In fact, 73% of B2C marketers say they plan to produce more content in 2017 than they did in 2016. Learn to say no to unnecessary work One way to scale your work with the resources you have is to let go of any content tasks that aren’t meeting your team and company goals. He says the purpose is to “outline the why, what, how, and who necessary to decide if it is worthwhile to continue a project.” Each business case for your content efforts doesn’t have to be as detailed as Webster suggests as long as all of the high-level ingredients are included. A lot of technology solutions, including project and work management software, can help to take the guesswork out of it. Communication efficiencies: Anything you can do to cut down on unnecessary meetings (like status meetings) will give your team more time to focus on their most important work. Plus, it avoids accidental overlap.” Angie says she conducted just a couple of interviews as a basis for all the articles, using different quotes from piece to piece. Relevant, particularly compelling statistics from the report were quoted in nearly every article. In fact, if you focus on your underlying processes, get better at managing and prioritizing your work, learn to say no, and follow the three Rs (reduce, reuse, and recycle) – you’ll be a few steps closer to creating the consistent, relevant content that your audience craves. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).
Year after year, many content teams are asked to deliver more and better content with the same staff and budget. In fact, 73% of B2C marketers say they plan to produce more content in 2017 than they did in 2016.
But how? Here are three foundational tips for increasing output without burning out your team and losing the talent you rely on. (You may be surprised that only one tip is directly related to the content.)
1. Learn to say no to unnecessary work
One way to scale your work with the resources you have is to let go of any content tasks that aren’t meeting your team and company goals. While this can be tricky to determine, there’s one simple question to ask, according to Michele Linn: Would anyone miss your content if you did not publish it?
Ouch. Obviously, if you’re just starting down a content path, you have to give it time before people will miss it. But if you’ve been at it consistently for a while, and you can’t honestly say anyone would notice if you stopped publishing, maybe you should rethink that channel or strategy.
At an earlier employer, I inherited a content channel that I wasn’t convinced was integral to my team’s goals or necessary to overall business objectives, but the project’s sponsor lobbied strongly for us to continue publishing on it. We did so, until a technical glitch blessedly intervened. After a couple of months, with the glitch still not fixed, it became clear that not only did the intended audience not miss the content, neither did anyone inside the company. Saying adieu to that project was an easy proposition, and my team was freed for more relevant work.
But these decisions aren’t always so clear-cut.
It can be helpful to build a business case for each initiative, whether your goal is to justify to yourself how you’re allocating your resources, to prove the value of an initiative that others are questioning, or to justify letting go of a project you doubt but others champion.
Martin Webster wrote a how-to guide for creating the perfect business case. He says the purpose is to “outline the why, what, how, and who necessary to decide if it is worthwhile to continue a project.” Each business case for your content efforts doesn’t have to be as detailed as Webster suggests as long as all of the high-level ingredients are included.
2. Get better at managing and prioritizing your work
Nobody likes a fire drill. You know, the kind where you get to stay late and work the weekend, all because someone didn’t plan well enough for the work to be accomplished.
Planning the resources needed, time estimated, and steps to take to accomplish a big deliverable is certainly an art. A lot of technology solutions, including project and work management software, can help to take the guesswork out of it. Whether you use software or not, it all starts with a solid process and building good work habits with your team. You can get back your nights and weekends by following these underlying principles:
- Automated work assignments: Use a standardized template to assign work the same way, every time. Automate this as much as possible to cut down on manual effort. You also can use this tool to view each team member’s workload before you drop a new assignment into the queue.
- Transparency for everyone’s workload: Whether you use an Agile burndown chart, a Kanban Work in Progress board, or software that achieves the same thing, seeing every team member’s top priorities at a glance makes it easier to slip new assignments into the mix, keep work balanced across the team, and reassign work as needed to keep work flowing…
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