3: How to incorporate Clearscope in your content workflow

If you produce more than a few pieces of content per month, you no doubt have a team and existing workflow in place. In order to maximize your content marketing efforts, you’ll want to bring your team into the mix by integrating Clearscope into your content workflow.

Today we’ll share a number of useful ways to integrate Clearscope into your team’s workflow to help you delegate, organize, and manage your content throughout the process.

Let’s get started.

Delegate Clearscope Reports to Your Team

Once you’re comfortable running reports and optimizing content yourself, you may want to start delegating some tasks (eg. running reports, building content outlines, optimizing content) to your writing team.

If you’re working with in-house writers, the simplest way to bring them on board is to give them access to the same data and features you have by inviting them to your Clearscope account.

Invite Users to your Clearscope Account

You can add additional users and manage user permissions by clicking on 'Account' in the nav bar and selecting 'Users' from the dropdown menu. New users can be invited to your organization by clicking on the 'Invite user' on the top right-hand corner of the interface.

If you work with freelance writers and you don’t want them having access to your organization’s data, then sharing individual reports may be a better option.

Share a Clearscope Report

You can toggle any Clearscope report to be shared by clicking on the arrow next to the 'Optimize' button in your reports page and toggling the 'Enable shared link' slider:

Shared reports allow a writer to access and edit your Clearscope report in “Guest mode”. Writers can use shared reports to freely draft content in the Optimize text editor and view the Keyword Discovery, terms map, and competitor tabs without needing to log in.

Report-sharing is especially useful if you want to give your writers the autonomy to write and self-edit. This can help cut down on time-consuming revisions.

Once you’ve started delegating to your team by inviting them to your organization or sharing reports with them, you’ll need a reliable way to keep everyone organized and on the same page.

Content Organization and Management

Every team will approach content management differently. What’s most important about effectively managing your content workflow is organizing the right details at every stage of the process, not the specific tools and apps to use.

In this section, we’ll share a few tips on how you should think about organizing your workflow for better visibility and efficiency, starting with the content planner.

Use a Content Planner

Having a good content planner is a must. It gives your team one centralized document to keep tabs on key details and milestones at each stage of the process.

Whether you’re using management software or a simple spreadsheet, there are a handful of key details we recommend keeping track of in your content planner:

• Assigned to — Especially when working with multiple writers, it’s important to keep track of project ownership.

• Status — Your content planner should keep track of the status of every project that comes through the pipeline. Did you just assign an article? Are you in the outlining phase? Did you just publish a post? A content planner should answer all of these questions at a glance.

• Client — If you work with multiple clients, organize your projects by client name.

• Publish date — Document the publish date and associated URL for live posts.

If you’re starting from scratch, we recommend a simple spreadsheet approach. It’s a tool everyone’s familiar with and it works great for consolidating everything into a single neat, easily-accessible view.

Alternatively, if you’re looking to pare down your tech stack or you have a fairly small content operation, the labeling feature inside Clearscope’s interface makes for a functional “content planner-lite” option.

Label your Reports

You can create labels for your Clearscope reports by clicking on 'Reports' in the nav bar and clicking on 'New Label' on the left hand side of the interface.

Labeling each Clearscope report is then as simple as checking the box next to the report and selecting the labels you want to use in the 'Labels' dropdown that’ll appear right below the report search bar:

At a minimum, creating labels for each of your writers and clients is a simple way to keep your reports nice and tidy, especially as they start to accumulate (they add up fast!).

As completed reports start to come in, you’ll want to verify that the submitted work is complete and meets your team’s quality standard.

Check Submitted Work

Want a quick way to evaluate your writer’s work without needing to review each and every report? Head over to the ‘Reports’ page and look through your list of reports, noting word count and content grade on the right-hand column.

If anything looks amiss (eg. Joe’s B- article in the example above), open the questionable report and check for term gaps to see what’s missing.

If the article looks like it’s off the mark, you can read the article on “How to Use Clearscope to Structure Your Content” for ideas on how to improve the structure of the piece.

If the content checks all the boxes, then your content is officially ready for publishing.

Integrate with Your Existing Tools

So far we’ve covered a number of ways to help you delegate and organize your content using Clearscope. Now let’s talk about how to integrate Clearscope with some of the tools you’re already using.

Google Docs Add-On

There’s little doubt in our mind that Google Docs is the most popular tool around for collaborative written work.

So rather than try and reinvent the wheel, we created a nifty browser extension that overlays the full Clearscope functionality right on top of the Google Doc you’re already working on.

On top of familiar benefits like tracking revision history, real-time editing, and commenting on a working draft, now you can optimize your content for SEO all in one document.

WordPress Plugin

Clearscope also integrates with the predominant content management system for bloggers and businesses alike — WordPress.

If you draft or publish content using WordPress, the plugin we created lets you experience the full Clearscope functionality right inside your text editor. This makes the process of editing old posts especially convenient; no need to move your content around copy-and-paste style — the WordPress plugin will get the job done, hassle-free.

Export Your Data with a CSV File

If you’re an Excel wizard, this last one is for you. Exporting raw data may not be relevant to everyone, but if you’re in a client-facing role or have reporting responsibilities, it might just come in handy.

To export a raw CSV file of your keyword data, relevant terms, or competitor data, navigate to your report and find the download button to the far right of the page.

Exporting gives you the flexibility to integrate and manipulate your report data however you like, whether for reporting purposes or as a means of demonstrating the analysis that went into your work.

The Bottom-Line on Using Clearscope in Your Workflow

Every team has their own preferences, which is why we’ve shared a few flexible ways Clearscope can help support the way you delegate, organize, and manage your content workflow– whatever that might look like.

Remember, staying organized and having visibility on the important details of your marketing efforts is how you manage a winning content initiative that lasts.