How to 10x Your Content Marketing Team's Productivity

Editing
Hana Abaza
Writing & Research
Braveen Kumar
Graphic Design
Quentin Zancanaro

TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Introduction
Defining Your Processes
Time-Saving Tactics
Structuring Your Team
Tools & Templates
Conclusion
04
05
08
11
17
19
3

Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.
That’s why you have to make sure your content team doesn’t
burn itself out trying to keep up with the daily content crunch.
Unlike many elements of a business, the individuals on your
content team don’t really scale; they stretch. That’s why it’s
important to ensure you’re not spreading your team too
thin, resulting in a compromise in quality simply to keep
up with the quantity.
But take the right steps and you can increase your team’s
output without increasing the strain you put on each
member. This eBook will cover how to prepare your content
marketing team for maximum efficiency.
Let’s start with how you structure your team.
INTRODUCTION
4

Every team will have a different make-up, depending on
your business, how you define your content mix and your
overall strategy.
Luckily, content marketing attracts individuals from all walks
of life. Naturally, each member of your content team will
have something they specialize in.
But specialty doesn’t necessarily
replace versatility.
A team of T-shaped marketers
will do a better job of collaborating
as a cross-functional team with the
ability to understand one another
than a team of marketers unwill-
ing to go outside of their area of
expertise.
At the very least you should consider covering the following
skillsets across your team:
STRUCTURING
YOUR TEAM
There’s no I in “Content Team”. But there are a few T’s.
5
I
I don’t know whether every
team or every marketer
needs to strive for this
[T-Shaped] model, but I’m
certain that as I advise
other companies and as
we grow Moz, it will con-
trinue to be a trait I look
for and recommend.
—Rand Fishkin, Moz
“

The Designer
The Community Manager
The Content Creator/Writer
The Analyst
6
Original blog images, infographics,
presentations and more would not
be possible without a seasoned
designer on your team to brighten
up your content mix. Some teams
have a dedicated designer and
others opt to employ a design-sav-
vy marketer; it all depends on how
diverse your content mix is.
Your content creator will produce
the bulk of your content and, based
on their skillset and experience,
might collaborate with designers
and other team members to create
content. This individual might have
a journalism or copywriting back-
ground, but needs to know his or
her way around a sentence.
This individual will mostly focus
on distributing your content and
boosting engagement by keeping
the conversations alive around
your content (by replying to com-
ments and feeding interactions).
They will also seek out opportu-
nities on forums and other niche
communities to make your brand
part of the conversation.
The analyst lives and breathes an-
alytics and KPIs, looking for ways
to optimize your content marketing
campaigns to improve the ROI of
your team’s overall efforts. They
are largely concerned with content
and campaign performance,
looking for gaps and areas to focus
on. They might also be your go-to
SEO expert.

You don’t necessarily need one person per function if you can disperse
these duties and responsibilities adequately across your content team.
You can also outsource some of these roles if you need to.
But it’s important to understand each person’s strengths, competencies
and limitations to figure out how they can best collaborate with each other
across the processes you’ve defined.
The Demand Generator The Content Manager/Editor
7
Check out our infographic for a
look at the qualities that make
up the perfect content marketer.
Without someone to manage,
nurture, and score your leads,
your content marketing initiatives
won’t align with your Sales team’s
efforts. Your Deman Gen person
lives inside your marketing auto-
mation platform, and is tasked with
managing channels and partner-
ships to bridge the gap between
content and sales by ensuring a
steady flow of quality leads.
You need someone to manage
your content calendar, coordi-
nate with freelancers and other
contributors, and ensure your
content quality across the board.
The Content Manager spearheads
the execution of the content strat-
egy, and also acts as the editor in
many cases.

Content marketing is process-driven. It’s important to
define your processes and how each member of your team
fits in, so you can iterate efficiently every day. Given how
much pressure there can be to produce content, it’s import-
ant to not only make sure each member of your team is
playing their part but that they know where everyone fits in.
“Is today’s post ready? Who’s designing the image? I thought
you were supposed to edit?”
An editorial calendar keeps your team’s day-to-day activities
aligned and informs them of content that’s in the pipeline.
You should map out your entire publishing schedule in
advance, including details such as the topic (with a working
headline), who it’s assigned to, the content format, due date,
and any additional notes such as the target buyer persona
or specific keywords to focus on. Everyone on your team
should have access to this.
DEFINING
YOUR PROCESSES
Creating Your Lean, Mean Marketing Machine
2
8

Be wary of processes that become habitual routines.
Adopt a process-driven mindset so you’re always looking
for inefficiencies that you can eliminate.
9
Depending on the structure of your content team, you might
define your process differently. But you should know how
your team functions on a monthly and daily basis.
Content
Brainstorm
(monthly)
Formatting in
Content Hub
Schedule for
Publishing
Update
Editorial Calendar
(monthly)
Assign articles/
Deadlines
(monthly)
Content Gets
Submitted
(Ongoing)
Design
(Images etc)
Editing
Here’s how it works at Uberflip.

UBERFLIP ENABLES MARKETERS
TO GATE CONTENT
FOR LEAD GENERATION IN SECONDS
—nodevsorlandingpagesrequired.
visit uberflip.com
LEARN MORE

When it comes to populating your content calendar with
enough quality pieces to keep your audience engaged,
there are several tactics that you can implement to save
you time and effort.
Here are some not-so-fun stats to get you thinking about
just how much time is spent on content marketing:
The average blog post—from idea to publishing—takes
4-5 hours. [source]
1 in 2 marketers think they don’t have enough content
ideas to keep up. [source]
Over 35% of marketers feel they don’t do a good job of
repurposing content. [source]
It’s possible to achieve the same results—if not better—with
less effort. All the time you save will contribute to a higher
ROI from your content marketing.
TIME-SAVING TACTICS
Working smarter
3
11

Here are some tactics that can help.
Prototype your ideas early:
Ongoing feedback can help you ensure that you’re on the
right track with your ideas. When you meet with your content
team—hopefully at least once a week—touch base on what
everyone is working on so they can talk about their progress
and get early feedback on content ideas.
Curate to save time on content creation:
You don’t need to create all the content you use for marketing.
Aggregating other content, incorporating other research,
and rounding up great content in your industry, is a good
way to save time and create conversations with others in
your space to open up new opportunities.
Some ways to curate content include:
Weekly content roundups or monthly newsletters
Presenting the findings from recent studies & research
conducted in your industry
Aggregating, citing and sharing external content that
relates to your audience
Remember: Good marketers create—Great marketers curate.
12

13
Repurpose content to squeeze more out of your ideas:
Larger content assets like eBooks and webinars can easily
be turned into blog posts, tweets, presentations, infographics,
podcasts, you name it.
In fact, you should look for opportunities to break down all
your content assets and repackage them as something new.
Try to:
Use a different format (turn a blog post into a SlideShare
presentation).
Add a fresh spin to it (apply an analogy for a fun take on
a how-to post).
Focus on one specific section of the larger piece and
flesh it out in detail.
Break it down into micro-content to share on social media.

Here are some examples of how we turned larger premium
content pieces into more content.
Data-Driven
Content Marketing
[eBook]
How to Successfully
Implement Video In Your
Content Strategy
[Webinar]
How to Turn Data
Into Content Ideas
(and Avoid Content Marketing Flops)
[Blog Post]
Your Stress-Free Guide
to Getting Started With
Video Marketing
[Blog Post]
Interview with Wistia’s
Kristen Craft in Flipped
[Monthly Newsletter]
How to Get Lucky
with Content Marketing
[SlideShare]
How to Successfully
Implement Video In
Your Content Strategy
[SlideShare]
Social Media
Posts
14

Assign an Editor to ease the burden on writers:
Editors do more than proofread your content. An editor’s
real value comes when they assume the burden of ensuring
the quality and tone of what gets published.
An editor can empower anyone on your team or at your
company to contribute to your content marketing efforts.
Many will argue against letting Sales and other non-marketers
contribute to your blog, because it keeps them from closing
deals and spending their time effectively. But an editor can
polish an hour’s worth of work and make it shine.
With an editor, content creators can also spend more of their
time researching, writing, and creating when they don’t have
to worry about polishing the final product.
15

Eliminate the IT bottleneck in your processes:
One of the things that slows down marketers the most is a
reliance on developer help to get things done properly. Bring
iterative tasks like building landing pages and optimizing
lead generation back into the marketer’s hands with an
accommodating ecosystem that’s accessible to the marketer
who may not have coding know-how.
Incorporate guest contributions:
Guest contributions can knock a few days off your content
calendar, opening your content team up to creating bigger,
better pieces of content.
You can build relationships with guest contributors, especially
if your audiences overlap, that make publishing on your blog
beneficial for both of you.
Take advantage of automation:
Scheduling tasks and automating certain parts of the
process—from publishing to social media and email distri-
bution—helps your team take care of future responsibilities
in the present.
16

TOOLS & TEMPLATES
Arm your team well
4
Luckily there are tools and templates that can help us move
beyond our limitations and execute faster. Today, non-design-
ers can create their own infographics, busy marketers can
automate content distribution, and we can leverage templates
so we don’t have to do everything from scratch every time.
No design skills?
Check out Canva to create gorgeous visuals—from email
headers to social media posts.
Don’t have time to edit properly?
Install Grammarly or use Hemingway App to help you catch
errors at a glance.
17
As marketers, we’re only human.
As humans, our skillsets aren’t perfect.

Content distribution eating up your time?
Auto-schedule distribution with Buffer and queue up your
social media posts in advance.
Starving for new ideas?
Quickly research keywords for new content ideas and angles
with BuzzSumo.
Want to refer to bring images into your long-form content?
Find GIFs on Giphy, annotate your screenshots with Skitch,
and find tons of free stock photos you can use without worry
on Pixabay.
18
DOWNLOAD NOW
And to avoid having to start from scratch, we’ve
put together this collection of FREE templates and
tools that you can use, including:
An editorial calendar template
8 blog post templates
5 eBook templates
5 SlideShare templates
400+ images, icons and other visuals

CONCLUSION
Bottlenecks, undefined process and a lack of proper infra-
structure can place an unnecessary burden on your content
team and easily turn 15 minutes into 50.
The old adage “Time is money” is especially true in content
marketing where how fast your team can execute directly
influences your ROI. As new opportunities arise, in the form
of partnerships and real-time marketing, it pays to give your
team room to adapt on the fly.
In order to keep up, however, your content team must be
agile, versatile and equipped to go the extra mile without
burning out.
19
Time is money. Make more time.

tips & tricks?
WANT MORE
CONTENT MARKETING
Subscribe to our HUB
Get your own Uberflip Hub!
Start your free trial now.

How to 10x Your Content Marketing Team's Productivity

More Related Content

How to 10x Your Content Marketing Team's Productivity