Content creation workflows that scale high-quality content across regions

When you’re trying to win a Grand Prix, the skill of the individual in the driving seat is only going to get you so far. The best teams optimize everything and everyone behind their driver: their car’s aerodynamics, their pit crew, track strategy, and so on.

And while the driver is going to be the one splashing champagne around on the finish line, that moment is just a representation of how well the team brought all those smaller, critical processes together. 

There probably won’t be as much champagne involved (more’s the pity), but marketing departments face a similar challenge managing all the individual processes that get their brand’s digital content over the finish line — in other words, their content creation workflow.  

From brainstorming ideas and applying the right project management tools, to making sure content production keeps pace with growth and resonates with target audiences in the relevant regions, an effective workflow should help brands get the most out of their digital content — boosting engagement, conversions, and, ultimately, bottom lines. 

But optimizing content workflows is easier said than done, and that challenge grows for brands that are trying to meet growth demands, or scaling content workflows to capture customers in multiple regions. With that in mind, in this post, we’re going to discuss the content creation workflow, how to deal with its challenges, and how content management tools, like Contentful, can help you get your workflow right.

What is a content creation workflow?

The content creation workflow is the process of taking a piece of digital content from ideation through to publication. It’s an umbrella term that covers all the people, parameters, technologies, rules, and systems comprising that journey.  

In this context, digital content refers to any digital asset within a brand’s content management tech stack (text, audio files, video files, logos, etc.) that could be used in web pages, blogs, campaigns, emails, social media posts, and any other touchpoint with customers. 

For example, a content marketing team for an outdoor clothing brand might decide that, in alignment with their content strategy, they need a blog post about their “winter coats” range to accompany a product launch. The blog would not only support the launch, but would strengthen regional engagement by specifically appealing to a target audience looking to purchase a coat for winter.  

Their workflow would begin with a discussion of ideas (current fashion trends, the economy, global weather patterns), before the team settled on a topic — something like: “What kind of winter coat do you need?” — with the goal of promoting the product launch in the blog copy. After that, they’d move through keyword research, writing, review, editing, design, and, finally, publication. 

Each part of that process would necessarily include contributions from members of the content and marketing teams, integrate personalization, factor in timelines and deadlines, and leverage specific tools — in particular, the brand's content management system (CMS). 

Why are content creation workflows important?

An efficient, well-designed workflow takes the friction out of all the different components of content creation. Let’s get into the practical benefits. 

Content velocity

The impact of digital content is often predicated on deadlines — and a publication cadence timed to keep audiences interested and engaged. A well-defined workflow can help brands move content pieces through the various stages of creation efficiently, shipping new content to touchpoints, and launching new campaigns, on time. 

Efficient collaboration

The content creation process rarely involves one person working in isolation; instead, it takes in writers, editors, search engine optimization (SEO) experts, reviewers, translators, and so on. By defining your workflow, including who is responsible for doing what and when they’re supposed to do it, you’ll boost collaboration and keep everyone aligned. 

Quality control

Workflows represent the guardrails that keep content of a consistent quality, aligned with a brand’s editorial standards and tone of voice. Those guardrails help content teams avoid mistakes and duplication, and ensure that editors and marketers are able to review and adjust content efficiently when it’s necessary to do so. 

Scaling

Quality control is especially important for brands that need to start scaling content to meet growth goals — whether that’s serving more customers or expanding to new regions. The greater the volume of content you create, the more likely it is you could lose control of your brand voice. For example, if you’re integrating an AI tool to help boost content volume, you may need to develop an associated workflow that ensures proper review and approval of the relevant AI content.

Personalization and localization

Your content workflow is a foundation for tailoring content to the preferences of specific audiences or audience segments. For example, during editing, personalization and localization software can help you adjust content to the preferences of specific audiences, translating text, updating references, swapping out images, or adjusting tone or terminology. 

The content creation workflow step by step

It goes without saying that every brand's content workflow template is going to be different, but the creation process typically converges around the following steps. 

Ideation

Using their content marketing strategy as a foundation, brands must first develop ideas for content that will drive engagement and conversions with their target audiences. That means thinking about high-level content goals, and how content proposals will perform against specific engagement metrics, such as conversion rate, time on page, bounce rate, and so on. SEO is typically a priority at the ideation stage, and so marketers should factor keywords and SEO research into their process. 

With content ideas and performance goals established, the marketing team can build out briefs to send to content creators. 

Production

The border between content ideation and creation is often blurry because ideas for content may need to be adjusted after a creator has begun work. 

Nonetheless, the content creation phase is the point at which writers, designers, and videographers produce and deliver the assets that you have scheduled for publication. That necessarily means you’ll need to engage those creators prior to the production, and ensure they have access to the relevant tools and resources to deliver on the requirements of their briefs. 

Editing and review

Subject matter expert (SME) reviews serve to ensure that content is accurate. You’ll need to factor SME’s availability into the workflow, and communicate your SMEs’ responsibilities clearly during the content production process. The editorial process should also be a priority, not only for quality control, but to ensure that content is consistent with your brand’s voice. 

Testing and experimentation

Different versions of content may perform better with your target audiences. That’s why it’s worth integrating a testing phase into your workflow, in which you compare different versions of content against each other. 

You can leverage testing technology to set up content experiments and to create different content variants that might appeal more to different audiences. Contentful, for example, supports advanced analytics that enable brands to make stronger, data-driven decisions about their content in real time — and implement those variables on their live sites seamlessly.

Publication 

You’ll need to consider how you’ll publish your finished content as part of your workflow. Your CMS is central to this step: it should make the publishing process as efficient and accessible as possible for nontechnical team members (such as content creators, editors, and marketers) so that content can be uploaded smoothly to the relevant channels, without the need for intervention by developers. 

Review and monitoring

While not strictly part of the creation phase, you’ll need to factor in a way to monitor the performance of your published content. If a blog is underperforming, for example, or if you need to change factual information about a product, you may need to tweak the content to optimize. It’s better if you can make those changes quickly, as part of your content management workflow, without any disruption to your wider site. 

Key workflow challenges

There are plenty of obstacles that can prevent you from executing your workflow smoothly.

Manual tasks

If your workflow includes a lot of manual copying and pasting between different platforms during creation, editing, and review, you’ll increase the risk of human error, reduce your content velocity, and may see your brand voice fragment across channels. 

Multi-region publishing

Brands that need to publish in different regions may struggle to localize specific pieces of content without compromising the consistency of their brand voice. Poor translation, for example, or a failure to regionalize content effectively, can quickly lead to brand voice and messaging inconsistencies across channels and websites — and, ultimately, reduce customer loyalty.

Silos

In organizations that publish large volumes of content, potentially to multiple websites or touchpoints in different regions, there’s a risk of content being placed into silos. Content silos are often the result of a reliance on different CMSes and different databases — for example, a website content team and a separate mobile app team. Siloed content architecture makes it difficult for teams to retrieve content, collaborate efficiently, and align content messaging, which, in turn, hurts brand loyalty and leads brand voice inconsistencies across channels. 

Accessibility 

The complexity of the content creation workflow can cause accessibility issues which, in turn, create delays and bottlenecks across the entire content process. Certain legacy CMSes, for example, tightly couple their back and front ends, which can limit access for nontechnical users because they need to rely on developers to intervene whenever they publish or edit content. 

Building better workflows with Contentful

Effective content creation workflows provide the flexibility and freedom that brands need to build unique digital experiences for their audiences at scale, without losing control of the volume and quantity of the content they’re publishing. 

With that in mind, your CMS represents a foundation for your content marketing efforts. Where legacy systems tightly couple their services, modern CMSes like Contentful are loosely coupled — an approach that offers powerful workflow advantages for both technical and nontechnical team members. 

Let’s look at some of the ways Contentful helps brands build better workflows. 

Fully integrated

The Contentful CMS lets content and marketing teams create, store, edit, and publish content from a single platform, with an array of native design, editing, and publication features. No need to jump between different tools, or switch CMSes for different channels: You can publish once in Contentful, and then reuse your content anywhere that aligns with your digital content strategy. 

Structured content 

Contentful unlocks the creative potential of content by breaking it down into its component parts: headers, body text, images, author bios, and so on. This structured content approach means that you can create new content fast, reusing those structural parts like building blocks to create new pages, banners, and campaigns, whenever you need them. 

Localization and personalization tools

Need to create content for publication in different regions? Contentful’s native AI tools enables teams to regionalize content effortlessly and translate text in seconds without having to leave the CMS. That not only makes life easier for your editors and writers, but reduces the risk of inconsistent messaging across regions. The same goes for personalization; our AI offers personalized content suggestions to help editors shape content experiences for specific audiences. 

Workflows app

Contentful’s Workflows app is a game-changing content governance feature that can help brands set up and enforce credentials for individual users, essentially applying status-based workflows within the wider content production process. The Workflows app can even apply checkpoints at the various stages of creation and publication in order to safely guide content to its home on the relevant channel. 

Nontechnical accessibility

Contentful separates the visual layout of content from its underlying technical  administration. That means nontechnical team members in the content creation workflow don’t ever have to deal with code as they’re creating and editing content, and can take as much (or as little) control as they need over its appearance on a webpage, app, or other digital touchpoint. 

AI integrations 

From content creation, personalization, and localization, to testing and experimentation, Contentful’s native AI automation features streamline every part of the content workflow. That means you can use Contentful to spin up a first draft, refine the language you’re using, adjust contextual references, translate for multi-region publication, and even compare different versions of the content to determine which will perform better with your audience. 

To learn more about workflow automation with Contentful, check out our AI Actions demos. 

Get started with Contentful today

Ready to transform your brand’s content workflow? Contentful brings your teams, assets, and technology together — to ensure your content not only makes it over the finish line, but reaches out across regions to win the views, clicks, and conversions that it deserves. 

To find out more, get in touch with our sales team, or read about how we’re helping brands around the world create unique digital experiences for their customers.

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