Content material advertising and marketing can turn into difficult and effortful in a short time.
Content material groups must handle ideation, writing, modifying, proofing, publishing, promotion, analytics, and reporting throughout a group of writers, reviewers, and dozens of articles every month. Sensible content material leads discover methods to automate a few of these processes to allow them to concentrate on what actually issues.
So, to encourage you and present you not solely what’s attainable but in addition the form of issues which are actually price automating, we requested three consultants to share their favourite workflows.
You’ll be able to’t automate every little thing, however you’ll be able to automate your complete content material manufacturing workflow.
My interviewees use Airtable as a “central base of operations,” as Tommy Walker places it. A base like that controls every little thing:
- Subject concepts with key phrases and their website positioning knowledge.
- Briefs.
- Outlines.
- Articles.
- Duties with their statuses and alternative ways to view them (calendar, kanban, and so forth.)
- Contributors and their roles.
- Notifications.
The final concept behind that is the usage of triggers and actions. A whole set of a set off and at the very least one motion is sometimes called a Zap (coined by one of many automation device suppliers Zapier).
All of our consultants have this type of central base, and I assume it’s exhausting to withstand having one when you begin automating issues. So right here’s a kind of techniques by Eric Doty:
Eric talked about utilizing Ahrefs as his supply of key phrases. In case you’re going to do the identical, right here’s a fast tip for you — use automated key phrase clustering proper inside Ahrefs, so that you gained’t must determine it out later on.
Tip
All it is advisable to do is click on the Cluster by Guardian Subject tab within the Matching phrases report in Ahrefs’ Key phrases Explorer. You too can export the checklist and use it in Airtable, Notion, or related.
Returning to our central content material base, it’s necessary to notice that not everybody might want to go to it commonly. As Tommy identified, a content material automation system can combine with processes your teammates observe (and probably even different automation).
For instance, some stakeholders want real-time notifications about standing modifications, whereas others solely require a weekly digest of content material output. Automation handles this excellently.
You too can have folks fill out types that may feed into system. For example, gross sales group may use a type like that to request new content material without having to enter your Airtable setup.
Caitlin confirmed me how she automates assigning duties to 3 sorts of contributors based mostly on the work progress: writers, subject material professional reviewers, and editors. All that is to take care of the output of 20 – 30 revealed articles monthly, with out leaving Airtable.
Caitlin was very beneficiant, so that you’re about to see not solely what this workflow does but in addition copy the conditional logic for Airtable and ready-made Zaps!
The entire course of begins when Caitlin assigns the standing of an article to “Writing”.
This triggers an Airtable automation that provides the transient to the author’s Google Sheet. A Zap is then triggered by the brand new row in Google Sheets, which provides the task date and sends an e-mail to the author, notifying them of their new task.
Right here’s what the setup of this half appears like in Airtable:
When the author finishes their half, Caitlin will get an automatic notification in Slack.
Subsequent, the article goes to the professional for a overview. That is essential for Caitlin’s technique as a result of it enhances the content material with distinctive experience and real-life expertise.
Due to automation, all Caitlin must do is change the standing to “Reviewing”. This provides the article hyperlink, transient, and phrase depend to the reviewer’s Google Sheet.
On high of that, this automation sends an e-mail to the reviewer notifying them of the task. And right here’s the cool half: the e-mail will differ relying on whether or not article is a very new one or a second overview. Right here’s how one can set this up in Zapier.
When the reviewer is completed, they examine “Performed” and choose a discipline in a “Subsequent steps” dropdown of their sheet to replicate whether or not the article is accepted or wants modifications made by the author. Then Caitlin will get a message like this in Slack:
If the author must make modifications, there’s a particular standing for that, too. When Caitlin modifications the standing from “Reviewing” to “Author is updating”, this robotically modifications the standing within the author’s Google Sheet. And to verify the author gained’t miss that standing change, there’s an automatic e-mail notification, too.
Lastly, we have now the modifying stage. Now Caitlin modifications the standing to “Enhancing,” which provides a row within the editor’s Google Sheet, identical to it did for the author and the professional.
When an article is finished, the editor modifications the standing of their sheet, and provides any feedback in the event that they wish to, Caitlin receives this message:
You’ll be able to copy the precise Zaps Caitlin used right here:
The extra you publish, the extra folks in your group, the extra you’re going to want such a automation.
First, Eric will present you how you can arrange Airtable in order that each time a brand new weblog publish is revealed, it triggers an e-mail to the author, a message on Slack, and a standing change in Airtable.
Now, let’s say you’ve a giant content material stock and wish to assist different groups entry it to be used in prospect calls or newsletters. You should utilize one other of Caitlin’s workflows, which provides an AI-generated abstract of all revealed articles to Airtable by means of a Zap.
In case you’re like Eric (and me), you get content material concepts in numerous, usually random, conditions, and it’s not all the time fast or straightforward to drag up your content material dashboard to jot them down. Fortunately, you’ll be able to arrange a Zap to deal with that, too.
On this instance, Eric explains how he created a nifty workflow to ship content material concepts famous in a Slack channel straight to Airtable.
- Eric notes down a key phrase concept in a Slack channel with a predefined hashtag.
- A Slack bot confirms including the key phrase to Airtable, appended with a hyperlink to the Airtable base.
- Now that the key phrase is within the key phrase checklist, Eric can add website positioning knowledge when he’s prepared.
In case you’re creating briefs for different folks or outlines for your self utilizing the identical doc format, again and again, I’m positive you’ll respect this workflow.
- The set off has two situations: the subject should attain the “transient wanted” standing and a short should not have already been created.
- The motion: a Google doc is created which acts because the template for the content material transient. The doc already contains some info from Airtable handed down by means of variables such because the key phrase, matter, and format.
Right here’s inspiration from Tommy Walker, sharing how one can automate podcast manufacturing by connecting a number of completely different instruments to Airtable.
Listed here are the steps:
- Tommy sends out an invite to e book a time slot for an episode through Calendly.
- When the visitor books a time, this creates a brand new document in Airtable with standing “Booked” and their particulars stuffed.
- This additionally triggers Google Drive to create a brand new folder and two subfolders inside in (one among them is for the visitor to add their headshot).
- Importing a headshot into the folder notifies the designer.
- Subsequent, an E-mail goes out to e book a precall with the visitor.
- Now, Tommy can click on the “Create web page” button proper inside Airtable which creates a web page and a weblog publish in WordPress (how cool is that!).
- As soon as the published is full on YouTube, it goes into the RSS feed in Castmagic. This permits Tommy to make use of the device to create a transcript and use an AI chatbot on it.
You know the way there’s no notification when somebody uploads a brand new file to Google Drive for you? You continue to must manually notify that particular person concerning the file which feels very guide; it seems like doing the identical factor twice.
Till Google fixes that, Eric will present you how you can make a Zap to avoid wasting you time and peace of thoughts. Use this when working with designers, writers, and your video group.
- Set off: a contributor drops a file in a delegated folder in Google Drive.
- Motion: an e-mail goes out to the Eric with the title of the contributor and the hyperlink to the file.
I’ve answered a handful of widespread questions for these simply beginning out with content material automation.
What’s the distinction between content material automation and automatic (AI) content material?
It’s straightforward to confuse these two phrases as a result of they’re fairly related, and one is a subset of the different:
- Automated content material is generated primarily by AI with out human enter.
- Content material automation makes use of instruments to streamline content material creation, administration, and distribution.
Thus, you’ll be able to have content material automation with out automated content material. Furthermore, it’s advisable to not absolutely automate your content material if you wish to rank effectively on Google.
Is automating content material good for website positioning?
TLDR; if you wish to absolutely automate content material, as in not even take a look at it earlier than publishing, it is going to almost certainly be unhealthy for website positioning, though Google is just not towards AI content material per se.
Numerous website positioning experiments and case research have confirmed one factor past doubt: gaming the system can deliver solely short-term positive factors. Google catches as much as unhealthy content material and spam ultimately, whether or not that’s automated content material or not. And when this occurs, your site visitors charts will seem like this:
You would disclose making content material with AI, as Google suggests. However paradoxically, attempting to stick to the rules can compromise the consumer expertise (particularly for YMYL subjects). Though shoppers don’t appear to be towards AI content material basically (research), they’re prone to be cautious about it (research).
Lastly, the content material automation consultants I talked with don’t use AI for content material technology. Given their expertise, I wasn’t anticipating a special reply. They could use AI for different issues like producing outlines, discovering content material gaps (take a look at our AI Content material Grader), or on the lookout for related subtopics, however not for precise writing.
Is content material automation for all group sizes?
Our consultants agree: large, or small, each group can profit from content material automation.
It’s truthfully for everybody. I exploit it for each degree of content material creation — from 10 articles/month to 100. At HealthMatch, we revealed between 150-200 articles monthly, so I in a short time had to determine how you can use automation to make that scale attainable. Sending an e-mail to at least one or two writers every week with new assignments is doable. Sending emails to twenty writers is not.
Moreover, Tommy Walker has a novel tackle this:
The worth proposition for large firms goes to be completely different based mostly on the scale. For greater firms, it’s extra about automating info change in order that it occurs successfully and effectively. For small firms, it’s extra about time financial savings.
If you wish to use AI for website positioning successfully but safely, we’ve bought fourteen tried and examined concepts for you.
What are the widespread pitfalls of content material automation?
In keeping with our consultants, you need to be careful for 2 issues.
The primary pitfall is creating infinite loops. That is when a job runs again and again till you max out your automation device’s plan. In case you’re utilizing Zapier, right here’s how you can keep away from it.
One other pitfall is automating every little thing simply because it’s attainable.
Comply with Eric’s recommendation: automate duties you’ve dealt with manually a number of instances. Keep away from automating new processes instantly; first, do them manually to see in the event that they’re price automating. In any other case, you would possibly waste time on ineffective workflows or overwhelm your self with too many automated duties.
Closing ideas
I’d wish to wrap this up with the primary content material automation tip for newcomers from every of our consultants. All of them appear to agree: sensible small.
In case you assault automation with a selected downside that you simply wish to resolve quite than attempting to turn into a content material automation professional, then you definately’ll study by trial and error, you’ll study a lot faster, and also you’ll resolve issues for your self quite than studying the summary. So begin small, and begin with a guide course of that you simply do on a regular basis however would like to cease doing.
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