Apply agile marketing practices to
crowdsource knowledge, prioritize critical tasks and know when it's time to
move on.
Content creation can be a slow and arduous
process. Among marketers, the agile are primed for creating and delivering
content at lightning speed. Here are some ways your organization can benefit
from leveraging daily customs of those who excel in the field.
1. Align content with user stories.
The user story template should be clear. One
user story describes the needs and wants of one persona. This extremely narrow
focus serves a purpose. It reduces meandering, mitigates excess and
encourages simplicity in customer engagement.
Creating content quickly means doing one
thing really well for one person. Your audience should be able to quickly
tell who your content is designed around.
2. Get content creators involved
early.
Content creators often aren't part of
the planning and strategy sessions that take place at the start of a
sprint. But they should be. Silos slow down content production. Involving
creatives earlier allows them to become attuned to the overall
content strategy. This can help them begin the ideation stage early and
potentially short-circuit it by dismissing ideas that don’t fit in with the
bigger picture.
This approach also empowers creators
to provide valuable feedback from their vantage point. They may foresee
potential roadblocks that others miss. Addressing problems early is a major win
for any strategy.
3. Create manageable tasks per user
story.
Teams and organizations will vary in how they
split the tasks that make up a user story. Regardless, it’s important to focus
on creating tasks that work directly to accomplish narrative. This prevents the
scope of work from expanding.
Likewise, if a team’s run rate is predictable
each time, don’t add tasks or stories in the hopes of getting more work done.
It is far more important to deliver completed work than to end a run with
unfinished tasks.
4. Prioritize the work that is
truly critical.
You can't do everything at once. Make tough
decisions about what is absolutely critical and rank the work accordingly.
Then, tackle content creation in priority order.
Ideally, team members should complete a user
story before moving on to the next one. If disaster strikes, your
organization can rest assured that the workflow won't be interrupted.
5. Get feedback during and after
every run so you can fail early.
Teams inevitably will fail. It’s the design
of human nature. Agile marketers know the focus is never the failure itself --
it's the after-effects. Getting feedback can be challenging, but it exists
to help.
Fail, get feedback, and learn. Then rise
up and quickly re-route the course. Consider any and all feedback to increase
your content's quality, effectiveness and responsiveness.
6. Embrace cross-functionality.
Not everyone is an effective content creator.
But the people within your organization have accumulated a wide
variety of knowledge and experiences that can prove to be a gold mine.
Get rid of the idea that only those hired to
create content should contribute to the end product. Crowdsource content
creation by allowing every department to contribute. Creatives can
then harness the mass knowledge base. This allows them to ideate,
create and refine more rapidly.
7. Address blockers on a daily
basis.
If a team member is stuck, others need to
know -- and soon. In agile marketing, status stand-up meetings occur daily.
The primary purpose is to find bottlenecks, roadblocks,
dead ends and boulders so these obstacles can be removed. Resolve as
quickly as possible any issues that cause a work stoppage or inhibit workflow.
Use an end-of-run retrospective.
At the end of every campaign run,
schedule a postmortem. Team members discuss what worked well and what
could be improved. Postmortems provide value, but only if members
derive actionable items from the discussion. It isn't enough to simply
learn what didn't work. Teams must create goals that address these
gaps. Give members ownership over each pitfall. This built-in
accountability helps ensure the same issues won't recur.
8. Abide by the manifesto.
In theory, creators can revise content until
the end of time. Seasoned creators rely on external feedback to help determine
when a piece is finished. Similarly, developers rely on quality-assurance
professionals to determine that functionality is complete.
Establish a mutually agreed-upon definition
of “done.” This will function as a checklist to curtail unnecessary time spent
on a task. Once a story has checked off every item on the list, it is
considered complete. Remember that perfection is never the goal. Content's role
is to deliver value.
Written by: Andrew Raso
Credit: Entrepreneur.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment