Managing content for your website and social media accounts takes a lot of time and expertise. Like everything else these days, companies are looking for ways to get technology involved to help reduce time and costs when it comes to their content generation. Workflow and Content Automation (WCA) has been a rapidly growing industry for the past few years. Experts estimate that this industry will grow to be a $6B market by the year 2023. But what is it exactly and how can you utilize it?
When we say, “content automation,” we don’t necessarily mean hiring a robot or computer to write your company’s blog and social media posts. While such technology exists, what we mean is applying tools to help you create the most impactful content possible. Continue reading to find out the ways WCA can help you and how to integrate it into your daily routines.
Basics
You have a few options when it comes to automating your content marketing, which can be done at several different points in the content marketing pipeline:
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Curation
Content curation tools are not there to create content for you, but rather they rely on algorithms to mine content from across the Web, and to then recommend content that would be most relevant to your audience.
An example of an automated content curation tool is DrumUp, which makes quick work of sorting through the billions of pieces of content that are online. Other tools like Google trends are great if you have access to those accounts. Tools like these take the guesswork out of content ideation and allow creators to rely on data to make better decisions.
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Distribution
Content distribution tools help to ensure that the most relevant pieces of content appear in front of the right people. Email marketing software, which sends out messages to customers based on their past behavior or purchases, is one example of automated content distribution.
What we’re really talking about here are ads. Getting your tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram stories and more, out in front of targeted audiences is key to social media marketing. Using paid advertising tools takes advantage of these platforms’ user data, to make sure the content you’re trying to promote is ending up in front of the right people.
Best Practices
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Define your problem
The first step in implementing an automated content generation process is to think of your goals or an area of content marketing where you’re struggling. Maybe your content sinks like a stone once you publish it, or maybe you need to find ways to get it in front of the right audience. You might have an internal resource issue where you just don’t have enough people who can produce the right content. Whatever the problem is, make sure it is properly identified.
You also want to define your audience, so that you know what tools will best reach them. Email marketing might not work so well if your customers largely hang out on social media, for example. Make sure you know who you want to talk to and where they are spending their time online.
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Find a product
Once you’ve determined what your internal struggles with content are, determine the best tools available to fix those issues for you. There are plenty of options out there that specialize on the generation, scheduling, and distribution of your content. We’ve mentioned some here in this article, but make sure to do plenty of research.
Talk to the salespeople at any company you are considering. Make sure they understand your unique situation. No two organizations are the same so ensure they aren’t treating you like everyone else. Does their program offer specific solutions to the problems you’ve identified? If not, continue the search until you’ve found something that does.
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Iterate the process
Once you’ve chosen a tool or tool set to use for your content automation, the job isn’t over. It’s imperative to continue to monitor and adjust the process until you are seeing positive results.
Also, do not forget to benchmark current content performance. How much traffic do your blog posts typically receive? What is the average number of engagement events on your social platforms by channel? Without this data, it will be impossible to tell if you’re making progress.
Compare your success metrics with the automated content generation in place to your benchmark data. Continue when things are improving and adjust when metrics dip.
Workflow and Content Automation is an industry on the rise and can be a huge help for a growing organization looking to streamline their blog and social channels. Be sure to figure out where you need help and find the tools to correct course. It’s not as scary as it looks, so get out there and create!
Author Bio: Amanda Peterson is a software engineer and regular contributor at Enlightened Digital. Based in New York City, she enjoys Netflix bingeing with her Puggle, Hendrix, and shopping in record stores.
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