Paying attention to the bigger picture is significant as it throws wenches in a lot of marketing team workflows which means that one of the most and common problems is that content marketing teams are being too zoomed in on content creation as this tunnel vision leads to a feeling of perpetual overwhelming by the amount of other stuff content marketing takes.
It turns into a perpetual cycle of our marketing strategies and then the quarterly calendar based on a completely inaccurate picture of the plan that has to be conducted and then we cannot stay on a schedule that makes us feel overwhelmed and underwater.
Then comes the ‘planning fallacy’ which is the phenomenon as humans have completed a task before (number of times) while planning for it in the future so as to optimistically estimate the number of times we need.
But the second thing is how the content writers place excessive emphasis on content creation at the expense of other important parts of content marketing. This consists of planning, research, promotion, optimization, and repurposing. Content creation is one of the many steps in content marketing.
Now, What is System Thinking?
System thinking is a collection of tools and methods or sensitivity to the circular nature of the world we live in and a disciplined approach for examining problems more completely and accurately before acting. All this simply means that, checking the work as a series of systems and applying critical thinking to troubleshooting the relationships between them. Dividing the problems to a different component and examining each and how they work together.
Reason for its importance for the Marketers?
The system thinking mindset simply paying closer attention to the systems at play during work, personal lives, as well as the content. As we need to be attentive towards the larger and smaller systems of our content is connected to, where the bigger system is things like the business operations and revenue generation our content can ultimately for the company. It is the impact of any content has on the audience’s lives is the larger systems the marketing contributes to and the smaller systems are the steps and stages that make up the content marketing. The moving parts within the strategies like market research and content promotion. It is essential to discuss more diagnostic problems after probing in these systems solving the approach to meet the goals.
There are a few main content marketing systems most marketing teams need to streamline.
Market Research:
A variety of marketing teams’ approach to market research and customer surveys are vapid to put it nicely. So as to figure out the worth and to the repeatable process of the document for things like sending a quarterly survey to the email subscribers, requesting testimonials and case studies, and holding regular Zoom chats with customers. The process to perform the following can be as simple as a recurring calendar appointment and email canned response. It is important to figure out with your team at once as it becomes handy and whenever you need to in the future. Due to the uncertainty of the process, there can be too many back burners that fall during customer research.
Structuring the content:
There are ample content marketers also face issues in a place where they are only one or two days ahead of their content calendar. The fact is they are not sure regarding the updating of the post until they finally post it, leaving the person in a constant brainstorming and planning mode since you are thinking a few days into the future. But one can develop a system for once team to take the insights from your now-systemized market research and turn them into a quarterly marketing calendar.
When you can get further ahead of your calendar, your ideas get to ‘incubate’ for a bit before you publish them through a bit more even if one isn’t actively working on the pieces. It provides more time to actively work on them too as well as research and revise them at every step of progress so as to depreciate rush and hassle.
Creating the content:
The initial fact about content is creating it and that is the most focused part of the content systematically. During the creation of content any individual while creating it neglects things like optimization and repurposing which means in order to make the time and mental capacity for all the other systems mentioned in the post so that any individual needs to reduce how much content creation takes up. The key to it is a streamlined content creation process.
Distributing the content:
In the cycle of perpetual content and till the time you achieve something so as to publish while you are stuck in the process and then, you are finally relieved that you’re almost done with it. Promotion is the aftermath of the process and if you do not promote the content it simply acts as sabotage. But then you can make your job easier and simple by adding some new and interesting work that you can create shortcuts later on.
For instance, social media calendars, outreach templates, promotion checklists, and more depending upon the distribution strategy.
Optimizing Content:
The issue, while you are done with a fragment of content, is that you miss out on important optimization opportunities for example, during repurposing or updating content. But when it is about the maintenance and optimization that can be performed for content for a duration of time of its being live. Priorly create a checklist so as the maintain a sequence of the post you are about to live at the right time.
Streamlining:
Streamlining is not exhausting, but with these three quick steps this will get easier like the blink of an eye for you.
- Documenting the processes that are already developed.
- Focusing more on the weak spots and missing links.
- Make sure to troubleshoot and streamline to improve.
Therefore, a system mindset starts to cultivate, improve, and begin something extraordinary.