How Marketers Can Adapt Their Workflows for Real-Time Content (and Why They Need to)
As social channels such as TikTok, Instagram Stories, and Facebook Live increase in popularity, so does the demand for real-time content. Audiences now expect instant updates, they want to see relevant content as it happens. In order to capitalize on such demand, marketers need to catch their audience’s attention while an event is happening, or a topic is trending.
According to a survey by Libris, 63% of marketers say that the ability to locate and share visual assets quickly is more important than ever. Many brands know that they should be creating real-time content, however, it can be challenging to actually implement an effective process that caters to this.
And while most marketers have a defined workflow for traditional content, which can be scheduled using a variety of tools, the process differs for real-time content. This type of content involves more urgency, meaning marketers have less time to brainstorm, plan, and get ideas approved.
Every brand’s content workflow varies, but there are some steps that every marketing team can take to incorporate more real-time content, and be more responsive when required.
Set up alerts or notifications
The key to succeeding with real-time content lies in being able to post and interact on designated platforms as things are happening. With traditional content, there’s less urgency, and planning can be more flexible. With real-time content, timeliness is crucial.
Marketers need to set up notifications or alerts to monitor major news and conversations which resonate with their audience. By using tools like Google Alerts or Socialmention, marketers can stay on top of current events, and decide whether or not they want to create real-time content around a trend.
Marketing teams that post real-time content on numerous channels should designate team members to monitor specific keywords and news on each platform to spot opportunities quickly.
Define a submission process
Depending on the channel, real-time content can involve numerous creators for the various elements, including artwork, videos, and copy. Once there’s an opportunity to create real-time content, it’s essential for marketing teams to have an easy way to get content creators to collaborate and submit materials for internal review.
Marketers could consider using collaboration tools like Trello or Asana to manage real-time content, and track tasks associated with it and its overall progress.
Teams will also need a safe place to store their real-time content files, such as video, images, audio, and documents. Google Drive and Dropbox are excellent tools for marketers to use to store, organize, and access items across any device.
Designate content approvers
Traditional content tends to have a longer timeline, and can involve multiple approval checks in the process. Typically, the more approvers engaged in a content workflow translates to more time for approval. When it comes to producing real-time content, marketers are working against the clock to deliver.
Since speed is crucial, it’s vital to keep approval rounds to a minimum. Marketers should evaluate their current content workflow by including people who are essential to the process, and eliminating anyone who may not be.
To help speed up the approval process, marketers or agencies should have specific approvers for each social network or type of content. For example, one person who reviews and approves Instagram Stories, and another who approves all live stream or video ideas.
Use an approval automation tool
One of the best ways marketers can speed up the process for real-time content is to use an approval automation tool. Instead of sending copy or ideas back and forth for approval via email, they can use a tool to keep everything in one place, and send automatic reminders to approvers when there’s content ready for review.
An approval automation tool ensures the right people review the real-time content before it goes live, while it can also help to keep content error-free and compliant.
The approval process for live streams is generally different, in comparison to other kinds of real-time content. For this type of content, marketers should get approval on the primary talking points before going live. This will help ensure that everyone participating is on the same page, and everything goes as smoothly as possible.
Keeping up with the demand for real-time content
According to Statista, 500 million people use Instagram Stories every day, while Facebook says that it has now facilitated more than 3.5 billion live streams since 2016, with the daily average continuing to double year over year. The demand for real-time content has never been higher.
Speed is a significant factor when producing real-time content, therefore, marketers and agencies must adapt their current workflow to accommodate this type of process. Marketers with a defined, documented process for real-time content are more likely to be successful in creating and publishing it, compared to those who don’t plan ahead.
