Navigating Digital Transformation

Content Marketer’s Guide to Digital Transformation

As a new year kicks off, businesses prepare for digital transformations and adopt new technologies to stay competitive. These long-term investments can rewire entire operations, including its existing content marketing strategy, to improve workflows and achieve new annual goals.

Digital transformation is more than just moving files to the cloud or updating legacy computer systems. It also involves transforming content marketing strategies, including investing in digital-first content and shifting toward more interactive formats.

Changing the way you create, distribute, and manage content can help your brand reach new audiences and increase visibility.

In this guide, we’re breaking down digital transformation tips for content marketers, including scaling content creation and measuring success.

What Is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation means integrating digital technologies into a business to create value. It might involve automating workflows, improving cybersecurity, and using data to make smarter decisions.

The four Ps of digital transformation are:

  1. People
  2. Project
  3. Process
  4. Platform

There are also many drivers of digital transformation. These include enhancing customer relationships, improving IT, and outranking competitors.

For content marketers, digital transformation (or digital marketing transformation) focuses on driving change through digital tools. As a result, you can improve content management, distribution, optimization, and other tasks.

Common digital transformation technologies include AI, machine learning, data analytics, and cloud computing.

Digital transformation is costly and challenging, but this process could generate an investment return if done successfully. 68% of respondents in a Deloitte survey said digital transformation is the single most crucial investment now and in the future for driving enterprise value.

Content to Refresh vs. Net New

Deciding whether to invest in new content or update old content is a common dilemma in content marketing circles. Creating a content marketing digital transformation framework can help. Determine what topics are converting and identify legacy content that could be easily updated and improved to rank. A digital transformation is an opportunity to start fresh so work with an SEO specialist to prioritize net new content and refresh opportunities to add to your framework.

Working with technologies like SEO tools and data analytics will help identify these opportunities quickly. For example, analytical tools might identify an old blog post from 3+ years ago that is still performing well with audiences. Optimizing this content can further extend its lifespan, maintain engagement, and boost SEO.

Data analytics tools also tell you which topics are trending on social media and search engines, which can influence your content marketing strategy.

For instance, create new pieces based on what people talk about on LinkedIn and other platforms. These new pieces can help drive more traffic to your site and improve the relevancy of your content.

When creating new content, it might be tempting to use AI for scalability on a time crunch, but beware as AI-generated content can impact Google’s performance and affect your SEO.

Aligning Style Guide with New Brand

In preparation for a digital transformation’s public launch and especially if a rebrand is occurring simultaneously, you’ll want your style guide to reflect the changes the company is making to its brand and content marketing strategy. Your guide should be comprehensive enough to cater to all active channels and give writers enough information about your company’s style, tone, and voice to meet your quality expectations.

Digital transformation can also ensure all content writers, marketers, and strategists are on the same page. Adhering to an updated style guide during a digital transformation will allow your marketing team to publish content that will still adhere to the brand post-launch. This will significantly reduce the need to refresh content post-launch since your writers will be working in advance with the proper resources.

Scaling Content Creation on a Tight Deadline

Getting new content out quickly is a challenge and digital transformation deadlines are intimidating no matter the team size. Agencies and digital tools can help your team tackle more in a short timeframe efficiently and cost-effectively.

Agencies like ContentWriters are great options for managing content creation and keyword research to deliver organic content as part of your digital transformation framework. Calibrating with your agency partner will allow you to outsource high volumes of net new or refresh assignments while your in-house team takes on other time-sensitive projects tied to digital transformation.

Tools that can help your marketing team include Grammarly and Hemingway Editor which streamline spell check, grammar, and readability. Project management tools like Asana will help your team stay on track for each phase of the digital transformation and provide visibility to key stakeholders.

Content Marketing Best Practices Post-Launch

Before a digital transformation is completed, and if a new website is launched in the process, you’ll need to think about key responsibilities as a content marketer post-launch. Here are some important considerations:

  • What tools will be used to publish content and engage with your audience? Whether you’ll be using your same tech stack like WordPress or Hootsuite or migrating to new platforms, you’ll want to ensure audience personalization isn’t compromised in the process. Hold on to that valuable institutional and customer data that informs your content strategy.
  • Will your publishing cadence change? Ramping up your blog posts will mean you need to prepare operationally to review and publish more frequently. Decreasing the monthly content investment means more time to write long-form, SEO-optimized content that converts and provides value to your audience. Be prepared for how your publishing schedule may impact KPIs post-launch.
  • How will you measure content performance after digital transformation? There are a lot of moving parts in a digital transformation so arm yourself with the data in the event of a shift in content performance post-launch. You’ll need to troubleshoot any issues quickly and be able to measure content performance within this new context.

KPIs to Monitor in Successful Digital Transformation Strategies

Analytical tools will help you determine which content pieces generate the most bang for your buck. Here are some key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor with these platforms.

  • Conversions: The number of people who take an action, such as clicking a call-to-action button (CTA), after reading your content
  • Page time: The amount of time people spend reading your content
  • Organic traffic: How many people end up on your content after clicking an unpaid search result
  • Paid-for traffic: How many people view your content after clicking a paid ad on a search engine or social media platform
  • Social sentiment: What people are saying about your content on social networks

Your Writing Partner for Digital Transformation

Investing in data analytics, the cloud, and other digital technologies can streamline content creation and drive value in your business, but preparing for digital transformation is a big undertaking. Managing content in-house can be overwhelming alone as your team adapts to new workflows and technologies.

Partnering with ContentWriters ensures you have a reliable team of industry-specialized experts to handle your content needs with a major deadline fast approaching. Let ContentWriters be your trusted partner during this transition. Reach out today to enhance your content strategy and achieve your transformation goals.

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