produce more relevant content that your website visitors will want to read.
At this stage, a content writer and a content strategist work closely together. Professional strategists’ responsibilities include analyzing the market, identifying its opportunities, and conducting persona research. By sharing their knowledge, strategists help content writers to better understand their buyer persona, i.e. the target audience.
An experienced strategist knows that a target audience may change over time. That’s why they conduct market research on a regular basis (in most cases each year) to review their audience parameters, which is crucial for growing a brand’s audience.
Pro Tip: Before talking to a…
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