I’ve been helping a couple of organisations recently to build a sustainable content creation capability, so I’m sharing 5 building blocks to embedding agile content creation in your business.

The first two points are two cornerstones in your brand strategy, which you can define in a 2-day brand sprint.

1. Know yourselves

This might sound hippy dippy or just plain basic, but I’ve been surprised how many organisations don’t know who are they are, what they stand for, and in some cases why they exist. That foundation of identity must be set before you can make any meaningful communication at all. A point of view is requires the ‘point’ - a perspective demands a reference, and a message without context is nothing.

Your purpose, vision and mission are at the core of your brand - the ‘why’ and the ‘what’. You values are the ‘how’ - and they help define your brand style, tone and personality.

2. Know your Audience & Platforms

Who are you speaking to? And how do you want to reach them? What platforms are right for both the audience and the type and tone of messages you want to publish?

You can answer these questions in the brand sprint. Those answers will determine the output formats of your content capability.

Marty Neumeier’s book 'Zag' talks about pairing focus with differentiation, combined with trends, and wrapped in communication.

Which media touch points can you use to best explain yourself and are used by the types of customers you want to reach? These range from your owned platforms, like your website and emails, through 3rd party platforms like LinkedIn, Medium and podcasts for thought leadership, to Instagram and TikTok for small doses of inspiration - all of which have a place in your customers’ journey from awareness to purchase.

[Pic: extracts from the Brand Sprint Canvas on Miro]

3. Embed a cadence

Creating a working rhythm which is sustainable and delivers continuous output is critical to getting your content operation going, and this is where some of the Agile principles come in.

I’ve created a simple Content Kanban board which helps run the process.

• You add your content jobs into the ‘cards’ in the backlog column far left.

• Each card can contain notes, links to source content & contact details; and you can assign each card to various team members depending on what stage in the process they’re at.

• At the beginning of every Sprint (could be a week or a fortnight) you decide which items you’re going to tackle that Sprint, and move them into the ‘In This Sprint’ column.

• Every morning you run a quick stand-up meeting where you each determine what you’re going to do, based on what you did the previous day.

• Gradually the cards move across the board as you complete each stage in the process. Clearly the production process (moving from ‘Briefed’ to ‘In Review’) might take longer than a week.

• At the end of each sprint you can show what you managed to get through, and optimise your sprint planning for each cycle.

The process will be much quicker having completed the first two steps. An important foundation of the brief for every piece of content you create is the brand strategy and voice.

4. Build a bench of creators

In your squad you need:

• A product manager role, who coordinates the process, prioritising the backlog and running the sprint cycles and rituals.

• A strategist role who can see the big picture of what you are aiming to achieve when, how you measure success and where you need to focus.

• A content creation resource, the number and range of creators will depend on skillsets, scope of work, and the touch points you’re publishing to. You may need copy writing, graphic design and video & photo skills, and even coding.

Depending on the volume of work and you budget, you may opt for full timers, or a roster of trusted freelancers you can turn to as appropriate.

Ideally you will be able to develop a consistency of delivery with a team of collaborators who get to know the brand, and learn by doing together.

5. Learn by doing

As I’ve argued previously, the best way to learn is to start doing. It may feel uncomfortable or clunky at first, but doing is the only way to exorcise fear, unfamiliarity or hesitation. You will discover tips, hacks and tricks along the way, as well as learn what works.

You will also need to balance persistence with pragmatism: on one hand your audience needs to learn about you, discover you and get to know you, so you will need time to grow it - don’t expect a viral hit off the first strike. Spot early signs of success and build on them. On the other hand, it’s madness to expect different results from the same actions, so be ready to change and adapt what you’re doing, and therefore stop something which really isn’t making a difference.

In time and with every success, no matter how small at first, you will build confidence both within the content team and around it, among your stakeholders, and supporters, which will encourage you to become more innovative and creative as you develop.