Team motivation is critical, especially for your content marketing team.

They (and you) are generating dozens or even hundreds of ideas every week and it can take a creative toll. Creative burnout is a real danger for those who churn out tons of content for their clients.

So how do you inspire and motivate a team to do their best creative work for your content marketing?

We are going to cover 3 concrete team motivation ideas to help your content team generate better content ideas! All it takes is a toilet bowl, a feedback loop, and a question box.

The Toilet Bowl

If you are looking for content team motivation, then the easiest to implement is a toilet bowl meeting.

This is the opportunity to gather your content marketing team in a fun way that can also hugely benefit their creativity.

Make this a brief meeting where everyone can come up with some of the ideas that definitely don’t work and “flush” them out of their system.

Encourage your content team to write down all of their ideas on note cards or on a shared doc (note cards for a concrete image) and bring them to the toilet bowl. Have the team go around sharing their worst ideas, the ideas they never wanted to bring up, except now it is just for fun.

As they read off their terrible, terrible ideas, they can toss the note card in the designated “toilet bowl” (could be a trash can, could be an actual toilet bowl…whatever).

However, you will find that, from time to time, someone’s “bad” idea actually has some merit. For those times, give everyone in the group the freedom to “save” an idea. That person can grab the note card or “take over” the content idea.

It will then be their responsibility to work on that content idea and bring it back to the group during the feedback loop or finally dump it in the toilet bowl.

Make this lighthearted and fun and really encourage team members to write down any and all ideas for consideration. Even the bad ones can make for a good idea later on or at least make for a fun time to discuss content ideas.

The toilet bowl is a great way to engage in team motivation that isn’t critical but creative! Then, all the best ideas can come up in the feedback loop.

The Feedback Loop

The Feedback Loop is a small part of your regular weekly meeting. The idea is that most of your content marketing team is already working on content for the content calendar.

This section of the meeting is to evaluate new content ideas, which creates an opportunity for team motivation to inspire your content team and encourage better content ideas.

The secret: don’t reveal your opinion until the last minute.

Give everyone a chance to pitch their content ideas within a given time frame. Then, once everyone is done, let the team offer their feedback, and only then will you offer your feedback.

This does a couple of things:

• It makes the content idea generation process collaborative
• It encourages team members to think critically about content pitches
• It is far less intimidating for them to, essentially, pitch content ideas to peers first
• It makes the work on you much easier because, likely, the rest of the team will have the same or similar feedback to you anyway…meaning you can take it off your list of feedback

Your role isn’t to micromanage the content idea generation process but make sure the content calendar is running smoothly, the pipeline is filled appropriately, and that your team is working as efficiently as possible.

So the less you can manage the ideation process, the more time you have to do your job. Which makes the feedback loop a critical part of the team motivation and the content creation process!

Now, all you need is a question box.

The Question Box

The best thing you can do for team motivation for your content marketing team is to give them the space to ask questions freely and openly.

Even the most approachable managers are a little intimidating when you have a sensitive question to ask. Whether your team is wanting to ask about pushing back a deadline or asking if a creative direction works, posing the question to a superior can be difficult.

So, the question box comes into play as a self-monitoring discussion board.

Create a space, whether a document or a Slack channel or an email chain…whatever (please, not the last one!).

This will be the place where your team can pose any question they want. The secret sauce to the question box? You stay out of it.

Sometimes team motivation means staying out of their way and letting them come to a conclusion on their own. So have a point person to “lead” this question box but stay out of it yourself.

If the lead thinks this is a question that must be answered by you, then it will be their responsibility to bring it to your attention. Otherwise, let the content marketing team discuss amongst itself without needing to feel discouraged by asking a “stupid question” that they worry might get them fired or something wild.

By instituting a question box you are able to, again slip yourself out of the equation, encourage creativity among your team members, and inspire them to create the best content they can within their given parameters.

People love boundaries

Here’s the thing: people really do love having boundaries. It’s why so many of us get freaked out when you go near a high ledge without a rope or chain boundary…that little rope or chain is not going to help you if you start to fall, but it will make you feel safe enough to approach the ledge and peer down.

The toilet bowl, feedback loop, and question box are just 3 ways you can take a crack at team motivation by creating specific boundaries without feeling the need to throw up walls.

(Walls take a lot of time to build and aren’t easily torn back down)

But…what do you think? Have you implemented anything like this before? Fire off an email and let me know what you think.

I’d encourage you to check out the DSM Blog for more strategies to boost your content marketing team motivation. If you need help building out that content, then I’d love to chat (or fill out this short form).

As I like to say, I appreciate you, friend!