Content creation has never been static. Since the early days of social, the relationship between publishers and readers has blurred and warped into what's now the state of digital publishing in 2020. At RebelMouse, we started out as a social feeds aggregator and subsequently went viral as the "social front page." Since then, we've obsessed over the best ways to share content in today's social world despite its unpredictable seasons.
For years, the role of the publisher was isolated, and the inner workings of how content was created was confined to the hands of creators. Publishers once operated a behind-the-scenes news desk that facilitated content for its readers. Now it's become a gigantic whiteboard meeting attended by the entire social ecosystem.
Today's audiences are craving authenticity and transparency, which has created the rise of the social influencer and birthed a universe of creators. Whatever your message may be — whether it's to sell a product or simply inform your users — it must be validated by others.
That's why we've created a workflow for our publishing solution that nurtures a community of creators. Because in the current climate, it takes a village to build user loyalty. Here's what it entails:
A Synergetic Platform: We've created an intuitive process that allows each article to be created as a collective process between team members, influencers, or any contributor to your content experience.
Detailed Approval Workflows: A post submitted by a community member never goes live without the review and approval of an administrator. Writers with zero publishing rights can submit drafts for approval rounds, and drafts can also be saved at every stage of the editorial process.
Built for Creators
No matter how big your content team may be, each article likely starts with a core creator. Once completed, their draft content is typically submitted for review and revisions before publish. RebelMouse's Entry Editor now makes this process seamless for creators, so they can spend more of their time focusing on creating quality content that's optimized for both search and social.
The workflow for a creator is comprised of:
Content Creation: A creator begins crafting a post using our powerful publishing software, taking care to get the most out of our integrated media bar to increase reach and the likelihood of a click.
Tagging: The creator then organizes their content with applicable tags to make sure it shows up in all the right places on the site. These tags are also used as search keywords.
SEO Best Practices: Next, the creator optimizes their post for the search phrase they want to win in the SERPs. By targeting a specific phrase for each article, each piece of content has a better chance of ranking high against Google's search algorithm.
Submitting for Review: Finally, the creator submits their post for review before heading off to their next assignment.
Dynamic Collaboration
Creators can add annotations to drafts at any time during the editorial process. Within the platform, there's a companion notifications-and-comments feed for writers and editors to review annotations, as well as a timeline that tracks edits.
Add Annotations: If you're reviewing a post in the Entry Editor, you can add annotations to any part of the content for the author to see.
Receive Notifications: There's an alert icon that appears in the top-right corner of the Entry Editor each time there's a new annotation or comment added to the post.
Comment Thread: Keep the communication open with a thread of all comments and annotations that've been left on a post.
Methodical Transparency
The dashboard is where content creators, administrators, and contributors can see the current queue of posts and where each article stands in the content lifecycle. Based on a users' rights, they can also look at real-time stats to keep track of trends and any potential peaks or dips in traffic.
Stay up to Date
Never wonder where a post stands. Every phase of the workflow is clearly marked in the dashboard. If an article is still in review, it's marked with a yellow bar across the top of the draft.
Monitor Every Post
Within the dashboard, users can see the latest pieces of content in the queue, their status, and when they were created. Preview, edit, or search for any article right from within the dashboard.
Stay on Top of Stats
The post dashboard houses not only the post queue, but also customizable statistics on performance, including the number of pageviews for each post and on site overall. Posts can be further filtered by date published, author, and keyword. The metrics available to each user are dependent on a member's role on the platform. For example, an editor may not be able to see as many stats as a user with administrative rights.
Improve Your Content Workflow
The new content workflow is designed to make each step of the content lifecycle intuitive and easy to control. Administrators are able to see the flow of content being published, and can quickly note any turns in reach, engagement, or even publishing cadence.
At RebelMouse, this workflow is just one part of our CMS that's helped launch new media powerhouses like Axios and The Dodo. It's why legacy brands like United chose our platform to launch their content hub.
Start optimizing your content and its lifecycle today. We launch sites fast. We also offer strategy services to make sure your media property reaches its biggest audience at scale while still generating revenue. Let's create something together today.
