Content Marketing

Content marketing is a form of marketing that is focused on publishing, and distribution of materials on the internet such as videos, blog and social media posts to a targeted audience with the ultimate goal of stimulating interest in the products or services of a brand.

It is more effective than directly pitching your products or services because you’re providing really valuable content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their problems.

Content Marketing Process

Request
Content marketing doesn’t begin with the creation of the actual content, but it begins when somebody in your company identifies the need for a particular piece of content. The managing editor might request for content according to the editorial calendar, or the CEO might have a fundamental idea that needs to be developed.

Content Planning
At this stage, the deadline for the piece of content, its format, and when it will be published is established. Oftentimes, content pieces are scheduled using an editorial calendar.

Identify Distribution
To have a successful content marketing, you need to know where your content will also be distributed outside of your blog. And this needs to be figured out before the creation of the actual content to enable you to decide how to tailor your content.

At this stage, the community evangelist is saddled with the responsibility of identifying niche forums and their estimated traffic to enable both the editor and the writer to tailor their content to fit your target audience. Distributing your content on these forums gives the content more value and purpose than just sitting quietly on a blog.

Create Content
Once you have identified your niche forums, proceed to create the piece of content. The managing editor assigns a writer to create the requested content and also gives the writer a full brief on what to write about including guidelines, the tone, and the right persona.

Proofread, Review, QA
Upon completion of the article, the editor needs to review the article prior to publication. The editor proofreads the article to check for grammatical errors, copyright issues and looks at the article in light of the style and tone that the organization uses.

Add Images and Publish Content
Once the content is approved, the article is then sent the graphic designer to create the perfect visual addition. Following the creation of the creation of the perfect visual addition, the SEO expert finally publishes the article, adds the images, edits the headline and SEO title, and ensures that the content is well optimized for search engines.

Distribute Content
Finally, once the post is live, the SEO expert notifies the community evangelist to craft some unique messages for the different platforms and then distribute the article.

With the manual system of content marketing, content briefs are vague and disorganized, the content may turn out that way too. Similarly, instructions are on different emails and chats, causing the writer and other team members to hunt through emails, Skype chats, etc to get important points. This is not a step in the right direction.

Content marketing automation keeps all the instructions about a piece of content in one place that every team member can access and also make contributions no matter their time role in the marketing process.

Benefits of Content Marketing Automation

Increases Productivity
Marketing automation simplifies organizational and marketing tasks by replacing repetitive manual processes with automated solutions. This will, in turn, increase productivity by freeing up valuable time for employees to focus on other tasks that will improve the content marketing strategy.

Reduces Errors
Investing in content marketing automation is just ensuring that you’re putting your company’s best foot forward in eliminating human error due to performing repetitive routine tasks manually. Automation helps you to standardize your content marketing processes and documentation, allowing for a seamless marketing workflow.

Governance and Reliability
The consistency of an automated system means you can rely on the system to execute your content marketing processes every time without hassle, enabling you to maintain a competitive advantage.

Reduces Turnaround Time
By eliminating unnecessary tasks and streamlining process steps, an automation system optimizes the flow of information throughout your content marketing cycle. This optimized flow of information improves your operational performance and reduces the turnaround time for your staff.