These days everyone is expected to work around the clock to beat the competition. Add in daily distractions, the demand to be bigger and better at all times, and the fact that we are all just human, it’s no wonder content marketing teams find themselves burnt out.
While there is always room for improvement (and we plan to show you how you can supercharge your content team’s productivity), it’s important you show your team that you care about more than just the bottom line. Because if you don’t, you’ll find that your team won’t churn out the kind of content you need to be successful.
Instead, aim to make improvements that will make your team more productive, and happier, all at the same time. Make it your goal to organize things efficiently, so your team always knows what they should be doing, and are more than happy to give you what you need to succeed.
If you’re looking for some ideas as to how to help your content team become more successful, you’re in the right place. We’ve rounded up five of the best ways to supercharge your content team’s productivity so you all can get more done in less time, without feeling like the rope is burning on both ends.
5 Ways to Supercharge Your Content Team’s Productivity
1. Learn to Delegate
This may seem obvious, especially if you’re the leader of the team, but so many leaders fail to delegate properly. This leads to people now knowing what they are responsible for and others wasting time doing things that aren’t contributing to your bottom line.
Worse yet, trying to do everything yourself can actually waste more time than if you just let your team handle the things they know they’re good at. Assign specific tasks to your content team so they can handle the content marketing and you can focus on growing your business in other ways.
Solution – use a WordPress plugin like Editorial Calendar, a premium solution like CoSchedule, or even a free project management system like Trello to organize your team’s tasks.
2. Communicate Effectively
Along with delegating your team’s tasks so everyone stays on track, it’s important you make sure everyone on your team can communicate as they need to.
As the leader, you’re the one in charge of encouraging communication amongst team members. After all, it’s likely your team members’ tasks will overlap in some way. The problem is, especially when teams work remotely, some people focus solely on their own tasks and never reach out to others.
However, communication among team members offer the following benefits:
- Improved relationships between team members, so when problems pop up, everyone is familiar with each other and can work together towards a solution
- Better collaboration, which means more gets done in less time
- Increased trust from your followers or customers, as they see your team is able to come together to create and disperse high-quality content
- Increased trust from within, which can lead better to team feedback
Solution – to help with internal team communication, consider messaging solutions like Slack or Skype.
3. Eliminate Repetitive Tasks
It’s not unusual for content marketing teams to be in charge of many things. To start, your writers are surely in charge of content brainstorming, assignment, drafting, and publishing. But there is more to content marketing than posting blog content on your website.
For instance, you need to run email marketing campaigns, advertisements, social media posts, and video content so you reach the broadest audience possible, drive traffic to your website, and boost conversions and sales.
When your team concentrates on too many small, repetitive tasks that can be automated, they cannot give enough of their focus to the tasks that will generate you the most positive results. Because of this, you run the risk of giving your content team too much to do at once, which can lead to less than stellar results.
Solution – automate email marketing using FeedOtter, social media posting, and interactions with Social Report, the way you discover how people talk about your company using Mention, and use HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator to automate content ideas for those times you get stuck trying to fill in the editorial calendar.
4. Set Realistic Goals
Your content team will never finish what you ask of them if they think the goals and deadlines you’ve set are unrealistic. If your team feels they have too much work and know they will never finish, they may not meet their full potential.
Schedule regular meetings with your entire team so people can discuss things that are going well, problems they’re having, and plans for the next week. This is a great way to hold everyone accountable, get everyone together to communicate their needs, and make sure that your business is heading in the direction you want it to.
Solution – Read up on the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), L10 Meetings, and getting your team to stay on track and stop wasting valuable time.
5. Set a Good Example
One of the best things you can do to supercharge your content team’s productivity is to set a good example and be willing to do some of the hard work too. Remember, the key is to make sure your team knows it’s not all about being the leader and generating lots of money.
People respect those that are willing to lend a helping hand and take on some of the work if need be. Your team will feel more appreciated and not so overwhelmed if you reach out every now and then and ask them if they need help. This is especially true if you have team members that are sometimes hesitant to reach out.
Solution – show your team that you work hard too, check in on them and ask them if they need clarification or help, and re-delegate tasks if needed.
Final Thoughts
In order to supercharge your content team’s productivity, you have to take an active role. That means following through from beginning to end so everyone knows what they’re responsible for, making sure there’s an open line of communication for when things go wrong, and automating tedious tasks that tend to drag team productivity down.
Only then will the things you want to be done get done on time, without overwhelming your team or wasting time. Be a good leader, encourage your team to work hard, join them in their efforts to create the best content for your business, and rest assured that success will come your way soon enough.
