There's just no escaping that, in this day and age, content (and high-quality content at that) is critical to the success of an organisation. In fact, 81% of marketers say their organisation now views ‘content’ as a business strategy.
So, why are we still struggling to have efficient processes around content creation?
63% of B2B marketers attribute low success with their content to content creation challenges — B2B Content Marketing 2021 Report
After a number of virtual trips to conferences and events over the past two years, it was no surprise to us to hear that one of the most cited challenges for our content peers was understanding the cost of content, and how businesses can make savings — without compromising on quality.
To calculate how much content creation costs your organization, you will need to quantify the following factors:
Consider the number of content types (webpages, blog posts, case studies, etc.) and the volume of each content type for either a specific project or during a typical time period such as a month.
Consider how many hours go into each stage of production, across all people involved, from briefing stage through to publishing stage.
Use the average hourly staff rate, or, if using contractors or freelancers, the average salary for a content writer in the United Kingdom is £48,750 per year (or £25 per hour).
When you have worked out these figures, use the following formula to understand the cost:
We’ve discovered first-hand, whilst running our own events, that using traditional content operations (such as Word docs or Google docs for writing and spreadsheets for status tracking) to create content, averaged out at massive 30.1 hours per web page!
Perhaps this isn’t so hard to believe when we consider the sheer number of stages and people that a single item of content typically goes through in order to reach the ‘publish’ point:
With processes involving this many stages, it means that the size of your content effort should not be underestimated.
The growth of content strategy has no doubt bolstered the accepted understanding that businesses need to provide authentic, valuable content to their audiences. As the discipline of content strategy matures, now comes the need for turning strategy into a reality. This is where Content Operations (ContentOps) comes in.
💡 See also: Calculating the cost of creating high-quality content where Lagom Strategy’s Founder, Liam King talks about the challenges of content creation and how he works out the costs when working with clients.
A typical response to calculating the cost of content creation is pure shock at the time and cost it can involve; often followed quickly by the question: “How can we can cut this down?!”.
A good place to start is to try and understand the points of friction that may be ‘bloating’ your existing process.
For example, do you experience these frustrations when creating content in your organisation?
On top of the ‘frustration’ element, the points of friction above will undoubtedly be adding time to the overall content creation process. But, when you introduce a ContentOps philosophy to an organisation, you can really modernise the way you create content, and thereby increase levels of efficiency:
Employing a ContentOps philosophy can allow your organisation to scale its operations, whilst keeping high-quality content in a continuous delivery pipeline.
💡 See also: Content Creation: The Essential Guide, where we unpack a number of topics, including how to develop a plan for creating content and how to design your content creation process using ContentOps.
Does such a tool exist?
Of course!
ContentOps is the next stage after you have already defined your content strategy and before you deliver any content to your audience.
It’s the ‘people’, ‘processes’ and ‘technology’ that are required to create content across an organisation:
A Content Operations Platform, like GatherContent, is the technology that facilitates efficient content creation.
How do we do it?
There's just no escaping that, in this day and age, content (and high-quality content at that) is critical to the success of an organisation. In fact, 81% of marketers say their organisation now views ‘content’ as a business strategy.
So, why are we still struggling to have efficient processes around content creation?
63% of B2B marketers attribute low success with their content to content creation challenges — B2B Content Marketing 2021 Report
After a number of virtual trips to conferences and events over the past two years, it was no surprise to us to hear that one of the most cited challenges for our content peers was understanding the cost of content, and how businesses can make savings — without compromising on quality.
To calculate how much content creation costs your organization, you will need to quantify the following factors:
Consider the number of content types (webpages, blog posts, case studies, etc.) and the volume of each content type for either a specific project or during a typical time period such as a month.
Consider how many hours go into each stage of production, across all people involved, from briefing stage through to publishing stage.
Use the average hourly staff rate, or, if using contractors or freelancers, the average salary for a content writer in the United Kingdom is £48,750 per year (or £25 per hour).
When you have worked out these figures, use the following formula to understand the cost:
We’ve discovered first-hand, whilst running our own events, that using traditional content operations (such as Word docs or Google docs for writing and spreadsheets for status tracking) to create content, averaged out at massive 30.1 hours per web page!
Perhaps this isn’t so hard to believe when we consider the sheer number of stages and people that a single item of content typically goes through in order to reach the ‘publish’ point:
With processes involving this many stages, it means that the size of your content effort should not be underestimated.
The growth of content strategy has no doubt bolstered the accepted understanding that businesses need to provide authentic, valuable content to their audiences. As the discipline of content strategy matures, now comes the need for turning strategy into a reality. This is where Content Operations (ContentOps) comes in.
💡 See also: Calculating the cost of creating high-quality content where Lagom Strategy’s Founder, Liam King talks about the challenges of content creation and how he works out the costs when working with clients.
A typical response to calculating the cost of content creation is pure shock at the time and cost it can involve; often followed quickly by the question: “How can we can cut this down?!”.
A good place to start is to try and understand the points of friction that may be ‘bloating’ your existing process.
For example, do you experience these frustrations when creating content in your organisation?
On top of the ‘frustration’ element, the points of friction above will undoubtedly be adding time to the overall content creation process. But, when you introduce a ContentOps philosophy to an organisation, you can really modernise the way you create content, and thereby increase levels of efficiency:
Employing a ContentOps philosophy can allow your organisation to scale its operations, whilst keeping high-quality content in a continuous delivery pipeline.
💡 See also: Content Creation: The Essential Guide, where we unpack a number of topics, including how to develop a plan for creating content and how to design your content creation process using ContentOps.
Does such a tool exist?
Of course!
ContentOps is the next stage after you have already defined your content strategy and before you deliver any content to your audience.
It’s the ‘people’, ‘processes’ and ‘technology’ that are required to create content across an organisation:
A Content Operations Platform, like GatherContent, is the technology that facilitates efficient content creation.
How do we do it?
Becky is a Product Marketing Manager at GatherContent. She has 10+ years working in marketing executing affiliate, content, display, mobile, search and social campaigns for high profile clients across various sectors including Travel, Entertainment and Oil & Energy.