If Content is King, Process is Prince

by Dan Bailey

“Content is king,” or so we hear. And in the advancing digital field, terms such as “social media strategy” and “SEO plans” begin to merge with “content strategy.” Although still infantile, such talk is not unheard of – seminars and blogs cover these topics more and more. Businesses admit that consumers are in social media and search engines, and so the question becomes how can brands be there for them. I believe there still needs to be much more strategic alignment between objectives and digital channels, but at least the questions are starting to be raised. And of course there is a chicken and egg conundrum here – what good is strategic vision and talk, if there’s no knowledge of how to reliably execute anyway?

All these questions I considered in planning stages with a local digital marketing start-up. Hence, see below my process and project management flow for digital content marketing. It covers tasks, both vital and optional (grayed out), against understandable marketing and technical job roles (left vertical axis labels). For example:

When should search and keywords be involved? It’s here.
To what quantity of approvals should customers – whether internal or external – be involved? Covered below.
And what of tech integrations and reporting (such as CRM and analytics)? It’s all here – let me know what you think (click image for legibility)!