A common challenge faced by many e-commerce businesses is balancing deliverability and quality in content production. Both are important aspects of running a successful business, but quality should never be sacrificed to meet a deadline. First-rate content is a key aspect of an effective marketing strategy, so pumping out subpar copy without an editorial process won’t help you meet your goals.
When you strike the right balance between timely delivery and exceptional content quality, you can ensure you’re not only meeting deadlines but also engaging meaningfully with your target audience. In this post, we’ll take you through how to ensure you meet your content deliverability goals without sacrificing quality, including why you should:
- Prioritize projects and tasks.
- Set realistic deadlines.
- Analyze and streamline processes.
- Foster a collaborative environment.
- Implement quality assurance.
- Outsource content editing services.
Why You Need Fast Delivery and High Quality
In today’s crowded marketplace, a fast content production process is essential for staying relevant and maintaining a competitive edge. But while fast content production is important, the quality of your content matters just as much (if not more) to your audience. Potential customers look to your business as the authority on your product or service, and if your content is low quality or contains errors or misinformation, it can damage your authority and hurt your brand’s credibility.
Essentially, a successful content marketing strategy needs both effective, well-written content and a consistent publication timeline. Rapid delivery demonstrates innovation and boosts the visibility of your business, while high-quality content fosters brand loyalty and trust with your customer base. Next, let’s take a look at how you can see results by balancing deliverability and quality in your business’s content plan.
Prioritize Projects and Tasks
If you’re rushing to meet a deadline, the quality of your content is likely going to suffer. As part of your content plan, be sure to manage your team’s time effectively by prioritizing projects based on their importance and expected publication dates. Create a detailed content calendar to share with your team that outlines the projected deadlines for each stage of content production, from research and ideation to drafting, editing, and publishing.
Set Realistic Deadlines
While accelerating content creation deliverables may seem like the best way to gain new customers, it’s important to be realistic with your strategy. Collaborate with your team to establish realistic timeframes, including prioritizing faster turnaround times for more important projects.
When planning your content calendar, be sure to consider the complexity of the work, available resources, and potential challenges (such as busier seasons). Avoid overcommitting to unrealistic timelines that could lead to rushed and subpar work and negative testimonials from unhappy customers. After all, when it comes to setting and meeting deadlines, it’s better to under promise and overdeliver.
Analyze and Streamline Processes
To improve the efficiency of your content production process, identify the most labor-intensive, time-consuming tasks and implement templates and AI tools to smooth processes and improve productivity. Templates and AI tools reduce the manual work involved and save time on tasks such as outlining and drafting.
While AI writing tools may not produce content that meets your business’s quality standards, they can produce a high volume of content quickly. This content can have a place in your content marketing plan if it’s thoroughly edited and fact-checked prior to publication. It’s essential that all your business’s content, whether written by a human or AI generated, is accurate and reflects your desired brand voice.
Communicate Expectations to Your Content Team
Encourage open communication within your content team to ensure everyone is aligned with project goals, timelines, and quality standards. At the start of a project, clearly communicate expectations and conduct check-ins to provide feedback and address any challenges or roadblocks early on. Business communication platforms such as Slack promote content collaboration and a free flow of ideas. They also reduce how long it takes for team members to resolve content issues – and when issues are addressed in a timely manner, it results in faster publication.
Implementing a style guide is another way to ensure brand consistency across platforms and reduce questions or confusion from your content team. It also boosts brand recognition and outlines cohesive content guidelines for issues such as dialect and spelling conventions, streamlining the editorial process and producing high-quality content. If you don’t already have a brand style guide for your business, check out this list of first-rate corporate style guides for inspiration.
Implement Quality Assurance
Establish a comprehensive content quality assurance process to review and validate content before publishing. Not only does this ensure your content is high quality, but it also saves your team time in the long run. If you have an effective quality control process, it saves you from having to correct errors or address inaccurate information after publication. What should you check for when conducting quality assurance? Besides reviewing content to ensure it complies with your style guidelines, check that the information is current, factually accurate, and error-free.
Quality assurance goes a long way in boosting website traffic and maintaining credibility with your existing customers. If your team is busy with other aspects of the business and lacks the bandwidth to take on this task alone, consider hiring a freelance editor to check the quality of your content.
Outsource Content Editing Services
Consistently editing and proofreading all content published by your business can be time consuming and, at times, costly. And if your content marketing team is using its time and resources to properly edit content, then it can take away from other essential tasks and projects (after all, there’s only so many hours in a week).
If you outsource your content editing to a team of freelancers, it allows you to prioritize marketing strategies and content production without sacrificing quality. Freelance editing teams are equipped to handle high volumes of copy and can work around your content calendar. Outsourcing editing also gives your content a fresh perspective that an in-house editing team can’t provide.
In Summary
As an ecommerce business, your content is what drives potential customers to your website and keeps them on your page. To expand your reach, you need more than just fast deliverables – you need high-quality content that stays top of mind for your customers.
Do you want to take your content marketing strategy to the next level? Have your business’s content professionally proofread and edited by our team of experts. We’ll give you your time back by taking copy editing and proofreading off your plate and ensuring your content always hits the mark with your target audience. Schedule a call with our team today to learn more about how professional editing services can help you grow your business and meet your content goals.
