Learning About the Power of Documentation with Gordana Sretenovic
Who is responsible for creating and distributing content? What kind of content should be created? When should it be published? Where will it be distributed? And why is this content being created in the first place?
Answering these questions clearly and concisely will go a long way towards ensuring that your content marketing efforts are successful. That's where documentation comes in. It is a critical part of content marketing because it ensures that content is created and distributed in a way that is consistent with the overall strategy.
In this insightful conversation, Gordana Sretenovic, Co-founder, Workello talks to Aanchal Khosla, Senior Program Manager (Marketing), Pepper Content, about the importance of documenting every process along the way to ensure the success of your content marketing strategy.
Here are some excerpts.
1. Can you tell us about your journey with content marketing?
I started a long time ago when I was in college. I was a writer and ghostwriter for about seven years, but I wanted to do more. Luckily, I got the opportunity to do so when I joined Content Distribution, started by Nick Jordan. There, I started as a writer and was promoted to editor and content manager.
When we started, we worked with a bunch of freelance writers and tried to set up content operations in the way we would want an ideal content agency to look like. We started documenting our processes, which proved to be extremely useful when we started building our team and hiring more writers and editors.
We didn't build any backlinks or do any crazy technical SEO. We figured that we can do everything with good, high-quality content, and a really good writing team.
2. What has been the most interesting part of your content marketing journey? What was it that changed the entire game for you?
The most interesting part of my content marketing journey was realizing that we can't do it alone or at all if we don't commit in several ways. The one thing that changed the game for us was realizing that we have to build a team, systematize the content production process, and document everything. We are huge believers in writer briefs so we made content series briefs to make things easier for our editors and have the most amount of structure for something creative such as writing. It's very easy to get lost in research for six hours, but systematizing that process allows writers to consider writing as a full-time job.
3. How do you see an SEO-led content marketing strategy being effective in a setup for upcoming companies and startups?
If you have a company nowadays, you have to publish content, and you cannot ignore SEO as an acquisition channel, and I'm not just talking about traffic.
The reason we believe that SEOs shouldn't mess with content is that if you have a good system, documentation, and instructions for your writers, editors, and QA team, they can easily optimize the content in the writing process. We're huge on SOPs and documenting everything.
We make sure that the content is optimized even before it goes live and in every single content brief, we add a list of mandatory internal links that the writers need to insert to build a good internal linking structure. It's important to focus on content quality and ensuring the usefulness of your content.
If you manage to hit the keywords, internal links, and content quality, I don't think anyone in this world will have trouble ranking anything. We outrank some huge brands with this strategy.
4. What's your favorite piece of content, if I may ask?
I love podcasts, and they're my favorite things in the world. But I need my time while I'm listening to it so I can focus on what people are talking about. During work hours, my favorite type of content is an article because you can easily skim it. You can get all the important points so if it's something interesting, you can come back to it later.
5. How do you see the future of content marketing? How will it evolve in the times to come?
I think more companies will start believing in publishing quality content, and there's no escaping it. As for the future of content, we will see more writers, editors, and content professionals using AI tools to help with their productivity. There are many tools out there that can help you get started if you're suffering from writer's block.
We will start seeing a huge difference in quality between people and companies that use AI to create content and those that take the time to develop a good content strategy, conduct proper keyword research, do good internal linking, and create high-quality content. Whether it's video, written content, or even podcasts, content is the best thing for you and your company. It's going to skyrocket even more now.
