Content development is an inherently slow process while a content creator like a marketer needs content delivered at lightning speeds. Social media, blogs, etc. have fascinated the conversational human nature where ideas are generated, praised or criticized, and many times also recycled fast.

Usually, all of us are happy participants in a variety of conversations on social media. This variety reflects our personal and professional preferences, likes and dislikes, political leanings, and a lot more about our personalities. The way we interact could be different, for instance, we might add to the content already present on a platform.

Or converse in a cross-user discussion with the industry or niche, or simply read the content while maintaining radio silence. All of this is dependent on our personality traits.

But the conversation is what makes social media tick and there are innovative ways to start a conversation and involve a user or a customer. Conversation starter items get the bulk of the attention as well as links and references.

Such relevant conversation starters are used by any organization to promote their product or service and help their brand to be noticed and recognized. While normal content will engage the user further.

The key to being able to post relevant content and conversation starters is to see where things are going in your subject matter.

This needs to be done strategically before others jump onto the bandwagon. Then integrate this direction with your insights and your objectivity to figure out if your direction is correct and shall help the organization.

Such content will attract attention and help achieve goals that get promoted online easily. But attractive links need not always be controversial, shallow, or rude.

They however need to be strategic content that will help start more conversations, gain more traction, and provide more links.

The following ways can help your organization to leverage views and responses and help you excel in this field.

Align content with the user stories

The story focus should be a narrow path that describes the needs and wants of one person and keeps the story clear. This narrow focus serves the purpose of reducing many meanderings in the story, mitigates excesses, and encourages simplicity that attracts and engages the customer.

One can create content quickly if the content does one thing well for one person. The audience in this case will be able to quickly find this character around which the content is designed.

Get content creators on-board early

The content creators at most organizations are not part of the strategy and planning meetings that start at the very beginning of the entire process. But they should be a part of the initial discussions. Most organizations have silos of working that slows down the content production process.

Involving them earlier will help them be attuned to the overall strategy. This will help a content creator immensely to ideate at an early stage. It will also help the process as they short-circuit some of the ideas which do not fit into the picture.

They shall be able to provide feedback from their vantage point and help foresee any potential roadblocks that others will miss. Addressing problems early is a huge win for any strategy discussion.

Create manageable tasks per story

The splitting of tasks is different for each team and organization but it is important to focus on creating tasks. This will help a team to work directly to accomplish the narrative and prevent the scope of work from expanding.

One crucial thing to remember here is to not add more tasks and hope to get more work done in the time provided.

One needs to know the team’s run rate and predict their work instead of goading them to do more. It will be prudent to deliver a completed array of work than end up with a lot of unfinished tasks.

Prioritize truly critical work

No team or individual can do everything at once. One has to make tough decisions and rank the work as per its urgency. This helps tackle the content creation process in an order of priority.

In an ideal world, team members should complete one user story before moving on to the next. This at any organization will ensure that the workflow is not affected.

Feedback

Teams inevitably fail which is human nature. Marketers also know that the focus should not be on the failure itself but its after-effects. And while feedback during as well as after the run is a challenging task, it is a method to check if you will fail early.

This can also help mitigate the disaster and provide you with options to bring back everything on track earlier. The learning here is not the failure but how quickly can the team rise and reroute the course.

Any feedback should be evaluated keeping the quality, effectiveness, and responsiveness of the content to take mitigative steps.

Embrace being cross-functional

Not everyone can create content but any organization is a gold mine of a wide variety of experiences and knowledge. One needs to jump over the fence in our brains that only a hired person to create content can contribute to the end product.

Crowdsourcing your content creation process will not only allow all departments to contribute but also provide the creatives to harness a mass base of knowledge. This shall further help them to ideate, refine, and create compelling content rapidly.

Address bottlenecks daily

A team member stuck for umpteen number of reasons can hit the process anytime. Other team members need to be aware of this in team meetings that should happen daily.

The primary purpose of such meetings needs to be to find the bottlenecks, dead ends, roadblocks, and other obstacles.

This identification will clear the way for content creation to proceed smoothly. Resolving an issue as soon as it occurs will help the work progress easily without affecting the workflow.

These meetings should also be done at the end of the content work like a postmortem of the entire project. In such meetings, teams should discuss what worked and what created a problem.

They should also focus on how to improve so that the same situation when faced has a ready solution.

Such postmortem discussions add value to the work chain but only if the discussions do not turn into a blame game. The focus of these discussions should be to derive actionable items from the project.

These discussions can then help create goals to fill up the identified gap areas. The teams can work to provide members ownership on each pitfall and build accountability to make sure the same issue does not reoccur.

Define ‘Done’

Content creators are notorious for revising the content until the end of time. Seasoned creators have a method of external feedback to help them realize that the piece is now finished. It works in the same way that software developers use quality assurance people to figure out that the functionality is complete.

This definition of ‘Done’ should be mutually agreed upon between the writer and the client who can be internal or external. It will help function as a checklist of the tasks undertaken in a timeframe to curtail any unnecessary delays or hiccups to the process.

One needs to remember that the person who iscreating content should deliver value and not perfection. The development of content thus followed through a check-off system on every item or actionable should be considered complete.

Utilizing these steps mentioned above will help an organization to be able to spruce up their content development efforts easily. These steps however will require a mindset change in the way an organization works towards its content creator to help maximize quality and output.

If any of these steps mentioned above seem difficult to manage in-house, we suggest you contact us now. Sterco Learning has been providing high-end services on the web, new media, and e-learning now for over twenty years. We can help boost your content creation processes.