From planning to execution: Step Two in making content marketing work for your business

Two weeks ago, we outlined Step One to get you underway in your content marketing journey in our practicable six-step content marketing process. This week, we share Step Two, which includes setting up your people, platforms and processes for success. Don’t forget that once you understand your raw materials and have a content delivery plan in place, it takes real people to deliver the process.

Step 2: Get sharp, stay sharp

Instilling an effective content marketing culture in any organisation requires a co-ordinated effort across multiple business units. It typically involves bringing together many individuals who previously acted independently, or worked together only in a loosely connected way. For the content marketing strategy to achieve targeted ‘cut through’, then the relevant business areas (PR, digital, social, legal etc.) must focus on the end game – and the skills of all the right people must be honed to achieve that goal.

As a manager tasked with making content marketing work in your organisation, you need to concentrate on three fundamental areas to ensure your people have skills sharp enough for the job:

1. Upgrade and/or outsource: Content production and management ability may be scattered across the company but bringing staff up to speed with the new strategy will usually require extra training. Alternatively, the solution could be to hire people with existing content marketing skills or outsource functions where you have identified a gap in your own organisation; often a mix of all three of these strategies will make sense.
2. Structure for accountability: Content marketing is a multidisciplinary process. Many teams and individuals will be pitching in. For that to work, one key person needs to have responsibility for the content marketing program – both at an overarching level and within each of the supporting teams.
3. Make an educated investment: To ensure your staff’s content marketing skills don’t dull over time it’s essential to invest in ongoing training and development – improving career opportunities and bringing a constant flow of new people into the process.

The first two steps in this content marketing journey could be seen as putting the technical necessities in place for further motion. Next week we’ll bring you the third step of your content marketing journey, which is all about acceleration.

Last week we took a deep dive into content marketing, with Content Marketing World Sydney giving us some key insights into content creation processes and creating engaging content. Our last blog summarises some of the takeaways we learned from some of our favourite sessions.