Building a Better Content Operation [Infographic]

3 minute read

Upland Admin

The stats are in: content marketing continues to prove its worth, with 63% of marketers ranking it in their top three most effective marketing strategies.

Wondering what other strategies perform well? Download the full report here.

Unless you’re behind on your marketing news, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Content marketing gives B2B organizations the opportunity to provide value while moving customers down the funnel. But while the value of content isn’t a new finding, we did notice some pretty shocking results from our report.

Namely, that 43% of marketing organizations don’t have a system in place to account for marketing’s contribution to revenue. Not to mention, the majority of marketers rank proving ROI of marketing content as one of their greatest barriers to success.

Real talk: if you can’t prove ROI with your content, how do you actually know it’s effective? You don’t.

Content Marketing Doesn’t Deserve a Half-Hearted Relationship

The fact that so many marketers aren’t fully implementing advanced content marketing—and yet are still seeing its effectiveness—suggests there’s a whole world of untapped content potential. Contential, shall we say?

Sorry, that was bad. Just like the temptation to half-heartedly commit to content marketing! A lukewarm relationship with content will only result in misaligned content that can’t be tied to revenue. Ad-hoc content rules your editorial calendar, a spreadsheet with 17 different tabs governs your life, and you have to constantly search through your content inventory for sales to get that one thing you know you saw a while ago, but don’t remember the exact title.

How a Mature Content Operation Should Function

Enough with the negativity. Let’s talk about a fully operational, robust content operation. Maybe you’ve heard of one. Maybe you’ve successfully been running one for years. Here’s what it looks like:

  • Alignment: Content is aligned to the greater priorities of your organization. Your team is aligned regarding what those priorities are. Each piece of content has a specified role in accomplishing your business objectives, just like each team member.
  • Collaboration: Your entire organization has visibility into your content and access to the technology that allows for effective communication.
  • Accessibility: You not only organize your content on external channels for a great customer experience but also tag each piece of content internally so anyone in your organization can find and use it.
  • Insight: Your marketing efforts are tracked. Time of page isn’t your primary metric to determine success because vanity metrics are for immature content operations.

An advanced content operation is a beautiful thing, isn’t it? So how do you go about tapping into its very real potential? Let’s break it down into seven steps:

 

Infographic: 7 steps to building a better, more mature content operation

There you have it: seven steps to advancing your content operation. Fortunately, you don’t have to stop here.

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