You come into the office, check a few emails, and then your head is down, creating content for the next 7 hours, free of all distractions. It doesn’t sound like a typical day, does it? It probably doesn’t sound like a particularly fun day, either. What does this have to do with learning how to save time on marketing? Marketers have to think about more than content creation.
That’s because marketers have more on their plate – much more. There’s strategy, social, SEO, and analytics…the list is almost endless. This is why time management is so critical for marketers. In order to move the needle, you need to focus on all facets of marketing and avoid the time sucks where possible. Number one on the list: the time you spend ideating, creating, and editing content.
Lucky for you, all we’ve done for the past few years is help marketers save time with content creation. Here are a few lessons we’ve learned from our experience:
Rely on Multiple People to Contribute Unique Content Ideas.
Always having to be creative can be draining, not to mention that your ideas will (potentially) become progressively worse and worse as your “creative juices” run low – at least, it does for me. A way to avoid this? Asking others for their ideas – whether it be from others in-house or from a freelance writing community. Getting more people involved in your content ideation will not only relieve some of the creative stress from your job but also provide your content with a fresh and unique perspective.
Delegate More.
You’re reading that sub-heading and probably thinking one of two things:
- “Oh yeah, I guess I could ask my team for some help.”
- “This is a joke, right? I’m the only marketer in this company.”
Even if you are a one-stop marketing shop, you can still involve other people in the content creation process. How?
- You could involve an expert from your company by picking their brain about a topic in the industry your audience is interested in.
- Ask co-workers to provide a blog post (or content idea, see the point above) once every other month or so.
- Employ a freelance writer now and then to take a crack at writing your brand’s content.
Save Time on Marketing by Planning Ahead.
Don’t wait until the day-of publishing to write the blog post to go live. There are two reasons for this:
- This typically leads to writing content for the sake of writing content – it offers little to no value for your audience.
- It’s great to write something, marinate on it, and then go back and edit that blog post afterward. Something that you wrote that day may not sound so great about three days later.
In order to truly plan your content marketing strategy ahead of time, it’s important that everyone is in the loop. So be sure to reach out to people ahead of time (regardless of whether it’s to your internal or freelance writing team) and let them know what topics you’ll be covering so that they have enough bandwidth to not only write the initial draft but to implement edits for you if necessary.
Maximize the Amount of Content from One Idea.
And by this, I don’t mean creating a dozen of new content ideas from that one blog (even though that’s a fantastic idea, of course). I mean that you should take that one piece of content and promote it in dozens of places – forever (or at least until the value has worn off/it’s time to move on to bigger and better things).
Put all Content Creation (or Management) on One Platform.
This way, everything is in one place – saving you the trouble of having to keep track of dozens of emails. Of course, we strongly suggest the nDash platform for managing your freelance writing needs. But platforms such as Hubspot, Trello, and Basecamp can work just as well for your internal needs.
So, let’s hear your thoughts. What strategies do you use to save time on marketing? Contact us today and let us know!