Using a digital smart marketing workflow process can be complicated.
If you have been marketing your small business or blog you know it can be overwhelming at times. There are so many tasks to think about and to put into action.
You may not know where to even begin!
This is why you will need a smart marketing workflow process.
A workflow that is smart really helps if you can stay organized. Then go step by step with the essential marketing workflow via an online collaboration tool.
Table of Contents
The 5 Smart Process Essentials Are:
- Content Marketing.
- Email Marketing.
- Social Media Marketing.
- Online Public Relations.
- Search Engine Marketing.
Content Marketing For Your Process
Content marketing covers a lot of ground. It all starts with a plan. Then you must schedule posts and write posts. But it does not end there.
You will need to find images, quotes, infographics, design slideshares or make a video for each of these blog posts.
Next, you will need to have your content proofed and scheduled out. You can use free content tools to edit your posts. Grammarly is the most known spell checker that you can use for free.
I love reading my posts on mobile too – it’s a way to catch things that even your spell checker or grammar checker may have missed. (It can easily happen as we are all human.)
Finally, you will need to respond to comments and push the content out to external sites, and then re-purpose the content! It’s almost like going back to square one unless you use some tools along the way to help you. I love using Canva for re-purposing images.
However, you can make different sizes for Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Slideshare is another awesome tool to add to your content marketing tools.
Email Marketing
Once you have content marketing down it’s time to send out your email marketing campaign. This too is not as simple as it sounds.
You must come up with clever headlines so the email will be opened and read. Then you need to create copy that people want to read. Hubspot did a great piece on how to create catchy subject lines for your emails.
Once the emails are sent out you then must check your stats and learn from them.
See what you can do better for the next email campaign. Send another email to those that opened them with a follow-up email.
Social Media Marketing Workflow Process
Did you know you should be spending about 80% of your time promoting your content? And social media marketing is a good chunk of that percentage.
You can use social media scheduling tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, Co-Scheduler, Agorapulse, or MissingLettr to help schedule your content in advance.
Be sure to tag others when you do share their content. This can take some time and careful planning.
Don’t forget to use social media ads. Everyone thinks social media is FREE but really it’s not if you are marketing on social media.
This is especially true for Facebook as many of you know. It’s become a pay-to-play social network for marketers.
Also, be ready to share information when news breaks in your industry.
Finally engage with others on social networks. That’s why it’s called SOCIAL media.
Online PR For Your Workflow
Not only do you need to share across social networks but you need to get across other channels online as well. I love using BizSugar and Flipboard for these types of PR.
You could also produce press releases and send them to various online news sources. There are other websites that publish press releases like Newswire and Upwork to name a few.
Finding the right influencers in your niche market is key to your marketing workflow for this tactic.
Search Engine Marketing Workflow Process
What exactly is this Search Engine Marketing? According to Search Engine Land, it is: “Search marketing is the process of gaining traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts.”
Most of your digital marketing efforts are useless unless you are found online. This is where search engine marketing comes into play. It is integral to your SEO efforts too.
Google ad words and Bing are the two top paid search engines to use. This digital marketing method is great when you need an added boost to your marketing or if your blog or website is new.
Furthermore, search engine marketing is also a great method when you have a new product or service to sell from your website. You must define your budget, and schedule and then test, test, and test more.
This method of search engine marketing is not for the faint of heart by any means.
The Infographic – Digital Smart Marketing Workflow Process
The Infographic below is brought to you by Wrike online collaboration tool. Wrike is a flexible collaboration and works management app that fits the way you like to work.
Your Turn On Smart Marketing
What type of digital marketing workflow process are you using today? What tips can you add to these methods above? I’d love to know more in the comments below.
She has 30+ years of experience in marketing/advertising with 12 years of experience in content marketing, social media, blogging, and SEO.
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Some of this is going to come across curmudgeonly; I’m an older guy after all. lo
First, I’ve never gone out of my way to find influencers to help promote me without my doing something for them first. The only influencer I reached out to was Guy Kawasaki, and that’s because I helped him edit one of his books.
Second, I loved infographics when they first came out, but at a certain point they got big and unwieldy and I began to hate them with a passion. I like smaller images but when they get really big I can’t print the articles out into a pdf form to read them later because everything formats badly and things get cut off. They also don’t read all that well on smartphones.
Third… I still haven’t created an email list, so I can’t even do email! lol
With that stuff being said, I love, agree & do the content marketing piece, even without a team. I also do the social media marketing part, but I think I need to go at it harder. Whereas I love Twitter, and I get a lot of people sharing my articles there, I don’t see the numbers showing up on my blogs that Twitter shows me. That’s a project I need to work on.
Hi Mitch, LOL. I hear you. I think Triberr would help you, you using it yourself. It would take time but in the end it’s worth it. And Viral Content Bee is another good place you could try out as more and more people are using that one today.
I’m surprised you don’t do email but wait, you do, I get your blog posts via email. ??
I love infographics still as they are a quick way to understand something that is more visual.
Thanks for coming by Mitch on this one and have a great rest of your weekend. Hope you get some sunshine there, I know we’ve had lots of rain here!
Yesterday was perfect; today, rainy. That’s the central New York lifestyle. lol
I’m glad I don’t capture email addresses, especially with this GDPR thing looming.
I think you get email responses to comment because you check the box to get them.
Yes, that is correct. I’ve been working on my privacy policy here. I think I have about 20 hours to go, LOL. Always so much to do. Have a great day Mitch!
Hey Lisa,
Awesome! Workflows, checklists, systems – those are stuff I definitely need to work optimally.
They do really help. Over the time, when I look back I see having such systems have helped me a lot accomplishing things consistently.
When it comes to content creation it is not just easy as many bloggers think of. Right from the conception of the idea to promoting, there are many steps in between. And a workflow definitely helps!
Thanks for bringing this topic up!
Cheers,
Jane.
Hi Jane, thank you.
Yes, that’s the idea, it helps us to stay consistent.
I wish I could even get ahead more because when life comes at you, you may not be able to get that next post out, etc. I lost my dad last month and then got sick. It’s been a struggle to keep up even some a few posts in the que.
So with a workflow planned a little ahead for those emergencies it will help.
You are welcome and have a great day ahead Jane. Enjoy the weekend too. (It’s Friday!)
Hello Lisa,
I enjoyed your post.
Having a workflow process or standard operating procedure for your routine tasks can improve productivity a great deal.
For me, some of the essential points are:
– A standard process to follow (this way I don’t have to think as much when e.g. scheduling new tweets or publishing a blog post).
– Policies/rules/guidelines that keep me in check. E.g. I have to respond to customer request within a time period or always have social media posts queued up in the Buffer app.
– Metric capturing. If you want to improve your workflow, you need to know how well you are doing and where you can perform better. And you need some metrics to analyze for that. I collect metrics once a month for things like social media, email marketing, etc.
Thanks for the post,
Mathias
Hi Mathias, welcome to Inspire to Thrive. Thank you!
Yes, that standard process is key today. Thanks for that reminder, I need to update mine chart on that one. Some places I used to share no longer exist and new places have come into being a great resource.
Oh yes, customers must come first. I do that work before my own.
Those metrics are key too. We need to do know what is working and what is NOT working for sure.
Thanks for your input on this one and have a great day and weekend ahead Mathias.
Great post Lisa,
You have some awesome marketing work flows here, and I’m happy you made content marketing the first one, this shows how important it is in this our type of business – – and further confirms the cliche that “content is king.”
However, i also agree with the quote Prosper dropped that 20 percent of your efforts should go to content creation, while the remaining 80 percent goes to content promotion according to the experts, and that is where the other marketing work flows comes in.
Email marketing is something that should never be taken for granted especially in 2018 because if you ask me, I will say that having an active email list is the best thing that can happen to a marketer. Social media is also good, but they cannot be relied on. I just read your post few minutes ago about recent Twitter changes. Now, imagine you’ve build all your audience on the platform, and you didn’t know about this new rule, you account might be banned abi? And you will end up losing everything.
Overall, everyone should put more efforts into content creation and email marketing. Search engine marketing is also a good approach.
Thanks a lot for sharing Lisa.
Thank you Anil. YES, that is what I’ve read everywhere too! It’s hard to believe only spending 20% of your time generating content and 80% promoting it…..
Sometimes it feels like we spend so much time on the content generation vs. content marketing promotion of that content!
Yes – email marketing is very important too. I’ve been working on my list this year and must even do more going forward. Thanks for coming by on this one Anil. Sorry late responding – I’ve been under the weather.
Have a great day!
Hello Lisa,
Very informative post. I usually focus on three things SEO, Content and Social Media. These are some of my primary marketing tactics to bring some good amount of traffic to my blog. Its really help me a lot. SEO is always changing the world and you have to be aware of the recent changes. Social media is a place which helps you to share your content to a large audience base. Thanks for sharing these helpful tips here.
Have a Great Day 🙂
Vishwajeet
Thanks Vishwajeet. Do you focus on one more than another? They all seem to change so quickly today than ever before. We have to stay on top of it or fall behind. Thanks for coming by and have a great day Vishwajeet.
Great article as always. As far as I think Email Marketing is not dead yet. Recently I have used this method to gain loyal subscribers. And loyal customers. Online PR is not an everyone’s cup of tea, as it needs some hard earned money. But yes it’s very lucrative to spread the awareness.
Social Media Marketing is going to tough task day-by-day because each and every social media platform lowering the organic reach, so there is a need to evaluate social media marketing strategy. Thank you for this wonderful article.
Hi MotivationJet, thank you. I would agree, email marketing is definitely not dead. It just evolves. Online PR takes time too to work.Social media is changing constantly and faster than ever. You must really be on top of it to see gains. Thanks for coming by and have a wonderful weekend.
Hi Lisa,
I’m personally a big fan of both content marketing and SEO. They both require high-quality content, a great understanding of the audience as well as a good knowledge of how the search engines work. I focused my efforts on these two most of the time as that’s where most of the valuable traffic is. I rarely utilize social media, but when I do, it’s Twitter and Pinterest.
Thank you for sharing this great content!
Thanks Stefan, welcome to Inspire to Thrive. Yes, those 2 can surely bring in a lot of traffic. You must save a lot of time not using social media – especially Facebook? Wow! Thanks for coming by Stefan. I hope you have a great weekend.
Hello Lisa
Hope you are doing great
The marketing side of it is another story. A blog is just a piece of the tough puzzle. I love to enjoy email and social media marketing. and earning via affliate
Thanks for sharing this post
Do share more such informative post
Regards
Darleen
Hi Darlene, welcome to Inspire to Thrive. Yes, it surely is. There are so many puzzle pieces to this today and it keeps on growing too. Thanks for coming by and have a wonderful weekend!
Hello
Lisa,
Very informative post you have written as always. The marketing workflow process from your side is going to be very helpful for bloggers. Writing great content is not enough when we can’t make it viral, according to our expectations.
The marketing workflow process you have explained is very amazing. Here I have learned many things new and I love the infographic also.
Thanks for sharing.
Best wishes,
Praveen verma
Hi Praveen, thank you. Yes, in the beginning bloggers think it’s all about writing. I know I did! But after a while it’s not enough. You must MARKET yourself and your blog. It gets harder too as time goes on. Blogging is not for the faint of heart Praveen. Thanks for coming by and have a wonderful day!
One of the best things any company or blogger can do to ensure that they publish content consistently is to create a process or workflow for their content creation/blogging strategy.
You outlay all of the steps really clearly here and I definitely think both new and existing bloggers can benefit.
My task management tool of choice is Task Pigeon, but any system to create and manage your tasks is better than none.
Paul
Hi Paul, welcome to Inspire to Thrive. Yes, publishing consistently after years of blogging gets harder and harder. But having the right tools can make a difference. Thanks for coming by Paul and have a great day ahead.
Hi Lisa,
The first year I started blogging I thought it was a breeze. But then as my blog grew so did the responsibilities and I was like ‘whoa’ this is gonna take some work on my part.
You definitely have to love what you’re doing because if you don’t it will all seem like just another job.
I love this infographic and the way it summarizes each bullet. Short and sweet is how I like it.
As far as online PR goes, I’m making some changes to the new blog – I know, already LOL.
Not so much cosmetic stuff but I narrowed down my audience so things like my tagline and services are going to be updated.
I added the Twitter chat to my Google calendar. I don’t want to miss it.
Thanks for sharing this infographic with us. It’s true when you have a workflow things are more organized.
Hope you’re having a great day!
Cori
Hi Cori, LOL – yes, because we had such much to write about starting fresh 🙂
I’m definitely a short and sweet type of person. IF someone sends me a long email I may not respond or take longer, but if they keep it short I’ll respond right away.
Really – changes? What kind Cori?
Thanks for adding that to your calendar. Madalyn is awesome and I can’t wait to be on with her.
You are most welcome and have a wonderful weekend coming up Cori. I appreciate your coming by today.
Hi Lisa,
Blogging is not an easy task. Putting up good content for your readers is just the beginning. It’s the commenting and social sharing of others that work well. The organic reciprocity is so powerful when we do this.
The marketing side of it is another story. A blog is just a piece of the puzzle. I enjoy email and social media marketing. It’s the connection with others that I believe to enjoy the most. But this takes strategy also.
Great article and I just love your infographic! Hope things are warming up in your neck of the woods.
-Donna
Hi Donna, That’s for sure! I love that phrase “organic reciprocity”. It is a very powerful tactic.
Making connections is the best part I believe. It makes it REAL.
Thank you Donna for that.
BTW – did you get my email?
It’s warming up but I see more cold behind it and blizzards throughout the country – crazy April weather! Hold on to your hat and winter clothes a little longer 🙂
Hi Lisa,
What an incredible blog post. In my recent article that was published yesterday, I pointed out that blogging is not easy. It is not just about creating and publishing content, more is more involved.
As you pointed out in your article, you have to do the marketing aspect to maximize ROI. It can be overwhelming sometimes but you must do it, which why the 20/80℅ rule still stands.
In the area of content marketing I love to repurpose my old blog posts. It’s help me reach a more wider audience and increases my blog engagement.
I so much love your infographic Lisa.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Moss, Thank you 🙂
Blogging surely is not easy and it is not just about writing as many people think. Marketing is key to blogging too. How are you re purposing your old posts already Moss? It seems like you just got started….
You are welcome Moss and have a great day.
Hi Lisa,
Too much marketing work for a single post and people say blogging is easy..
But I would say once done correctly, you will see a good amount of people coming for it and gives a good growth to the blog.
I am currently doing some SEO marketing for my posts and using Google Ads for that. I have never used Bing Ads. Which one do you prefer Bing or Google Ads?
– Sanjeev
Hi Sanjeev, LOL Blogging is not that easy with everything that needs to be done today with so much competition. I prefer the Google ads over Bing but sometimes Bing can work well too. Not as much competition on that network and many do use it (I believe around 20% from what I’ve read)….Thanks for coming by Sanjeev and have a great day!
Hi Lisa,
Really Great Marketing Workflow right here!
Over the few weeks, I’ve been testing some SEO strategies for marketing my blogs and it’s been a great one.
This refers to “Search Engine Marketing” as said in your post.
Both for old and new sites.
All that is needed for this workflow to be super-duper effective is PLANNING!
Set plans and keep to them
You’d definitely see success over time.
Experts say “20% for Writing your Contents, and 80% for Promotion”
PS: Useful Articles will forever keep your visitors coming.
I haven’t written some contents for a while now on my blog tipsonblogging but the visitors keep coming as the articles are still relevant.
You know what I do is actually practical tutorials hehe! They keep coming again and again and again, practice-practice-practice and finally, SUCCESS!
Hope you’re having a great time?
Hi Prosper, Thank you. Oh yes, the old planning still rules with digital marketing. That is true too – the useful articles will continue to generate traffic. Do you ever do updates and re-purposing Prosper? Thanks for coming by and have a great rest of the week.