Complete Guide to Content Collaboration

Creative content can attract new web traffic to your company website and engage existing customers. It can boost your brand's image and reputation through marketing and advertisements. There are many reasons why your business may need content creation.

To meet the deadlines for new content, your marketing team will have to collaborate. But content collaboration doesn't just help you produce content to scale and to a schedule. It can benefit your organization in a surprising number of ways.

In this complete guide to content collaboration, we take a closer look at those benefits. We also cover the 10 best practices for collaborating on content, so you can maximize your teamwork.

What Is Content Collaboration?

Content collaboration is the process of collaborating with others to create, revise, update, and share digital content. It's usually for branding, marketing, or advertising purposes.

The number of collaborators may vary. Their collaboration may be simultaneous or asynchronous. But the aim is always the same: a commitment to producing creative content that will benefit the company or brand.

Collaborating on content offers more than just fresh, new content. It also offers many benefits that every business will be interested in.

Benefits of Efficient Content Collaboration

Efficient content collaboration can have some far-reaching advantages for your team and the entire organization. Want to know more? Here are the top six benefits.

1. Creativity and Innovation

Different collaborators will see the product or brand they are producing content for in different ways. They'll approach its marketing from different angles. And amidst all these perspectives, creativity and innovation are born. Once the creative spirit is unleashed, it can revitalize the entire workplace.

2. Efficiency and Productivity

If you want to see greater efficiency and productivity levels in your marketing department, collaboration is the answer. With more minds (and hands) working towards the same goal, everything runs more smoothly. This new approach to efficiency will spill into other areas of their job roles, too.

3. Employee Engagement

When your employees are more engaged, they are more efficient and productive. They take more of an interest in the company and their role in it. They also enjoy their work more. So, where does content collaboration factor into this? Collaborating on content can increase employee engagement!

When employees feel that their contributions to the team and its goals are important and appreciated, they'll feel valued. This recognition of their skills and talents will increase their interest in the task at hand, facilitating further engagement.

4. Consistent Brand Messaging

When your brand's message is seen to be consistent, it establishes your reputation as a brand that can be trusted. It also aids in brand recognition and customer loyalty. Therefore, it's clear that consistency is a crucial factor in brand marketing.

When your content collaboration is more efficient, it can keep your brand messaging consistent. That's because the various team members work together to stay true to the brand message. Anyone straying too far from the brand image will be brought back on track by feedback from their teammates/collaborators.

5. Increased Feedback

Any marketing expert will tell you that creating engaging content relies on efficient collaboration. One of the reasons for this is the power of feedback, both good and bad. With feedback from all team members, the team can make the necessary revisions to get the content just right.

6. Stronger Working Relationships

Collaborating is one of the best ways to build stronger work relationships. Individuals who work well in a team setting tend to have stronger relationships. So if you want your team members to have better workplace relationships, get them to connect by collaborating on content more often.

10 Best Practices for Effective Content Collaboration

By now you'll be wanting to know how your team can start enjoying those benefits. It's not as difficult as it appears. You just need to follow the right strategies. These are our 10 best practices for more effective content collaboration.

1. Build Your Team Wisely

Every content collaboration process needs a hardworking and committed team at its foundation. Build your team wisely and you'll reap the benefits of more innovative and creative content. However, don't forget that every team member has their own skill set, amount of experience, and degree of expertise.

The trick is to build a team where these differences complement each other and work together to achieve something spectacular.

This calls for discernment, and inside knowledge about each collaborator's strengths. Aim for a mix of veteran employee wisdom and fresh, new talent, for a more balanced approach.

2. Define Roles and Responsibilities

Once you've built your power team for content creation and collaboration, you must define their roles and responsibilities. Whether it's a sports team, a campaign trail team, or a marketing team, there's a common thread between all teams. And it's this: every team needs a sense of stability and structure.

Collaborating on content is all about working together towards a common goal: producing engaging content true to your brand. But every team member has their part to play. Look at your various team members' strengths and use that as your guide to assign their duties within the group.

3. Brainstorm and Plan

Before your team starts to collaborate on your content, you'll need a basic plan. Where does this plan originate from? Sometimes, it comes from a single idea, but most often, it's a combination of aspects of various ideas. And for that to happen, you need to do some brainstorming.

Brainstorming involves coming together as a group to generate ideas. It helps to have a leader for these initial brainstorming sessions. Their role is not to criticize, correct, or control, but merely to facilitate the free sharing of ideas. From this initial phase, a content plan can start to take shape.

4. Invest in Marketing Technologies

You might have the best content plan in the world, but it won't come to much without the right tools. This is where the importance of marketing technologies comes in. These technologies include all the software, platforms, and online tools that your team will use to collaborate and create marketing content.

Invest in marketing technologies that offer both collaboration and content management features.

With the right technology, like a digital asset management system that doubles as a collaboration platform, your content creation success will know no bounds.

5. Implement Version Control

Content collaboration isn't a quick process. It takes time, and usually many revisions and edits, to get your content to align with your marketing plan. This is normal. Your team may sometimes get it right the first time. But no team gets it right the first time, every time!

Version control is a systematic approach to managing the various changes to your marketing content over time. It allows your team members to track any digital asset modifications, and maintain a historical record of these changes. This makes collaboration easier, despite the need for repeated revisions.

6. Establish a Feedback Mechanism

Because feedback is so important to the collaborative process, establishing a feedback mechanism early in the team's development is crucial. But remember that your content teams won't always all be in one place. Sometimes, they'll include collaborators at other locations.

The solution is to enable feedback for all collaborators, including remote ones. With the right software in place, this is easy to do. With no barriers due to time, work model, or geographical distance, collaboration software allows everyone's voice to be heard.

7. Schedule Regular Check-Ins

Schedule regular check-ins with your teams. This is not only so you can keep an eye on their progress. It'll also let your team know that you are available for questions or guidance.

These check-ins don't have to be formal meetings. That can increase their stress and prevent more timid team members from voicing opinions. An informal weekly chat will do just fine. It'll put your teams at ease, and you'll still be up-to-date with their progress.

8. Document Your Processes

When you first wade into the waters of large-scale content collaboration, it helps to document your processes. Although this sounds like a time-consuming and unnecessary task, nothing could be further from the truth.

Documenting your processes allows you to eliminate confusion and report back to clients more effectively. But most of all, it allows you to monitor the progress your collaboration has made. You'll quickly see if there are any redundant steps or superfluous tasks that can be removed next time around.

9. Go with the Flow

Content creation is exciting, and collaborating on that creative process is a dynamic process. There will be ups and downs. Sometimes things won't work out quite as you imagined. This is unavoidable, and part of the learning process, so learn to adapt and go with the flow.

Rather than become frustrated when things go wrong, use these opportunities to gain insight into where you can improve your collaboration processes in the future.

Going with the flow also means adapting your original plan, strategy, or creative concepts as new ideas emerge. Being rigid with your plan can hinder the creative process. Often the best ideas pop up near the end of the collaboration process. Don't shut these ideas down. Let the creativity flow.

10. Celebrate the Wins

Content creation can be challenging. Learning to work with multiple team members collaborating on that content can be a challenge all of its own. Sometimes, all they need is a bit of a morale boost or a pat on the back for a job well done.

One of the best things you can do for your team is to recognize their achievements. A confident and motivated team will produce better work, and work together more harmoniously. So celebrate the wins. Even the small ones!

Conclusion

When you need great content for a marketing campaign, rebranding, or new product launch, efficient collaboration is the solution. It brings together top talent you can rely on to take your business and your brand to new heights.

But for efficient collaboration, you need the right strategies and the best marketing technologies. That's where Razuna can help. We have the software you need for all your content collaboration efforts. Digital asset management, brand management, collaboration tools - you'll have access to all of these and more.

Create your free account in seconds, and start collaborating on content the right way, today.