Efficient content approval workflows are key for publishing high-quality content. Why are they so important, and what are some best practices to consider when creating them? Let’s find out.
Published on Aug 15, 2024
Making sure your content is accurate, consistent, and on-brand is crucial. The key to achieving that? A well-crafted content approval workflow—or, as is often the case, approval workflows.
In any organization, different types of content will often require different approval processes. For example, a complex campaign might need a review by several people, while a simple content update may require a quick check from a single team member. The key is to design content approval workflows that fit the specific needs of each project.
Let’s dive into why every forward-thinking content team should implement effective content approval workflows that match the content’s goals and complexity.
Without designated approval workflows, inconsistencies and errors in content can slip through, even after weeks of effort on an important project. Having approval processes in place helps make sure the right people are involved at the right time so your content is accurate, compliant, and error-free before publication.
Let’s now take a look at some of the most common issues that arise when there is no organized content approval workflow in place:
Inaccurate information
One significant challenge of not having approval workflows is maintaining accuracy. Without a clear approval process, outdated information or errors can go unnoticed. This can lead to factual inaccuracies that damage your content’s credibility and mislead the audience.
Branding issues
Branding issues are another common problem. Without a workflow, it’s tough to keep a consistent brand voice. You might end up with one post that’s playful and engaging and another that’s overly formal. This inconsistency can leave your audience confused and weaken your brand’s identity.
Lack of subject matter expertise
Specialists with deep knowledge of the subject provide critical insights. Without their input, you might miss including important details or forget to hit all the key points the audience expects. This can make the content less trustworthy and possibly cause misunderstandings or spread incorrect information.
Legal and compliance risks
Last but not least, legal and compliance risks can become a major issue. In highly-regulated industries like healthcare or insurance, where compliance and legal considerations are non-negotiable, skipping proper review processes can result in content that fails to meet regulatory standards, which can also cause damage to your organization’s reputation.
To avoid these issues, different stages of the content lifecycle need oversight. Implementing a content approval workflow addresses the challenges head-on.
Creating an efficient content approval workflow is the key to delivering high-quality, accurate content on time. The first step is identifying your content team’s roles and responsibilities to make sure the right subject matter experts are involved at the right time.
Next, set clear objectives for your workflow. This step is a crucial part of the content creation process because it gives your team a clear direction and establishes benchmarks for success. Lastly, there are tools and technologies that can help you streamline the process, so you can consider integrating them into your workflow.
Let’s check these steps out in more detail.
When planning your content approval workflow, one of the crucial steps is identifying your content team’s roles and responsibilities. Each team member should have a clearly defined role, whether it’s creating content, reviewing drafts, or giving final approvals. This clarity helps streamline communication and prevents tasks from falling through the cracks.
Do you want to speed up approval times? Or ensure your content is always compliant? Setting clear objectives for your workflow will make sure your team works efficiently toward common goals.
Here are some objectives you might want to consider before setting up your content approval workflow:
Choosing the right mix of tools is crucial, and there are a few things to consider when making that decision. If you’re deciding on multiple tools or a more unified platform, you might want to consider factors such as your team’s size or the complexity of your projects. It’s also important to think about whether the tools you choose can grow with your needs—will they be able to scale as your team or project size increases?
Multiple tools might offer specialized features suited to different tasks, but they can be difficult to manage in a streamlined way. An all-in-one platform brings all tasks into a single system, simplifying management and making it easier to scale, but may lack some specialized features found in separate tools.
When it comes to making the content approval process smoother and more efficient, content management systems (CMS) that invest in the authoring and publishing experience can suit your teams’ needs especially well.
While it may take a greater organizational shift to manage all things content in your CMS, it’s definitely possible to get more from it. With a modern CMS platform like Kontent.ai, for example, you can define multiple workflows based on different types of content. This means that, for example, marketing and legal content can have different workflow steps and role permissions.
This will allow you to involve subject matter experts exactly where they’re needed to approve content that is accurate and compliant. With legal content, the roles can be set up so only the legal team can move content items to the Approved step and then hit the publish button.
Tools like Trello, Asana, or Monday.com can help you assign tasks, set deadlines, and track progress. This ensures everyone knows their responsibilities and what is expected of them. These tools come with built-in commenting features that keep all communication related to a task or project in one place. They also often allow you to attach files, links, and notes directly to tasks, so all the documentation is centralized.
Collaboration tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Workspace let team members communicate in real time. With instant messaging, video calls, and voice calls, it feels easy to use these tools to chat about ideas and solve problems on the spot. With that being said, it can also be harder to manage streamlined content approvals that involve many stakeholders, as feedback and sign-offs could get trapped in 1:1 conversations that not everyone can access.
That’s why disciplined use of specific Slack and Teams channels for different content projects is key; your team can have all relevant discussions, files, and feedback in one place. This organization helps keep communication focused and makes sure important information doesn’t get lost.
Workflow automation tools like Zapier or Automate.io can handle repetitive tasks that would otherwise consume valuable time. For example, you can set them up to notify team members when a task is ready for review, update project management boards when a document’s status changes, or automatically archive approved content.
With automated workflows, collaboration becomes a lot smoother. Tasks get automatically assigned to team members based on their roles, so everyone knows exactly what they need to do and when.
So, when should you consider adding workflow automation software to your tech stack? If your workflows are especially complicated and, for example, involve multiple teams or cross-departmental approvals, adding workflow automation software can help streamline the process. It’s certainly worth exploring all the workflow options your other tools have first, so you can assemble the best stack for your needs.
Depending on the complexity of your content and organization, setting up one or multiple content approval workflows is key to making sure you produce high-quality content. By having a clear process in place, you can make teamwork easier and boost productivity.
In the following sections, we’ll take a look at some best practices to consider at every phase of content production in order to minimize feedback loops and accelerate approvals.
This first phase of content production sets the foundation for high-quality outcomes. Defining guidelines, roles, and templates ensures that everything aligns with your goals and makes the review process run more smoothly.
Set clear guidelines
Setting clear guidelines is essential for ensuring everyone on your team understands what’s expected. You can start by creating a detailed content brief that outlines specific aspects such as length requirements, details on formatting, and any necessary keywords or SEO considerations. You can also provide your teams with established brand guidelines covering aspects like tone of voice and visuals that align with your brand. Don’t forget to give your team examples of content that fits these guidelines to give a clear reference.
Assign roles
Be sure to identify and clearly communicate who’s responsible for what—whether it’s the writers crafting the content, graphic designers adding the visuals, or project managers overseeing the whole project. The key is to make sure everyone knows their specific tasks and deadlines to avoid any confusion. If using a CMS for content approvals, assigning clear roles in the system is vital to keep things moving.
Use templates, but encourage creativity too
Templates provide a consistent framework that keeps everything organized, from blog posts to social media updates. They save time and ensure that your team follows your brand’s style and formatting. Having said that, while templates are great for consistency, don’t forget to encourage creativity! Give your team the freedom to explore new ideas and add their unique touches. This balance allows for innovation while still maintaining a cohesive brand voice.
Leverage AI
If used responsibly, AI can be a great asset in content creation. One of the benefits of AI is that it can boost creativity by offering fresh ideas and perspectives. In addition, AI can save valuable time by generating content quickly, and help with tasks such as editing or summarizing. For example, with Kontent.ai’s Ask AI capabilities, teams can get in-the-moment assistance to create titles or change the tone. For bigger tasks, teams can give free-form instructions and see them carried out immediately.
While AI offers great benefits, it’s important to make sure the content still has the personal touch and emotional depth human writers would provide. Without it, the audience might feel disconnected. In addition, make sure to loop in subject matter experts where necessary, as AI may struggle with understanding nuanced context.
Once the content is created, the next crucial phase is reviewing it and providing constructive feedback. This is essential for identifying areas that need improvement and making sure the content meets all necessary standards before moving on to the next stage of the approval process.
Provide constructive feedback
When it comes to giving feedback, it’s all about being constructive and specific. Being vague is anything but helpful, so instead of saying, “This isn’t working,” or “The headline needs to be more clickable,” try to pinpoint exactly what needs improvement. Offering actionable suggestions not only helps the creator understand your perspective but also empowers them to make meaningful changes.
Use collaboration tools
Providing clear and helpful feedback is important for improving content. Collaboration capabilities in a CMS like Kontent.ai, such as suggestions and comments or simultaneous editing, can make this much easier. As with any doc-style editing, these helpful features allow team members to comment and discuss in real time, making it easy to share feedback directly on specific parts of the content without endless email chains.
Once you’ve gathered initial feedback, it’s time to move on to revisions. This is where the magic happens, as your team refines the content based on the insights and suggestions received.
Track changes
When editing the copy directly, using tools that allow you to see edits and comments in real time helps everyone stay on the same page. It’s not just about knowing what’s been changed—it also provides context for those changes. This way, you can easily follow the evolution of the content and understand the rationale behind specific edits.
Limit revision rounds
Limiting revision rounds is key to keeping the content creation process running smoothly. Setting a maximum number of revisions helps avoid that endless back-and-forth that can really slow things down. When you establish this limit, it encourages everyone to be more decisive with their feedback. This not only speeds up the approval process but also keeps the team motivated. Remember, the goal is to refine the content without letting perfectionism hold you back!
Double-check everything
Double-checking everything before final approval is essential for producing top-quality content. This step ensures that all facts, figures, and links are accurate and that the content flows well. This is also the perfect time to check for grammar mistakes, typos, and any inconsistencies.
Here are a few questions to ask in this phase:
Designate approvers
Designating approvers makes sure that each piece of content has a clear decision-maker responsible for its final approval. This could be a subject matter expert, or a team lead depending on what needs to be checked.
It’s important to assign different approvers for specific parts of the content if needed—such as having a legal expert review compliance-related sections, while a content manager oversees the overall style and tone. Having a designated approver allows for quicker decisions, so you can keep the workflow moving without unnecessary delays.
As you reach the final stages of your content process, it’s time to prepare for smooth publishing. This involves making sure that your content is not only ready to go live but also setting it up for ongoing success and easy retrieval.
Optimize for SEO
Before hitting the publish button, take some time to optimize your content for SEO. This involves making sure your keywords are naturally included throughout the text, especially in the title, subheadings, and meta descriptions.
Don’t forget to add alt text to your images and make sure your links are all functioning correctly (or use AI to do it for you!). Optimizing for SEO helps improve your content’s visibility on search engines, making it easier for your audience to find it. A little effort here can significantly boost your reach!
Test everything
Testing is essential to make sure that everything works perfectly once your content goes live. This includes checking all links to make sure they don’t lead to any 404 pages and testing all interactive elements to confirm they function properly. Don’t forget to make sure all multimedia elements load properly and can be viewed on different devices and browsers.
Schedule publications
Scheduling your content publications is a great way to keep your content calendar on track. In a content management system, you can set specific dates and times for your posts to go live. This allows you to maintain a consistent posting schedule, which is essential for keeping your audience engaged.
Improve production pace over time
To keep processes on track, it’s good to keep an eye on how well your workflows are running more generally. With Kontent.ai’s Mission Control, you can get valuable insight into the pace of your content approval workflows, helping you identify any bottlenecks or delays at different stages of the production process. With these insights, you can pinpoint where issues are occurring and what might be causing them. This allows you to take action and make necessary adjustments to streamline your workflows.
Creating an effective content approval workflow is absolutely worth the effort. The success is in the details: setting clear roles, using the right tools, and staying organized. Content management systems with strong workflow capabilities can help you minimize errors, maximize efficiency, and accelerate content velocity. Plus, by following some key best practices, your content creation process will be smoother, more efficient, and ultimately more successful.
Want to know what it’s like to unify all your content and processes in a secure CMS and publish better content faster? Schedule a Kontent.ai demo.
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