As native content continues to stir, many marketing organizations are establishing internal content publishing teams. But like the growing pains for establishing a neighborhood coffee house, creating original content may not be native to the business. The way to overcome spills is through collaboration and working together.
Similar to combining Italian espresso with a scoop of gelato for a tasty affogato, it takes a certain kind of marketer to have the vision of creating a branded content campaign. It takes creativity, storytelling, technical savvy and willingness to take a risk. Most importantly, it takes the ability to pull in other teams who can add value to the process.
“For many companies, the content creation process is complex, with many projects that need to be fully monitored across a range of departments, offices and partners,” according to CMSWiRE. Therefore, it makes good business sense for a greater effort of collaboration to ensure success.
Naturally tension often occurs between areas like Sales, Marketing and Communications. But it takes all of these teams working together to be successful at developing and executing creative content.
This story takes a deeper dive into the process of integrating your content messages. So here are five tips for creating a crack content team within your organization.
1. Be Nimble, Be Quick
Often, content teams are set up more like newsrooms than ad agencies. To succeed in todays fast pace content culture, the team must be nimble and scrappy, able to stretch budgets and deliver strategic content, while staying on top of emerging platforms and the latest trends. It is important to set this foundation for an independent and efficient content team in order to meet the demands of a dynamic, multi-platform campaign.
2. Create a Knowledge Hub
A successful content campaign begins by creating a hub where the Marketing, PR and Sales teams can collaborate. Consequently, they must break out of their historically compartmentalized approaches. This hub functions as the central percolator where the various teams can brew up best practices from across a variety of disciplines.
3. Cross the Channel Divide
Whether it’s paid, earned or owned, all of your organization’s channels deserve consistent, quality content. Keeping in mind the likelihood that your audience may come across one or more of your channels along their customer journey, it only makes good branding sense to have a consistent voice across all of your channels and platforms.
4. Break Down Silos
Working together as a team can improve productivity and cut costs across the organization. Having a collaborative effort allows for greater agility and quicker approvals, and eliminates the duplication of content. It also allows overall process establishment for future campaigns and future team members, which will save your business time and money.
5. Align Goals and Messages
The process of creating and sharing content becomes much more efficient when goals are aligned across disciplines. Technology and automation can also help to streamline coordination and reduce the potential for off-strategy messages. From an email lead to a news media story, cross-promoting the same content message reinforces the desired results — and that will make both your boss and your customers happy.
Creative Cafe is your hangout for discovering content that connects. Sip on tips that break down the process to serve up the perfect blend of marketing content for your business. Join our discussion group on Facebook.
