Even seasoned marketers will often admit that the content creation process can be something of a grind. Your audience wants content and they want as much of it as you’re willing to give them – which is great until you realize all the effort that is required to actually get to that point in the discussion.
People organize their content creation ideas in a lot of different ways, from taking page after page of notes to using content calendars and more. One technique that doesn’t nearly get as much love as it should, however, is also one of the oldest – namely, beginning your process with a good, old-fashioned flowchart.
Especially if you’re in charge of a team of people who will all be contributing to your larger content marketing strategy, a flowchart can really help make sure that your efforts soar in a wide range of different ways that are certainly worth exploring.
The Major Benefits of a Flowchart: Breaking Things Down
When you sit down with a flowchart creator tool like Visme (which I founded), you’re doing more than just taking the ideas that you have in your head and bringing them into the world in a visual way.
There are actually a number of critical benefits that you get to make use of almost immediately, including but not limited to things like:
– An enhanced sense of visual clarity. This is especially true for teams with multiple people, as with a flowchart you can clearly illustrate the progress of multiple projects in a single, easy-to-understand document. People can easily see what they’re doing. Why that matters. How individual pieces contribute to the larger whole and how much work is left to be done.
– You’re keeping everyone on the same page. When everything is laid out clearly in the form of a flowchart. People can instantly see the context behind what they’re working on – guaranteeing that they’re always moving in the right direction at all times.
– You’ll also gain access to an almost immediate efficiency increase, too. When you lay out your content creation process in the form of a flowchart, certain steps that are largely unnecessary ultimately reveal themselves. This gives you a true chance to optimize your content creation process, both individually and within the context of the larger team.
– You’re in a better position for analysis and critical thinking. Because a flowchart is great for illustrating exactly what work is required at each step of a process. You’re able to break a larger task (“create the content dictated by your strategy”) into a series of smaller and more manageable parts (“create X, Y, X, etc. pieces of content”). Not only does this help make sure that you’re not leaving anything out. But it also gives you constant opportunities to verify that these are the steps you should be taking in the first place.
Not bad for one of the oldest though organization techniques in existence, huh?
In a lot of ways, this isn’t too dissimilar to whenever you sit down with a timeline creator to build something like a timeline Infographic for your audience. In that example, you’re taking a complicated idea for your audience and are simplifying it using A) visual communication, and B) the natural structure of time.
Using a flowchart to help design and develop your content is largely the same thing. Only instead of focusing on something for mass consumption you’re creating a document useful for a smaller and more niche group of people: namely, your team members. Analysis, evaluation, comparing and contrasting and even brainstorming at the beginning of the process all become far easier – which ultimately strengths the quality of the content you’re able to create in the first place.
Nobody is saying that you HAVE to use a flowchart to act as the foundation of your content creation process. Different people think in different ways and naturally, your mileage may vary. Maybe you’ve already got a process that works well that looks absolutely nothing like this – nobody is trying to say that you’re wrong.
But for people who are looking for a way to streamline their process. Improve the quality of their output and wrangle a team of creative people to harness that energy in the same basic direction. It’s clear that a flowchart is going to bring with it some distinct advantages that you probably won’t have access to through any other means.