How to Ease Your Mental Load as a Content Marketing Manager
Working as a content marketing manager requires wearing multiple hats. The content calendar constantly has to be fed new ideas, you need to edit contributing writers’ submissions, and the SEO team is calling for more long-form content.
With the amount of work that needs to be done, you might be looking for ways to work smarter, not harder. Here are some of our top strategies for easing your mental load while managing your team.
Don’t Reinvent the Content Wheel
Reusable evergreen content is a lifesaver as a content marketing manager. It can be reused, reformatted, and shared repeatedly, saving you work. Evergreen content translates into ever-green profits. Still, it can be brain-wracking to come up with timeless ideas.
When creating evergreen content, it’s essential to find topics that will draw your readers in—both today and six months from now. The first step in developing topics is understanding your audience’s pain points. What are the common obstacles your customers face? What’s the frustration in the industry?
The Content Marketing Institute gave a great example of how to create evergreen material yet tie it to current events. One popular piece of content was titled Should the News Disrupt Your Content Calendar? Here’s How To Decide. The publish date? March 17, 2020. The author didn’t need to mention the pandemic to know that the piece was timely. However, because news events can often disrupt content calendars, the piece can be used over and over again.
Brainstorming evergreen content doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel. You can also get evergreen ideas from looking at your existing content. What has performed well in the last year? Are there pieces that consistently get views long after they get published? These may inspire ideas that your customers will use repeatedly.
Measure the Effectiveness of Your Content
Measuring the effectiveness of content can save you headaches in the long run because you know what’s resonating with your audience. However, if you’re trying to measure the effectiveness of content, you’ll have to narrow down what “effective” means. Here are a few ways to make it easier to sort through the numbers.
Set a goal. “Good performance” and “high effectiveness” are relative, but with a goal, your analytics can be objective. Goals could include shares of a piece, click-throughs of links in a blog, or a longer average user time on a page. This also paves the way for progress. You can’t compare performance over quarters or years without a goal.
Set a timeframe. Set a timeframe for how long you want to measure the effectiveness of certain content. Maybe that’s a month; maybe it’s six months. Doing so will set realistic expectations and make it easier to compare pieces over similar amounts of time.
Prioritize certain metrics. Analytics can provide a huge range of information, so pick a few metrics that will best represent success for the goal of the piece. Impressions and page views are often vanity metrics. They’re good for awareness content, but metrics like behaviors are a more reliable indicator of leads. Behavior-based metrics include form fills, link clicks, and shares. If you’re working with a content marketing agency, let them know which metrics you want to prioritize so they can plan accordingly to meet your goals. By prioritizing certain metrics, you’ll know which pieces are working best for your audience.
Simplify the Content Calendar Planning Process
A strong content calendar is an antidote to stress. It helps you know what to plan on and how to prepare for the upcoming weeks. The hard part is actually keeping up with the calendar. These strategies can help you stay on top of your content calendar and simplify the planning process.
Create content “buckets.” A “bucket” is a category of content, such as industry news, employee spotlights, thought leadership content, and customer testimonials. These buckets make it easier to know what kind of content to focus on next. This strategy also keeps your content calendar fresh with a variety of formats and topics.
Mark events ahead of time. If you are aware of conferences, product launches or other events that would influence your content, mark them on your calendar so you don’t forget. You can plan content leading up to and following up on the big days.
Stay flexible. Forbes recommends not keeping your content calendar set in stone. Leave wiggle room to optimize and switch tactics to optimize your calendar.
Know where your audience is at in the buyer journey. HubSpot’s guide to content marketing in the buyer journey recommends different types of content for each stage of the buyer journey. For example, at the awareness stage, more informational content is helpful: blog posts, whitepapers, ebooks, and webinars. Knowing where your audience is can help you manage the types of content, you populate your calendar with.
Edit Collaboratively
The meat of the content is done—now it’s time to polish. Editing is much more than nit-picking commas. It’s about shaping a story, rewording sentences, and ruthlessly cutting out the fluff.
One of the hardest parts of editing is knowing a piece just doesn’t sound quite right. If you’ve been staring at a document for too long, consider collaborating with a content agency or someone else in your organization. A fresh pair of eyes can help you identify places where the voice doesn’t quite match your brand. Asking for feedback is tough, but it can open your eyes to where you may need to improve. Perhaps you need to add in some data, or you realize a section isn’t relevant to your main point.
Work With, Not Over, Your Writers
Working as a content manager is not for the faint of heart. In addition to managing your own work, you’re managing other people and their work. To fully work as a team, work with—not over—your writers.
Search Engine Journal suggests that content marketing managers can ease their load by delegating tasks to a diverse team of writers. You can assess team members’ strengths and weaknesses to more efficiently complete content writing tasks. You can use the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s guide to identify someone’s writing strengths and weaknesses. Some team members or agencies may excel at punchy content writing that sizzles on social media. Others may have a more professional voice that fits well with long-form corporate blogging.
As you diversify your team, rely on the strengths of your coworkers. Trust them to innovate. This will help them feel valued for their individual skills, and it will free you up to focus on more overarching strategic work.
Another difficult part of being a content manager is giving feedback to the writers you manage. Balance criticism of their weaknesses with praise of their strengths. Be sure to meet with each writer regularly. One way to keep yourself objective when giving feedback is to rely on metrics. Concrete metrics like deadlines, Flesch-Kincaide readability scores, and keywords are measurements that can help guide your conversations with the writers you manage.
More people means more ideas. If you’re struggling to come up with more ideas for your content calendar, Comma Copywriters has your back. Our team can brainstorm evergreen content ideas, refresh old content, and help you build thought leadership through high-value content. Schedule a free consultation today to get started.
