As a small business owner, you understand the pivotal role content plays in your overall marketing strategy. (And if you don’t, that’s okay! Our team would be happy to chat with you to help!) Still, it’s not always easy to manage all your content, especially if you wear multiple hats in your organization. Learn how to navigate the process of first capturing and then sending content to your marketing team (whether they’re in-house or an agency) efficiently and effectively so you can focus on what you do best: running your business.
How to Capture Content
What does it mean to capture your content? No, this has nothing to do with holding your content against its will. What we mean by ‘capturing’ is simply putting your ideas for content in one place.
If you’re the type of person who has a ton of smartphone notes or even post-it notes haphazardly strewn about, you need to try to get all your ideas in one place.
The first step is capturing your content in choosing a central location for it to live. You can opt for a cloud-based storage system, a content management system (CMS), or a shared folder.
4 Tips to Organize Ideas Before Sending Content to Your Marketing Team
With these handy tips, you can build up your library of content.
1. Write Down Your Ideas
Start by capturing your ideas as they come to you. Whether it’s a brilliant concept for an entire campaign, an idea for a blog post, or just a snippet of an idea you need help with, write those ideas down somewhere.
2. Keep Them Organized
You’ve established a pool of content ideas; now it’s time to organize them effectively. The process will help you prioritize and also ensure you’re covering essential topics.
Categorize your ideas by topic, channel, and publication date, or use tags and labels to facilitate tracking. If you’re using content capture tools, most will offer built-in organizational features.
3. Create a Content Calendar
The last thing you want to do is miss important deadlines, and a content calendar helps you plan and schedule content accordingly. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy; just using a spreadsheet can help organize what you want to post and when.
4. Repurpose Old Content
Creating content from scratch over and over again requires an enormous time and labor investment. Instead, look for ways you can repurpose existing content by adding up-to-date information, new information, or even just changing the format.
Best Practices for Sending Content to Your Marketing Team
With all your content captured, organized, and ready for the next phase, you can now start sending content to your marketing team.
This step is all about efficient distribution of content, so here are some things you should consider.
Use Tools for Seamless Content Distribution vs. Manual Distribution
Content distribution tools can help you send your content to multiple platforms quickly and efficiently. They can also help you schedule your content in advance, saving you time and effort.
You can also post your content manually, but keep in mind that this is more time-consuming.
How to Ace Capturing and Sending Content to Your Marketing Team
Want to send your marketing team content that’s usable, effective, and on-brand? Here are a few best practices to follow…
1. Communicate Clearly
When you’re sharing your ideas, don’t beat around the bush. Get to the point quickly and say what you mean. This will help your marketing team understand your vision and create content that’s aligned with your goals.
Keep your marketing team in the loop about your content strategy and audience needs, too. This will help them create content that’s relevant and engaging for your target audience.
2. Get Organized
Develop a content organization system that works for you and your marketing team. This could be anything from that simple spreadsheet we mentioned earlier to a more robust content management system (CMS). The important thing is to have a system in place so that you can track your content and make sure nothing slips through the cracks.
When your marketing team has access to all your content, they can maintain consistent and effective messaging across all channels. Plus, seeing your ideas all in one place might also help generate other ideas for even more content.
3. Have Fun!
Creating and distributing content should be enjoyable, so don’t be afraid to let your personality shine through in your work. If this sounds daunting, that’s where our team comes in…We’re pros in helping craft content that will appeal to your audience and fit with your company’s branding.
Learn more: Finding the Balance with Social Content — Entertaining vs Professional
Take Your Content Practices to the Next Level
By following best practices and maintaining an organized collection, you can streamline sending content to your marketing team while also ensuring your audience consistently sees top-notch content.
But why stop there? Partnering with Eviva Media to optimize your content strategy can take your marketing efforts to the next level. With expert assistance in the creation and distribution of content that resonates with your target audience, you can drive better results and see better returns on your marketing dollars.
