Being a marketer in today’s digitally dependent world without using automation tools is just like starting a business without intending to scale it.
Statistics show that half of the companies in the marketing field alone are now using marketing automation and 58% of the B2B companies are thinking of using it in today’s digital world. According to data from Invespcro, 80% of marketing automation users have an increase in the number of leads and 91% of marketers based on another’s study have considered automation played a great role in promotion.
To put it simply, marketing automation simplifies work. And when it comes to content marketing, automating some aspects of your workflow will give you the freedom to do other important tasks.
In this article, we will discuss 10 actionable tips that will get you started in automating your content marketing workflow.
But first…
Content automation: What is it?
Content automation is using tools that automate all or some of the aspects of the content marketing workflow. It includes streamlining content creation, distribution and monitoring of performance or conversions.
Just as in market automation, content automation finds ways to convert traditional content tasks into automated processes that save your team time and money. This means saying goodbye to the manual way of doing a process. If a certain task is repetitive, it makes sense to automate it to boost overall productivity. For example, checking grammar is a manual task that takes time. But with the right tool, you can get edit an article in minutes through automatic grammar corrections and editing suggestions.
Related: How to Use CRM and Marketing Automation to Improve Your Scalability
Why your company should automate content marketing
If you are a marketer, you should love data. With data, a marketer can plan campaigns strategically. With it, you can also better understand your audience and create content that can engage them.
If your company is still having doubts about getting a content marketing automation tool, here are the statistics about content marketing and marketing automation that can help you arrive at a decision:
- A whole lot of marketers use content marketing. According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing to find customers. And 86% of these marketers consider content marketing a crucial strategy.
- It’s one of the most effective strategies to grow your business. PointVisible reveals that 60% of B2C marketers are committed to this type of strategy.
- It helps you find customers. CMI’s data shows that 72% of marketers find that content marketing boosts engagement and gets you more leads.
- People share content online. Around 57% of the content on the internet is shared on Facebook. Meanwhile, people use YouTube to look for solutions, find entertainment or learn something new.
- Interactive is effective. Around 93% of marketers think that the interactive type of content is effective. Quizzes and contests are the most popular and they are also the most engaging, according to CMI.
- At least have one! According to Instapage, 75% of marketers have at least one marketing tool that automates some aspect of their workflow.
- Get it if you want to save time. Seventy-four percent of marketers, CEOs, business owners and top-level management say that the best benefit of using marketing automation is saving time.
- It’s bound to grow. The global spending on marketing automation software is expected to expand by $25 billion by 2023. This is a predicted 14% growth rate per year.
10 tips to automate your content marketing workflow
If you are reading these statistics, you might want to automate your content marketing process this year. If you do not know how to start, here are 10 actionable steps to automate your content marketing workflow.
1. Determine what you want to automate.
Want to identify what content is being made online based on your target keywords? Try using Google Alert. When you are organizing and curating visual content like images, videos and infographics, this is an important tool to get wind of the content trend for a specific target keyword.
There are also paid tools like Buzzsumo that can do the trick and more. Buzzsumo can help you find the right topics to write about and lead you to the right influencers in your chosen industry.
2. Use content calendar tools.
Instead of manually scheduling content in your social media accounts, try getting tools that allow you to monitor and schedule content from creation to distribution. Workflow applications help you do this. Calendar tools are an example. With calendar tools, you can segregate what content needs to be written. You are also updated if some of your tasks are almost due. They also have scheduling options so you won’t forget to post in a social media channel or blog.
3. Save content ideas and share notes with a note-taking app.
Instead of using a pen and notepad to take down notes or scribble ideas, use a note-taking app to automate the process.
Take, for example, Evernote. With this tool, you can put your ideas in one place and share them with other members of your team. It’s a good tool for brainstorming topics and outlines. You can capture web images, pdfs and even web pages with Evernote so it has the potential to really become a repository of ideas for awesome content brainstorming.
4. Share content across channels with social media management platforms.
Hootsuite is good for sharing content automatically from your RSS feed website to any social media such as Facebook or Instagram. If you want alternatives, Buffer and Sprout Social are also great options you can try as social media management tools.
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5. Create visuals that go along with your content.
Nowadays, when you publish on social media or web pages, the textual content is not enough. You also need stunning visuals to grab the attention of your readers. You could use a photo editor or graphic design tools like Pixelied, Canva and Removal.AI to help you create professional-looking images even if you do not have any background in design. A photo editor is one of the most useful tools you can have to automate your content marketing process. Think of the hours you can save making images for your content with this tool. It offers thousands of premium templates that you can customize and download in no time.
6. Your email newsletter should be automated.
Mailchimp is the best at distributing newsletters. This tool lets you manage your email lists and create email drip campaigns and schedule them. You can send personalized images to find or nurture leads with this tool. For alternatives, you can also try Marketo, GetResponse and Hubspot.
7. You connect to different kinds of content marketing platforms.
So, your bottom-of-the-funnel landing page is successfully getting leads now. Can you collect the emails from those leads and put them directly into your email list? Sure!
You can do it through Zapier. Its tagline — Easy automation for busy people — speaks for itself. It integrates web applications that you use. That means, through this automation tool, you can add leads from your website straight to your email list. It can also alert you if you have mentions on social media platforms so you can quickly respond and interact. Zapier is good at monitoring your social media platforms by sending you an email notification whenever you are mentioned on social media so you can respond promptly.
Related: 5 Content Marketing Myths Limiting Your Startup’s Growth
8. See if your content marketing is working.
Take a close look at your data. Is your content marketing really working? Or do you need to change some of your tactics? If you want a great tool to measure the performance of your pages, use Google Analytics. Google Analytics emails you automatically every month to show you what content and pages are performing well when it comes to getting traffic, producing conversions and more.
9. You should consider creating funnels.
Understanding the stages of the sales funnel is important so that you can create the proper content for the users on each step of the funnel.
Whether your company looks out on your customers offline or online, creating funnels so you can attract leads is one of the most important tactics when you are doing content marketing. The good news is, if you think this is time-consuming, there is an app that can automate this process. Clickfunnels is a SaaS tool that can help you create high-converting sales funnels and webpages. It’s a drag-and-drop type of platform so it is easy to use even for beginners. Its key features include creating sales funnels, membership funnels, hangout funnels, auto-webinar funnels, A/B testing and email integrations. Guide your users through their buyer journey with this automation tool.
10. Reduce grammar errors with Grammarly.
There is nothing more off-putting to a reader than bad grammar. Instead of putting in hours to edit long-form articles yourself or having an editor go over all the drafts to make sure your content is error-free, you can now edit articles with a few clicks with Grammarly. The application can be easily integrated into your browser. Once integrated, it will offer suggestions when you input texts in your social media posts, chat boxes, Google drive files and other platforms. You don’t have to worry about misspellings, awkward sentences or poor grammar again.
Takeaway
Time is precious. In marketing, we can only do so much given our limited time. Free up your hours by automating your content marketing workflow so you can do other important tasks to scale your business. These tips and tools — from post schedulers to online graphic tools and content editing apps — can help you get started.
