In your work, there are skills that are more important than others to achieve your goals and get tasks done. Skills that are specific to your experience and have lead you to your current role. It’s these skills that lead to the best results. A specialized workflow is a way of working together on a team based on maximizing the most valuable aspects of your skillset while also allowing for other team members to maximize the most valuable skills that they’re good at.
For example, if you’re an email marketer, you may be good at strategy and planning of an email campaign. You may also take on the job of writing copy yourself as part of crafting the messaging you’re going for. But because of the way you put together your email with your team, you may also be required to take on certain aspects like formatting your email’s content by writing some HTML code, which is not a good use of your skills.
"A specialized workflow is a way of working together on a team based on maximizing the most valuable aspects of your skillset while also allowing for other team members to maximize the most valuable skills that they’re good at."
Consequences of working outside your skillset
Besides being frustrating, these additional chores can also be time-consuming and lead to unintended consequences that eat up resources, and potentially delay getting your campaign out. And in the case of writing HTML code, because it can get pretty involved, it would be much better suited for someone who excels in that kind of work.
And that is the goal of a specialized workflow, to have work done the best way possible in order to not only eliminate the unnecessary stuff so you can do more of what you’re good at, but to also ensure overall quality. There are two ways to try and get to a more specialized workflow: by utilizing people, and by utilizing tools.
How to utilize people and tools
Figure out how to offload each task to someone on the team who is more qualified for it. If you don’t have someone available, consider taking advantage of the gig economy and outsource the work to a contractor. For example, a virtual assistant can help you handle repetitive tasks you can map out a reusable process for them to use. Or, a developer can properly code the HTML needed for building emails.
When using tools, you can use a project management app that allows you to break down tasks you’re having a hard with and assign them to the right team members. Specialized tools are ones that do very specific tasks, like a content editor for your custom-branded email.
The right tools for the right job
Similar to finding the right person for a task, it’s usually best to use tools with their own specialized traits, as opposed to using a tool which tries to do everything. As in the email marketer example, it’s often the case that the tool itself can create extra work in the first place. This usually happens with a tool which tries to do everything because it can have an interface full of options that make it confusing to use. It can also fall short on certain aspects, like editing content, when it’s better-suited for other areas, like managing your customer database.
What you want are specific tools that match up with certain parts of your marketing process. At the end of the day, a specialized workflow is more of an approach to keep in mind when looking for the right person or the right tool for a given task. It helps you work better and ensures work is done in the best way possible.
"...a specialized workflow is more of an approach to keep in mind when looking for the right person or the right tool for a given task. It helps you work better and ensures work is done in the best way possible."
We’ve developed Blocks Edit around a specialized workflow. Here’s how it works specifically for you and your team: as a marketer, manager, designer, developer, copywriter, or if you just review email content.
