Many small businesses can grow larger over time, even those that are created and operated by just one solopreneur.
As your business gets more profitable, you may reach that exciting point when it's time to start scaling your business.
You may find yourself hiring contractors, expanding your selection of products, and otherwise taking your company to the next level.
This growth is going to affect your marketing strategy and tactics, too.
You don't want your content marketing plans to get left behind amidst all the change that's going on within the business.
Content marketing is something that you can scale as your business grows.
Tons of people start out writing all of the content themselves, and years later, they've fully outsourced the whole process to a dedicated team of remote workers.
When the time is right, you may consider hiring writers, video editors, and even project managers.
As you can imagine, this can all be a little overwhelming.
In a recent blog post, The Content Marketing Institute explains how to assess and streamline your content creation and publication process.
Think big about your processes
Go retro and be OK with doing manual work before rushing into buying a technology to solve your problems.
Often, I see marketers decide to implement technology to solve a problem that is actually a people or process problem, only to discover that in hindsight during the technology implementation.
By doing the work manually – and being disciplined about documenting the current process, or lack of process – you will discover holes to be fixed and improvements to be made.
All this knowledge will help you select appropriate technology and prepare for a smooth implementation.
In other words, adjust your processes first. You have to adjust your processes eventually anyway.
I simply recommend doing it as part of the technology decision process instead of part of the technology implementation process.
Addressing your issues up front helps you make a more informed technology decision and eradicates poor processes before you replicate them inside a new technology.
Integrate content efforts across the customer life cycle.
The customer’s content journey doesn’t stop when a lead is handed off.
Content is part of the ongoing experience, integral to not only conversion but also retention.
If your authors compose directly in a CMS, provide fill-in-the-blank content templates that prompt them for all the content – and metadata – they need to submit.
Where possible, prefill the metadata fields for them (for example, event hashtags).
If authors compose in Word or another application, give them template files they can fill in so that your production team has everything it needs to enter the content – and metadata – into the CMS.
Whatever kind of templates you use, include fields for social media sharing.
It’s more efficient to populate this content early in the creation process.
A lead copywriter can work with the social team to write tweets, for example, rather than someone having to come up with the tweets cold later in the process.
Templates are especially helpful for mobile submissions since typing can be tedious on the road.
Success with scalability is in the details – things like knowing the words and phrases your audiences use to describe what they care about.
Align everyone in your content ecosystem on things you do and don’t want to see in your content.
Communicate your style and tone preferences. Document your guidelines, with examples, and make your documentation.
A link to your guidelines isn’t enough.
Expecting your content creators to spend time regularly searching for guidance is unrealistic.
It won’t happen.
Instead, explore ways to deliver guidance in manageable chunks, ideally right in the authoring environment.
Taking a measured, methodical approach to content creation can go a long way toward streamlining the entire process.
You can read more about how to scale your content marketing as your business grows, in the original article from The Content Marketing Institute.
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