Content Marketing can’t possibly be a one-man ballgame. Unless of course you possess the skills and determination of Scott DeLong, whom the world has recently known as the one-man team behind Viral Nova.
Let’s just say, Scott DeLong is a special kind of alien species, and for us humans, Content Marketing is impossible without a team of people who strategize, contribute, support, and encourage one another to reach a common goal.
These past weeks we’ve seen Spiralytics’ newbie bloggers step up in the Content Creation front. The truth is, while these guys are experts in their own departments, none of them has experienced blogging before this week. But with a little push (and bribery!), everyone contributed a bit of what they know, and we’re so proud of everyone for getting on board.
That said, we learned 3 relevant lessons on team building, more specifically on involving everyone in the Content Marketing process.
Pressure is a powerful driving force
Writers sometimes don’t like pressure. I struggle with it sometimes. I like being able to write in my own pace and time, especially since inspiration doesn’t just come any given time of day. Then again, if we waited for inspiration to strike, we could be waiting for days and weeks! We can’t keep a company blog stagnant that long.
That said, it’s important that you pressure yourself, and your team, to go the extra mile. Content Marketing does not wait around for us to be ready to write. If we want to succeed in this game, we have to set deadlines and pressure ourselves to meet those deadlines by hook or by crook.
A nice friendly competition is a good motivation
While there are dangers to throwing competitive employees inside a lion’s den, a good competition ultimately motivates everyone to strive to produce the best possible output.
This week was a riot in the Spiralytics office. Everyone has given his best shot on his blogging assignment, and there’s a lot of friendly (also life-threatening, LOL) banters around here on who deserves to win the top performing article of the week. What can I say, you can only expect the best when everyone is aiming for the best.
Content creation is a team building activity
In spite of the friendly competition, Spiralytics has definitely grown as a team through this content creation process. Like I said earlier, Content Marketing is impossible without the collective effort of several key persons. For us, the usual content creation process goes like this:
- Content Strategist/Manager brainstorms with the team about blog topics, and plots the editorial calendar
- Content Writers research and develop their content
- Graphic Designer creates illustrations based on the content
- Content Editor goes through the content for quality assurance and revisions
- Content Writer or Admin publishes the final content
- Graphic Designer comes in for quality assurance, also to add styling to the content if needed
- Content Promoters/SEO Specialists (and basically everyone in the team) promote the articles on social networks and other relevant forums
Each content that we publish is the result of a tedious process where 3-5 people contribute significantly. Readers can only see one name in the byline, but some unnamed helpers are working behind the scene, making sure that each post comes out they way it should.
Planning to do Content Marketing? Make sure you have your team backing you up.
