7 Content Automations Used by Real Content Pros

Content material advertising and marketing can change into sophisticated and effortful in a short time.

Content material groups have to handle ideation, writing, modifying, proofing, publishing, promotion, analytics, and reporting throughout a crew 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 deal with what actually issues.

So, to encourage you and present you not solely what’s doable but in addition the type of issues which can be actually price automating, we requested three consultants to share their favourite workflows.

You possibly can’t automate all the things, however you’ll be able to automate your whole content material manufacturing workflow.

My interviewees use Airtable as a “central base of operations,” as Tommy Walker places it. A base like that controls all the things:

• Subject concepts with key phrases and their SEO data.
• 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 also known as a Zap (coined by one of many automation device suppliers Zapier).

All of our consultants have this sort of central base, and I assume it’s laborious to withstand having one when you begin automating issues. So right here’s a kind of programs 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 keyword clustering proper inside Ahrefs, so that you received’t have to determine it out later on.

Tip

Key phrase clustering lets you group key phrases with the identical intent — and also you’ll come throughout these rather a lot (e.g., “automotive insurance coverage” and “auto insurance coverage)”.

All it is advisable to do is click on the Cluster by Mother or father Subject tab within the Matching phrases report in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. You may also export the record and use it in Airtable, Notion, or comparable.

Returning to our central content material base, it’s essential to notice that not everybody might want to go to it often. As Tommy identified, a content material automation system can combine with processes your teammates comply with (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 may also have folks fill out varieties that can feed into system. As an illustration, gross sales crew might use a kind like that to request new content material without having to enter your Airtable setup.

Caitlin confirmed me how she automates assigning duties to 3 forms 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 temporary to the author’s Google Sheet. A Zap is then triggered by the brand new row in Google Sheets, which provides the project date and sends an e mail to the author, notifying them of their new project.

Right here’s what the setup of this half appears to be like 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 evaluate. 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, temporary, and phrase depend to the reviewer’s Google Sheet.

On prime of that, this automation sends an e mail to the reviewer notifying them of the project. And right here’s the cool half: the e-mail will differ relying on whether or not article is a totally new one or a second evaluate. Right here’s how one can set this up in Zapier.

When the reviewer is completed, they test “Carried out” and choose a discipline in a “Subsequent steps” dropdown of their sheet to mirror whether or not the article is authorized 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 mechanically modifications the standing within the author’s Google Sheet. And to ensure the author received’t miss that standing change, there’s an automatic e mail notification, too.

Lastly, we’ve got 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 completed, the editor modifications the standing of their sheet, and provides any feedback in the event that they wish to, Caitlin receives this message:

You possibly can 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 the sort of automation.

First, Eric will present you how one can arrange Airtable in order that every time a brand new weblog submit 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 an enormous content material stock and wish to assist different groups entry it to be used in prospect calls or newsletters. You need to use one other of Caitlin’s workflows, which adds an AI-generated summary of all published articles to Airtable by way 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.

1. Eric notes down a key phrase concept in a Slack channel with a predefined hashtag.
2. A Slack bot confirms including the key phrase to Airtable, appended with a hyperlink to the Airtable base.
3. Now that the key phrase is within the key phrase record, Eric can add search engine optimisation 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 certain you’ll respect this workflow.

1. The set off has two situations: the subject should attain the “temporary wanted” standing and a short should not have already been created.
2. The motion: a Google doc is created which acts because the template for the content material temporary. The doc already contains some data from Airtable handed down by way of variables such because the key phrase, subject, and format.

Right here’s inspiration from Tommy Walker, sharing how one can automate podcast manufacturing by connecting just a few completely different instruments to Airtable.

Listed below are the steps:

1. Tommy sends out an invite to e-book a time slot for an episode through Calendly.
2. When the visitor books a time, this creates a brand new document in Airtable with standing “Booked” and their particulars stuffed.
3. This additionally triggers Google Drive to create a brand new folder and two subfolders inside in (one in all them is for the visitor to add their headshot).
4. Importing a headshot into the folder notifies the designer.
5. Subsequent, an E-mail goes out to e-book a precall with the visitor.
6. Now, Tommy can click on the “Create web page” button proper inside Airtable which creates a web page and a weblog submit in WordPress (how cool is that!).
7. As soon as the published is full on YouTube, it goes into the RSS feed in Castmagic. This enables Tommy to make use of the device to create a transcript and use an AI chatbot on it.

You understand how there’s no notification when somebody uploads a brand new file to Google Drive for you? You continue to have to manually notify that particular person concerning the file which feels very handbook; it appears like doing the identical factor twice.

Till Google fixes that, Eric will present you how one can make a Zap to save lots of you time and peace of thoughts. Use this when working with designers, writers, and your video crew.

1. Set off: a contributor drops a file in a delegated folder in Google Drive.
2. 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 comparable, 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 totally automate your content material if you wish to rank properly on Google.

Is automating content material good for search engine optimisation?

TLDR; if you wish to totally automate content material, as in not even take a look at it earlier than publishing, it can more than likely be unhealthy for search engine optimisation, though Google is not against AI content per se.

Varied search engine optimisation experiments and case research have confirmed one factor past doubt: gaming the system can carry solely short-term beneficial properties. Google catches as much as unhealthy content material and spam eventually, whether or not that’s automated content material or not. And when this occurs, your visitors charts will appear to be this:

You may disclose making content material with AI, as Google suggests. However paradoxically, making an attempt to stick to the rules can compromise the consumer expertise (particularly for YMYL topics). Though customers don’t appear to be in opposition to AI content material usually (study), they’re prone to be cautious about it (study).

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 distinct reply. They could use AI for different issues like producing outlines, discovering content material gaps (take a look at our AI Content Grader), or in search of related subtopics, however not for precise writing.

Is content material automation for all crew sizes?

Our consultants agree: massive, or small, each crew can profit from content material automation.

 

It’s actually 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 one can use automation to make that scale doable. 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 singular tackle this:

 

The worth proposition for giant firms goes to be completely different based mostly on the scale. For greater firms, it’s extra about automating data 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 search engine optimisation successfully but safely, we’ve bought fourteen tried and tested ideas for you.

What are the widespread pitfalls of content material automation?

In line with our consultants, it is best 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, here’s how to avoid it.

One other pitfall is automating all the things simply because it’s doable.

Observe Eric’s recommendation: automate duties you’ve dealt with manually just a few 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.

Ultimate ideas

I’d wish to wrap this up with the primary content material automation tip for learners from every of our consultants. All of them appear to agree: good small.

In case you assault automation with a specific downside that you simply wish to resolve moderately than making an attempt to change into a content material automation professional, then you definitely’ll be taught by trial and error, you’ll be taught a lot faster, and also you’ll resolve issues for your self moderately than studying the summary. So begin small, and begin with a handbook course of that you simply do on a regular basis however would like to cease doing.

Acquired questions or feedback? Let me know on X or LinkedIn.