Team Collaboration Within Marketing Hub? 🧐

[rrcorgan]

Heya! I'm a copywriter/part of an inbound marketing writing team, and I'm helping my team figure out ways to use HubSpot Content Assistant and ChatSpot as part of our delivery workflow. SO MUCH COOL STUFF TO UNCOVER...but it's led me to wonder whether moving some of our collaborative drafting/editing/approval processes from Google Docs to HubSpot CMS would let us take better advantage of these tools, and other recently-released tools like the approvals system. (It probably definitely would.) 

Problem is figuring out a streamlined, intuitive way for writers, editors, client services teams, and clients to collaborate within HubSpot the way we currently do within Google Docs. I'm sure someone else has figured out how to do this -- anyone have any best practices/tips/tricks? Help a girl avoid reinventing the wheel? 

If anyone's got secrets to spill, I'm all ears. OR if you're trying to figure out something similar, LMK, let's put our heads together and brainstorm! 🤪

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

Hi @rrcorgan with the new AI tools I can definitely see the appeal of moving your writing workflow and approval processes to HubSpot. Here are a few ideas that might help with transitioning to HubSpot natively for your process.

1 - I would use a whiteboard tool to map out the current process as-is, something like Lucid Chart, Miro, Clickup, Figma, or even a Google Slides doc so you have a full visualization of the process, approvals, people, etc.

2 - Once you know the current process, add comments for how you could change the process to move it to HubSpot based on the tools available

3 - Map out the ideal future state for the process within HubSpot

It's important to make sure everyone understands how the process will work when making a big change like this that involves multiple roles.

Being able to Comment on various assets in HubSpot depends on your subscription - for example, you have to have Marketing or CMS Hub Pro or Enterprise to comment on blogs.

There was a fairly recent update that allows replies to be threaded and also for comments to be marked resolved - these two features make it easier to incorporate an approval workflow into HubSpot directly.

The content approval overview that @BérangèreL shared is excellent if you have Marketing or CMS Hub Enterprise, otherwise you can incorporate other approval methods.

One team I worked with added emojis to the blog title for the blog posts to indicate the status - these are removed as a last step before publishing.

(This method is so much easier for website and landing pages where there is a separate internal name for the page from the page title).

Depending on your approval process, you could either assign each team member with an approval emoji (each one being unique) that indicates they've approved the post.

If the approval flows in a sequence - the first person could add their emoji to indicate they are reviewing it, when they are done, they can change it to a thumbs up and add the emoji for the next reviewer in the process, and so on.

The post is fully approved when it has the correct number of thumbs up.

When it has final approval, you could use a green check:

Comments would be used for any revision requests, etc. much like they would be with the comments in Google Docs. 

[dtwuensch]

Am looking for updates on best practices for small businesses using HubSpot Professional to review HubSpot blogs for internal comment prior to publication?

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@dtwuensch the built in comment feature is really great for internal comms, but unless you have the content approval feature included with Enterprise, there isn't a good way to manage the review process without tracking it externally in some way.

[BérangèreL]

Hey @rrcorgan, I hope that you are well!

We are delighted that you ask our Community!

First, I'd like to share this article "Approve HubSpot content" that might be of interest to you.

I'd like to ask some of our top experts on this topic: Hi @Emmanuelle, @Phil_Vallender and @Jnix284 do you have any tips to share with @rrcorgan, please?

Also, if anybody else has anything to add and/or share, please feel free to join in the conversation 🙂

Thank you and have a fantastic day!

Best,
Bérangère

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

Hi @rrcorgan with the new AI tools I can definitely see the appeal of moving your writing workflow and approval processes to HubSpot. Here are a few ideas that might help with transitioning to HubSpot natively for your process.

1 - I would use a whiteboard tool to map out the current process as-is, something like Lucid Chart, Miro, Clickup, Figma, or even a Google Slides doc so you have a full visualization of the process, approvals, people, etc.

2 - Once you know the current process, add comments for how you could change the process to move it to HubSpot based on the tools available

3 - Map out the ideal future state for the process within HubSpot

It's important to make sure everyone understands how the process will work when making a big change like this that involves multiple roles.

Being able to Comment on various assets in HubSpot depends on your subscription - for example, you have to have Marketing or CMS Hub Pro or Enterprise to comment on blogs.

There was a fairly recent update that allows replies to be threaded and also for comments to be marked resolved - these two features make it easier to incorporate an approval workflow into HubSpot directly.

The content approval overview that @BérangèreL shared is excellent if you have Marketing or CMS Hub Enterprise, otherwise you can incorporate other approval methods.

One team I worked with added emojis to the blog title for the blog posts to indicate the status - these are removed as a last step before publishing.

(This method is so much easier for website and landing pages where there is a separate internal name for the page from the page title).

Depending on your approval process, you could either assign each team member with an approval emoji (each one being unique) that indicates they've approved the post.

If the approval flows in a sequence - the first person could add their emoji to indicate they are reviewing it, when they are done, they can change it to a thumbs up and add the emoji for the next reviewer in the process, and so on.

The post is fully approved when it has the correct number of thumbs up.

When it has final approval, you could use a green check:

Comments would be used for any revision requests, etc. much like they would be with the comments in Google Docs.