When you think of automation, what’s your first thought? Maybe you think of machine-like precision, efficiency, or large-scale operations. Creativity probably isn’t your go-to, yet marketing automation plays a major role in making the most of your creative. Automation lets your creative team focus on what they do best, allowing them to come up with more and better content that doesn’t feel canned.
Here’s how marketing automation can transform your content strategy.
Create Work Templates
Having a format doesn’t eliminate creativity; it gives it a framework on which to grow. When you create work templates in your marketing automation system, you cut down on the efforts your team makes to reinvent content each week. Templates also appeal to your audience, many of whom look forward to familiar features. Think about how popular David Letterman’s Top 10 lists or Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update segments are, and you understand the lasting appeal of a familiar template with new content.
Make Editing Transparent
Marketing automation technology is centralized, giving everyone who has input on content a clear view of it. Your content team can pass articles seamlessly from creators to editors to final approval to publication without the need to backtrack or wonder who’s seen the latest changes. Ease of editing dramatically reduces time spent covering familiar ground, leaving more room for new projects.
Communicate Effectively
As you produce more content and branch into other channels, you need a way to coordinate your content marketing efforts across a larger number of people. Easy communication between teams and departments allows content managers to balance editorial workloads, allocate more resources to larger campaigns, and cut back on distractions that interrupt creative flow. The more smoothly ideas move from content creators to your blog or white paper database, the larger your repository of knowledge grows and the more your leads will look to you as an authoritative resource.
Make More from Less
Let’s face it: Even the most enthusiastic content creators sometimes get a little stuck. If the pressure is on to post five days a week to the company blog, write white papers, and contribute in-depth articles to industry journals, the creative well can run dry. Automation is an asset here because it allows you to repurpose existing content, atomizing it and extending its shelf life for a wider audience.
Atomization refers to dismantling content into its constituent parts and then combining them in new ways. For instance, you want to share an interview with an industry leader or some exciting new data you’ve discovered; with atomization, you take that knowledge and break it out into multiple infographics, blog posts, a webinar, a few white papers, and part of your next e-book. Content that works for you on one channel becomes a valuable resource on others, forming a network of knowledge that leads prospects into your sales funnel. Meanwhile, your content team is free to focus on the next project.
Automation isn’t the opposite of creativity; it’s another tool that enhances it. Set your content creation process free by automating routine aspects of it, sending content to new channels, and making content more relevant to your leads.
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