If your content marketing team is like mine, you have a lot of ideas. You have goals and dreams, too — but they’re not always clear or quantifiable. And that’s okay! But if we want to get anything done in this world, we need to make sure that our team is operating with some sort of goal in mind. That way, when someone asks us what we’re doing and why we do it (and someone will ask), we can make a strong case for our work as well as show how it contributes to the larger picture of our company’s success. So here are my top 10 tips for creating goals for your team:
Make sure you have a set of goals that are specific, measurable, and useful.
- Goals are important because they help you measure your progress and identify areas where you need to improve.
- To set a goal, first, decide what your content marketing team is trying to achieve (e.g., increase customer retention). Then, create a clear statement that defines what success looks like (e.g., increase customer retention by 15%).
- Finally, define the results that will indicate success or failure for each goal (e.g., if we don’t hit our target number of new customers in three months, we need to look at hiring more salespeople).
Include your entire organization in the process.
One of the biggest mistakes content marketers make is failing to get buy-in from the entire organization. Without that, you’re not going to have much success.
You can get buy-in by creating a culture of content marketing and encouraging feedback from every level within your company. That way, everyone will feel like they had a hand in crafting the final product—and that it really represents them as a whole.
Decide on roles and responsibilities.
This section will help you figure out who on your team should be in charge of what. It will also give you a sense of what tasks need to be completed, and by whom.
- What is the purpose of this section?
The purpose of this section is to help you assign roles and responsibilities for content marketing efforts. This is helpful because it allows people to get more done, and makes it easier for them to take on new projects when they come up.
- What’s the main takeaway from this section?
This section has taught you how assigning roles can help get more work done—and do so faster than if everyone worked alone. You now know that there are many different types of roles that can exist within any team (writer, editor, marketer). You’ve also learned about how those different types of employees function within an organization: marketing managers create campaigns; writers write articles; editors edit those articles before publication; marketers promote those articles through social media channels like Facebook or Twitter as well as through email newsletters sent out by companies like MailChimp or Constant Contact; designers create graphics based on these promotions so people remember seeing them no matter where they saw them last time.* How does this section help achieve business goals?
Think about what’s been successful in the past and use it to inform the future.
When you look back at the past, be sure to consider what was successful and why. This will help you understand what led to success and how you can replicate that success in the future.
However, don’t just look at what worked in the past. Look for why it worked as well as other factors that may have contributed to its success (such as timing). Remember that there are many ways of defining success—a post could have been shared hundreds of times on social media or generated thousands of clicks through links on your website. You should also ask yourself if there were any failures in these previous efforts so they can inform your plans going forward and avoid repeating them unnecessarily.
These tips will help ensure that your content marketing team is set up for future success—but remember: It’s important for everyone involved with creating content marketing to keep an open mind about trying new things and not be afraid of failure or rejection!
Create workflows that will help you get ahead of your content creation process.
A workflow is a series of steps or tasks that you need to complete in order to achieve your content marketing goals. Not all workflows are created equal, and not all workflows are right for every company. However, there are some general best practices you can follow when creating yours:
- Automation is key. The more you can automate the process of creating and publishing content marketing, the less time it will take out of your day-to-day responsibilities.
- Make sure everyone’s on board before implementing a new workflow system because it won’t work if people don’t know how it works—or worse yet, they don’t trust what’s going on behind the scenes in their name!
- Your workflow should include a checklist so everyone knows exactly what needs to be done at each stage of development so there aren’t any surprises later on down the road (and then those surprises don’t happen).
Set up systems for collecting feedback and for assessing information about your audience in real-time.
- You should set up systems for collecting feedback and for assessing information about your audience in real-time.
- Get the right tools in place so that you can collect data about the effectiveness of your content, and use it to make future decisions.
- If you did something wrong, try to find out what went wrong so that you can avoid those mistakes in the future.
Pay attention to what other small businesses are doing with their marketing.
There are many ways to learn more about the competition, but one of the easiest is to simply look at what they’re doing. This can be as simple as checking their social media profiles and website for any recent posts or content. Are they posting regularly? What kind of copy are they using? What kind of tone does it have? The answers will give you an idea of where your brand needs to be in terms of social media strategy, blogging style, and content management (if you don’t already have a team dedicated to these things).
Be sure to check out the content marketing trends that might affect your business.
As a content marketer, you should always be on the lookout for the latest trends. You don’t want to be left behind. There are plenty of things that you’ll want to watch out for when deciding which content marketing strategies to adopt, including:
- What are some of the latest trends in content marketing? In general, there is an increased emphasis on “native” advertising and sponsored posts. This means that brands will be more likely to create ads that look like editorial content rather than traditional ads that interrupt a user’s experience with unwanted pop-ups and banner ads. This can help your brand appear more trustworthy and less intrusive than other types of advertising—and increase its chances of being clicked on or shared with friends via social media channels like Facebook or Twitter.
- What are some ways small businesses can use this technology effectively? Small business owners should take advantage of these new technologies by creating engaging blog posts or videos and posting them directly onto their website so they’re easier for visitors who may not follow them closely through social media channels like Twitter or Facebook (which tend not to show up in search engine results unless someone clicks on them directly).
Don’t let yourself be ruled by fear.
Fear can be a good thing when it helps you to succeed and get things done. When you know that your success depends on something, the fear of failure can motivate you to do whatever it takes to achieve your goal. For example, if your content marketing team has budgeted for a campaign that will help increase leads and sales within the next year, then the fear of failing will keep them motivated throughout their workday as they try not just to meet their goals but exceed them.
But don’t let this type of fear control everything you do or stop you from doing what needs doing because sometimes there are risks involved with taking action—and sometimes those risks pay off! While there is no guarantee that any sort of action will have positive results if something doesn’t work out exactly how we expect (or at all), we should still always look forward rather than back; never give up on our goals!
Remember that content marketing is one part of a healthy business strategy — not everything you do! — so don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
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Setting goals will help you make progress with your marketing initiatives and create greater efficiency within your team as well as across your whole company
- Setting goals will help you make progress with your marketing initiatives.
- Setting goals will create greater efficiency within your team.
- Setting goals will create greater efficiency across your whole company.
Conclusion
Now that you have a handle on the basics, it’s time for you to get started with your own content marketing plan! If you need some inspiration or just want some ideas for how to implement these tips in your organization, we’ve got plenty of resources here at HubSpot. Head over to our Learning Center and check out our blog posts about content marketing best practices or take the free “Content Marketing 101: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners” course today!
