1.       Assemble a diverse content marketing team.

Make sure each team member knows one another’s strengths and weaknesses. Build in processes so team members can depend on each other as you develop a diverse team of specialists, generalists and hybrids. For example, there may be certain people on your content marketing team that may be quite detail oriented. These team members most likely would make better editors or proofers, whereas the more creative team members might be better writers or graphic designers. The key is to have a wide range of skills and interests so team members can learn from one another.

2.       Develop a marketing technology roadmap.

A shiny, new content marketing tool can be helpful, but before you go out, buy it and implement it into your existing systems, you should really understand how it would help your team. By creating a marketing technology roadmap you will be able to see how all your systems fit in together and communicate with one another. Work with a marketing company to help you get the right systems in place and your team will perform at a higher level. By understanding how your marketing technology systems fit together and the processes you should have in place, you will have a more efficient, productive and integrated content marketing team.

3.       Construct an overall theme around your content

It is important to develop a central theme for your content for a certain time period. Theming – or the use of an overarching framework that creates a holistic and integrated organization around one theme or topic – can help with the development of your content portfolio. A theme can help your team (and your audience) understand how all the content your organization produces ties together. Theming helps successful content marketers create and define their content marketing editorial calendars. For example, content marketers can create a theme for an entire year where all the content (magazine, issues, newsletters, etc.) ties into this theme. Alternatively, you can create seasonal content, relating to Christmas, Easter, the end of financial year. There are no limits! So be creative!

4.       Determine where your content marketing capabilities stand today.

In order to understand where your company is going with its content marketing efforts, you should know where your organization is today. Work with a marketing company to determine where it lies on the content marketing maturity model below, and/or build a maturity model specific to your company. It can be helpful in communicating to your company – especially to upper management – where your company stands and where it’s going.

 5.       Create a vision for what the future will look like.

After you determine where you content marketing efforts are today, you should paint the picture of the future. What will your content marketing department look like in a year or two? What are you trying to accomplish? What does success look like? What is the purpose of your content, and how does it fit your company’s vision, values and objectives?

Coco-Cola recently created a “must-watch” video series called Content 2020 to show where its content marketing efforts are heading. The vision: to create the world’s most compelling content by moving from creative excellence to content excellence. If Coca-Cola accomplishes this task, it will earn a disproportionate share of popular culture. This is easy to understand, whether you are a content marketer or not.

If you feel like you could use a hand kick starting your content marketing efforts, give Strategy and Action a call. We can work together to develop a marketing technology roadmap and can help you grow your company faster.