Habit 1: They Build Out Templates of Routine Tasks

Do you find yourself doing something over and over again? This could be writing a certain type of copy, working with the same design elements, and repeating emails, among many other tasks. You need to begin thinking about your time as a valuable asset and spend it only wherever it is best invested. When you do, you will feel the urge to come up with templates to facilitate creating items like these:

• Email copy

• Project tasks

• Design layouts

• Article copy

Habit 2: They Ask, “Is This Scalable?” and Act Accordingly

Efficient content managers wonder if what they are currently doing, in the way that they are currently doing it, could take place many more times without them. Could we continue doing this if we grew…a lot? Is this task something we could continue to support for many more content pieces? That is when the automation solutions we will analyze next become crucial.

For now, begin asking yourself “is this scalable?” more frequently and unveil parts of your process for which you might be missing out on automation or outsourcing opportunities.

Habit 3: They Are Clear-Cut on Feedback

Feedback can be assertive and proactive, but to be both of those things, it must be clear. Try to put yourself in your creator’s shoes: would I know what to do if I read/heard this? Will this piece of feedback be useful? When in doubt, begin by stating what is clearly working in your opinion. Then, proceed to express specific questions or issues regarding what you are seeing. If you have the time, let him know a possible way to fix these issues. Sometimes providing examples of possible solutions is a faster route to comprehension.

Habit 4: They Use Tools and Systems Effectively

Successful content managers are also professional tool hunters. Every time we find something that can save a little time or effort, that is making our content machines spin a bit faster. And, if there is one thing that Japanese production success has shown us, it’s that small, incremental improvements matter. They matter so much that sometimes they are the entire reason that we are able to maintain our success in the long run.

Given that tools can have such a great impact in those small, significant savings, we will demonstrate how to build your content marketing technology stack in the next section.

Habit 5: They Split Processes Effectively

Content managers who outsource successfully understand that every process can be split into smaller, more manageable chunks. After tasks have been broken down, the content manager can delegate them to specialized individuals (or companies) who are more experienced in specific areas.

Take video production as an example. An efficient content manager might compartmentalize the entire process into the following stages:

• Ideation

• Storyboarding

• Shooting

• Editing

• Distribution

Upon doing this, you can easily assign each stage to someone who is ideally equipped to deliver. Whereas someone inside your team can handle ideation, for example, perhaps you can outsource the shooting and editing phases. Understanding that content production is fundamentally divisible and being smart about who tackles what are the keys to becoming a more efficient manager.

Habit 6: They Document Everything

If you suddenly became sick or had to leave someone else in charge for whatever other reason, would that person know where to find information? Is your team unnecessarily dependent on your memory and personal files for crucial tasks? Creating a clear, consistent documentation strategy prepares you for content scalability.

You should assemble content-related processes in written guidelines that others who work with you can easily follow. Some of the key documents you will want to arm your team with are:

• Visual guidelines for how your graphics are built

• Visual guidelines for how your written content should look

• An overview of the content proofreading and editing stages

• Checklists for quality assurance (see Chapter 11)

• Instructions on how to submit payments to content creators

• Hiring considerations, if any have been standardized

• Creator-facing files like your blog’s style guide (see Chapter 11)

• Any templates used for standard requests like copy and design

• Instructions on how to use your Content Management System (CMS)

• Instructions on how to use various tools in your stack (as discussed later in this chapter)

Along those same lines, any external creators who you hire to support your content efforts will need documents to guide their work. Consider handing them the following information:

• Your content style guide. As Chapter 11 discusses, this comprehensive document includes notes on voice and tone, your tagging/categorization structure, SEO rules, length expectations, styling considerations, and more.

• Any technical notes on using your CMS or uploading directly to any given platform.

• Instructions on how to invoice you.

• If they are creating visuals, descriptions of what works best for your personas. Ask them to provide these descriptions as moodboards.

Habit 7: They Establish Clear Terms and Conditions

Your internal and external staff should have no doubts regarding hours, expectations, and content ownership. Do they know where they can log their progress? Are they clear on intellectual property, and have they signed off to certain provisions? Do they understand the level of quality you expect? Are due dates properly articulated and enforced?

Smart Automation

No, robots won’t take over and destroy our jobs. What they will do, if we are lucky enough, is take on all the repetitive, noncreative tasks that we are currently wasting time on to set us free to pursue truly innovative activities. This is what smart content automation is all about: freeing your time and that of your team to go after bigger fish.

Even at its most basic level, automation can greatly speed up your content machine. Chapter 11 emphasizes the importance of coming up with systems and routines to execute your editorial calendar. Think about these routines as you decide which tasks you can automate. To give you an idea, here are some of the content-related tasks you can now partially automate:

• Production

  • Generating headlines

  • Generating content ideas based on keywords

  • Curating content for social sharing; recommended posts

  • Automatically creating content production tasks in certain project management platforms

  • Automatically resizing supporting social graphics for each platform’s ideal size

  • Automatically repurposing content from one format to another; for example, presentations that can be exported as videos, or images that are automatically stitched together as GIFs

• Distribution

  • Prefilled or programmatically filled emails for outreach

  • Automatic sharing to multiple social networks

  • Automatic social sharing upon publishing in certain CMSes

  • Semi-automated content translations

The key here is the word partially. There is no replacement for a human being’s sense of empathy and judgment, but certain automation solutions can support those competencies considerably.

As Artificial Intelligence evolves, so do the kinds of tools available for traditionally human-only tasks. That includes certain content production, edition, and distribution activities. We are beginning to hear about automation services that can do the following:

• Discover exactly which topics will drive engagement for your brand based on a combination of factors

• Analyze your audiences’ behavioral data to predict which related content it will like best

• “Read” your content to find and suggest areas for improvement

• “Write” human-sounding stories from a dataset

Intellectual Property and Licensing

Along the same lines, you need to ensure that any third-party assets included in your content pieces are not just suitable for reproduction, but modification as well. This type of license will give you ultimate freedom to adapt the asset (video, image, photo, graphic) to your specific needs. If that isn’t possible, secure a license that allows for the types of reproductions you can foresee in the short and midterm. Some of the resources you will use for content creation are installable, like fonts and certain plug-ins. Ensure that you read their licenses carefully because the number of final products in which they can be used may vary.

About Creative Commons

Because properly licensed assets are such vital elements of our content strategy, you will quickly become familiar with Creative Commons licenses along this journey. In 2001, Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred launched the Creative Commons organization to provide free, easy-to-use copyright licenses to give the public permission to share and use creative work in a way that protects the original creators’ desires. You will find incredible photos, illustrations, audio, and media files all protected by Creative Commons licenses—and that is why it is so important to understand how they work.

There are several types of Creative Commons licenses, each allowing you to do something different with the assets you find. Some of them allow you to use items without attribution and others will explicitly ask for it. The ability to modify the original file will also be specified in the type of license the creator selects for his assets. This provision can come in handy, for example, if you are trying to remix a photo with brand-specific graphics like your logo.

Finding memorable multimedia assets that support brand storytelling will become part of your daily routine. Use search.creativecommons.org to discover thousands of resources that you can use in your brand’s social media profiles or content hubs with due attribution. But be sure to read each file’s license carefully.

How to Get Buy-In for Your Content Initiatives with Data

I have always believed that thorough research is the key to persuasion, in business and in life. Find data points that make your case for a given content initiative impossible to turn down. Here are some examples of what that might look like:

• You need the SEO expert in your company to help you to optimize content pages. Find data on the positive consequences brought about by an increased focus on SEO from a similar brand in your space. Show her the potential behind the task you would like her to undertake.

• You need a designer on your team to create a series of downloadable cheatsheets to launch a gated content campaign. You want users to sign up in exchange for these cheatsheets. Assign economic value to each new signup and draft a rough calculation of how valuable this gated content initiative could be for the company’s goals.

• You need an engineer in your team to develop a feature for the company’s blog. Create a list of benefits brought about by the new feature, which could include time/cost savings and user experience improvements. Articulate the feature’s impact and enlist this expert’s help by making him feel as if he is a vital part of making it happen—because he is.

The worst mistake we can make in our continuous search for internal alignment is to stay inside our own head and forget the importance of clear communication. You know why a certain project is vital, but others can’t read your mind. Your train of thought and arguments need to come across transparently.

Making Sure Your Meetings Stay Productive

Have you ever been on a call that seems to go on forever, reaching no real action points? Ever wondered “why am I here?” far too many times during a meeting? There is a chance you did not belong in that meeting, or even worse, nobody else really did. Instead, you should have all dealt with the issue at hand via some other channel like email or corporate instant messaging.

Now, to be certain, some meetings are necessary. I would just like to invite you to frame them as what they are: costly allocations of time and resources to add value to your company. If something does not require a meeting, do not call for it. If it does, make sure everyone’s time is being invested strategically.

As a content production manager, you should devote your meetings to connecting content pieces to business opportunities that can add value, instead of everyday reporting that would be best conveyed via email or an internal writeup. If you do end up sharing routine information, be sure to dedicate time to more analytical, innovative thinking at some point. If you are organizing the meeting, making it a productive space for everyone is in your hands. To avoid waste, verify that you have the following covered:

Before the meeting

Prepare and share an agenda for the meeting. Why are we here? If this is a periodic meeting (happens every month or week) your agenda could live in a single, evolving document. Ensure everyone knows what communication channel will be used if the meeting includes remote attendees.

During the meeting

Make sure someone is taking notes. If what we are saying isn’t somehow recorded, we are not really saying anything. For every item in the agenda, assign someone to be responsible for solving it as discussed during the meeting. If there are any visuals to go along with what is being discussed, distribute them so that everyone (remote or not) can see them.

After the meeting

Turn action points into tasks using whichever project management tool works best for you. Asana and Trello are widely used within content and marketing teams. Assign each task to whoever is responsible for completing it. If there is a follow-up meeting to check on the status of these pending tasks, schedule it. Although this might not be possible every time, try to send out meeting notes to those who participated as well as those who could not make it.