Content Creation Process
By Ian Richardson, Managing Partner, Richardson & Richardson Consulting LLC
Inspired by Thursday Process with guest Jennifer Bleam, MSP Sales Revolution
Content Creation Process
Process lets anyone do any job, and marketing content creation is no different. Through effective process documentation and adherence, your organization can properly plan what resources will need to be allocated to an effort, what outcomes to expect from said effort, and how those outcomes will impact your customers, your team, and your organization’s goals and strategy.
When process is absent, confusion and annoyance can bubble up as teams make avoidable mistakes, customers express frustration or migrate away from an organization, and fear and insecurity can manifest in entrepreneurs and their leaders, leading to second-guessing and avoidable mistakes.
Having a marketing content creation process can help you avoid these pitfalls and instead capture the rocket fuel that effective marketing can deliver to your organization. Read on to learn more.
A Content Creation Process gives predictable outcomes
One of the biggest benefits of a content creation process is that it can give the sales or marketing leader for the organization to be able to use a “rubber stamp” of approval for content to “go live” in the various mediums and market channels your strategy dictates. Instead of relying on the entrepreneurial brainpower to develop content that is “valuable”, your process can dictate guidelines, structure, and “gold-standard” examples that your team can follow to create content that does not need more than a cursory glance and “stamp” of approval from your desk. The outcomes of your process are predictable.
My friend and colleague Jennifer Bleam, CEO of MSP Sales Revolution, shared this concept on the Richardson & Richardson webinar series The Thursday Process. I have Jennifer sharing more about this topic below.
That predictability is not only good for you, the entrepreneur, but for the consumers of your content as well. If your network of prospects, clients, and colleagues “know” that your content follows a certain structure and delivers a certain level of value, they can come to expect and rely on your content creation process to give them resources and knowledge that they can then utilize for their business. You’ve created the successful loop through your process where a routine audience will wait to consume your next creation.
Manage exceptions to your content creation process
Jennifer went on to share that as you find errors, missteps, and other bottlenecks in your process, edit and modify the process to accommodate them. This is a “manage to the exception” rule for process improvement. Find the areas where the process fell down and ask yourself “Why did this fail here?”
Once you have the failure identified, figure out if you can create simple, easy to follow guidance on how to avoid the pitfall in the future. Take that guidance and iterate your process over time, creating new versions that capture future learnings as you move forward with creating content. You’ll find that slowly but surely, the process starts saving more and more of your time while simultaneously improving the quality of the content you create.
Final Thoughts on content creation process
Content creation process is just like any other key business process – it requires an entrepreneurial focus to capture expectations, outcomes, inputs, and key procedures to set up a team member for success on how to deliver what is needed by the organization. Over time, your process can improve both the content your organization creates, as well as the amount of time it frees up for the entrepreneur.
If you’re struggling with creating thought leadership content, figuring out how to effectively present it, or getting alignment with your team on the need to invest in the effort, Richardson & Richardson can help. Check out our case studies for stories of organizations that we’ve assisted with similar issues and download our white papers for deep dives on tools you can use in your organization. If you’re wondering where to start, book a complimentary session with one of the Richardsons today to come up with a plan on how to move forward.
Share this Post
