What is your top tactical suggestion to make content creation scalable and efficient? Includes content for internal enablement, external launches/content, and more.

Lots to unpack here! My main takeaway--start with AI, then stretch your content as far as you can!

To start, I love a good template. Once you have a good template in place, you can build out "sub-sections" to build from your key content piece. For example, you are writing a messaging doc for a seasonal product launch, but you also want to translate that into: a blog post, a social post, an email template for sales, new web copy, etc.

This "source of truth" doc can also be shared with other teams like if you have a content team or sales enablement team to help them in building supporting content.

AI can help you get started on these if you copy and paste the content and ask it to parse into the various other content you want.

Feel free to message me for the templates I use!

Second, repurposing content is key! Here are some ways I like to get the most out of the content I work hard to create:

• Internal to External Reuse: Repurpose internal training materials for external audiences. For instance, a product overview presentation for sales enablement can be adapted into a blog post for external consumption. CS can help you choose some good ones/most commonly used ones to get started. These also tend to be more educational, which is great for content engagement!

• Content Cannibalization: Break down long-form content like white papers into bite-sized pieces like blog posts, social media snippets, or infographics. I really like doing "Content Overview" carousels on LinkedIn like this.

  
  

Finally, I love a good CMS, especially when you properly enable sales/CS to use it. Here's are some thoughts on tools for streamlining and collaboration:

• Content Management System (CMS): Utilize a CMS to centralize your content assets, templates, and brand guidelines. A good CMS will also have integrated analytics (how many people viewed the content, how much time did they spend on that content, etc.). I personally really like Seismic. This gives you additional data points on what content sales is using the most, what content prospects and customers are engaging with the most, and help inform what type of content to prioritize next.

• Project Management Tools: Implement project management tools to streamline workflows, track content creation progress, and ensure timely delivery. My favorites are Asana and Monday.

• Marketing Automation Platforms: for scheduling content distribution, personalized messaging, and measuring engagement metrics, allowing you to optimize content performance and scalability. Historically, I've used Hubspot with GaggleAmp, but recently heard about Letterdrop for blog publishing, SEO suggestions, AI writing, and social scheduling features all-in-one.

When I think about scaling content creation (this could be sales decks, collateral, long-form content, etc), my best tactical suggestion is to create a self-service template.

Here's an example: Several years ago, we had a process at SurveyMonkey for creating sales one-pagers that involved PMM writing copy, Content Strategy proof-reading, then Design creating a PDF. The PDFs were difficult to edit/personalize, so we kept having to go back to Design for versions. Then we created a project where Design instead created a self-service one-pager template. The result was a one-pager "component library" in Google Slides (what we use for presentations). We had several versions of headers, single/double/triple columns of text & imagery placements, logo bars, customer quotes, etc. All on-brand. This was a game changer for us, because we could mix & match those components to create a one-pager & then personalize it by industry, etc. - even down to the account level. PMM then had autonomy to create sales content without dependency on any other teams. It meant we could create more content in WAY less time!

The most important thing to be able to scale content is to create a messaging framework that can be a north star for all your sister teams in marketing, product, and sales e.g. social team, campaign team, sales enablement, product management etc. There are many templates for messaging framework - so use whatever is most suitable for your organization. This framework can multiply your efforts by providing a guiding document that you and your colleagues can rely on. Beyond that following are some ways to scale content:

• Content Repurposing: Repurpose existing content into different formats. A white paper can become a blog series, for example.

• Content Collaboration: Work with other teams (e.g. product, sales, solution architects) to create content relevant for different audiences. Put easy mechanisms in place to propose, create, review and publish content.

• Content generation (Automated): With the advent of generative AI there are many tools that can help you create new ideas for content and also provide outlines for them. Use these tools wisely following the best practices that your organization has outlined.

Let's start with a fact: despite our wishes, a Product Marketing team cannot create tailored content for every sales opportunity or match every account executive’s style and preferred content format.

Time and resources are and will remain constrained. Assess your capacity (personal and team), whether you are already using AI to asset you or not. From there, you can strategize on maximizing your impact within your capacity limits.

A few tips which could apply to any organization and team size:

• Prioritization. Recognize that you cannot fulfill every request coming your way. Mastering prioritization and the ability to say "no," or to defer requests to a backlog, is crucial. Other tips listed below can help in this prioritization exercise.

• Historical Analysis. Evaluate the impact of previously created content. Identify which materials were successful and which did not achieve their intended impact. Investigate potential reasons behind their success or failure. If the content varied in format, note which formats were most used.

• Existing Content Audit. Before addressing a new content request, review if similar content has been produced before. Could existing materials be repurposed or updated to meet current needs with less effort?

• Alternatives to Content Creation. If immediate content creation isn't feasible, recommend existing materials that may satisfy 80% of the request's requirements in the meantime.

• Version 1. I love to create perfect content. However, even with proper analysis, you may miss the mark and the content won’t perform as expected (no downloads, no sales engagement, whichever metric matters). By creating a v1, you can quickly gather feedback, and iterate when the content potential is confirmed!

Allocate adequate resources to it — in other words, get someone on board whose job is to create content. Unless there is a person or a team directly in charge of content creation, you’ll find it difficult to scale and run a smooth process.

Reasoning for this is: creating content is frequently hard and tedious. It’s rarely a smooth process, especially in B2B context with lots of stakeholders, and particularly in a technical domain. If a person who’s supposed to create content is also supposed to do 10 other things, they will keep delaying content creation.

You can have a dedicated content creation staff member, such as a technical content writer, a video presenter/editor, a podcaster, etc. Or you can also hire an agency or a freelancer to do the implementation work, and have, say, a PMM direct their work via 30-minute check-ins weekly.