Table of Contents
A content workflow is a process that takes your content from ideation to publication efficiently. Also known as the content management workflow, this process ensures the content created achieves the business goals while delivering value to the audience.
The content workflow manager focuses on the entire process below to find areas of improvement:
Steps of a typical content workflow | thundertech.com
Every brand with a digital presence needs a content creation workflow to:
- Generate content ideas that resonate with the brand’s values
- Create different types of content such as blog posts and eBooks
- Deliver value to the target audience by educating them
- Increase brand engagement and trust
- Improve their domain authority both in Google search results and in the industry
However, creating and managing a content workflow is easier said than done.
You have to work with multiple team members such as authors, reviewers, editors, etc., through various phases of the content production workflow. Ensuring the continued efficiency of the process and choosing the right content workflow management tools are also challenging.
For small teams with limited resources, it is crucial to direct their efforts at each of the above facets of a content management workflow.
In this article, let’s look at the six key things you need to keep in mind so you can focus on doing what you love — helping your audience through quality content.
Let’s start by looking at what content workflow management is.
What is content workflow management?
Simply put, content workflow management builds and keeps your content production process efficient and effective. This repetitive process helps you identify and adopt new tools and methodologies that allow you to produce quality content faster.
Based on factors like the expertise of your team, resources available, and the type of content you wish to create your content workflow changes. For example, creating blog posts consists of a longer drafting phase as compared to creating social media posts.
When left unchecked, your content publication workflow becomes tedious, ineffective, and in some cases, counterproductive for your brand. For instance, publishing a technical post requires a huge investment, but might be difficult for your target audience to understand.
Therefore, we have listed six fundamental things you should keep in your mind while managing this workflow to ensure its productivity.
6 Things to keep in mind while managing your content workflow
1. Build the workflow collaboratively
Unless you are the only person running the entire content workflow alone, you should work with everyone on the team to build a process that everyone can follow. Apart from keeping everyone involved in the content creation process, this ensures that the process actually works.
Content collaboration with authors, editors, reviewers, etc., will also help you identify more challenges through the content processing workflow such as underlying communication challenges.
2. Create an editorial calendar that works for you
An editorial calendar is a tool that helps you schedule and plan your content production. Which kind of content will be produced, who will be reviewing it, what are the guidelines, etc., are some of the details enclosed in an editorial calendar.
One of the common mistakes that content teams make while creating an editorial calendar is that they attempt to copy their competitors. The content needs of every brand depend on factors like value proposition and available resources which are different for everyone.
3. Assign someone to run the workflow
Content workflow managers work with the content team and external collaborators to produce and publish quality content at the right time. This helps detect potential challenges early on and take steps to mitigate them.
Another benefit you can look forward to with a content manager is seamless communication through different phases of content creation.
The editorial review phase, for instance, is where every collaborator shares their feedback with each other to improve the content. Content managers facilitate that by ensuring everyone’s reviews are related to the topic and the best ones are taken into consideration.
4. Ensure everyone knows their role
The role of the authors is to draft the content and incorporate relevant suggestions from others during the review phase. The SEO expert takes care of SEO project management, ensuring that the content created is search-engine friendly. Similarly, everyone in the content team has a distinct but equally crucial role.
While managing your content workflow, it is necessary to help all your team members understand what is expected of them. This not only prevents them from stepping on each other’s toes but also instills accountability which is necessary for the overall efficiency of the process.
5. Revise the workflow periodically
The content industry continuously evolves. Whether it is with tools, processes, preferred content types, or distribution mediums. You need to constantly keep an eye on the market, the preferences of your audience, and the actions of your competitors to retain your advantage.
A major responsibility of content workflow management is to repeatedly measure and try to improve the efficiency of your content production processes. This could involve things like expanding your team, changing the type of content you create, or targeting new niches.
6. Use scalable and versatile tools
In theory, you can do a lot with blog content. However, your capabilities in practice are limited by the tools you use. For instance, you can run your WordPress editorial workflow by using third-party tools such as Google Docs but it will be slower and inefficient since they are text editors, not blog editors.
Sharing feedback on videos and dynamic content blocks (CTA boxes, image carousels), which are now present in almost every blog post isn’t possible with apps like Google Docs and Microsoft Word.
Content teams also struggle with keeping their organizational data secure with such tools because they have to give unrestricted access to external team members during the review process.
Fortunately, there is a solution for WordPress content workflow management teams.
Multicollab is a WordPress collaboration plugin that enables Google Docs-style editorial collaboration in the Gutenberg Editor where you can share your feedback on any type of content including videos and dynamic content.
Since your editorial process will be shifted to WordPress, you won’t need to provide external teams unrestricted access to your organizational data. Multicollab also allows you to create custom roles and assign specific permissions to each of them.
Summing up
Content management workflows or content workflows ensure the processes in each phase of content production are run efficiently. Content managers should keep the following five things in mind to maintain the productivity of this workflow:
- Consider everyone’s feedback while building your content workflow
- Create an editorial calendar that meets your unique requirements
- Have someone run the process to identify roadblocks early
- Help your team members be accountable and understand their responsibilities
- Conduct retrospective meetings periodically to find areas of improvement
- Adopt multipurpose tools that help you run your processes as you grow
Multicollab helps WordPress teams run their content workflow efficiently by shifting their editorial process to the Gutenberg Editor and facilitating Google Docs-style editorial collaboration.
FAQs:
Trigger, task, and result are the three basic components of a workflow.
Creating a set of standard practices, continually improving the processes, and instilling accountability within team members are three simple ways to manage workflows.
Content workflow is a process that ensures the continued efficiency of the content production process.
Planning, organizing, staffing, directing, communicating, decision-making, troubleshooting, and controlling are the eight stages of a workflow.
The workflow checklist consists of a set of tasks that you need to complete to optimize a workflow.
Clear definition, prioritization, monitoring, and KPI-based reporting are four things included in effective workflows.
Clearly defined workflows, prioritized/streamlined workflows, and regular monitoring and optimization are three basic workflow management practices.
Planning, organizing, staffing, directing, communicating, decision-making, troubleshooting, and controlling are the stages of a workflow.
Workflow strategies are the plans of action that build the steps of a workflow for its efficient execution.
Project and case are two types of workflows.
