How to Build a Content Backlog

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For every 10 marketing ideas you draft, we believe you should throw away nine. Does that seem wasteful? We think of it as weeding. Just as a gardener expects only a few of the many seeds they sow to thrive, so too should content marketers allow many ideas to gestate but only the strongest to blossom.

This isn’t how most marketing teams operate we find, but I believe it fosters an editorial ruthlessness that keeps your content quality high. It’s how you defend your brand and teach readers that there’s more good stuff where that came from. It’s also practical. Teams that try to create everything burn out. And why? Do less, but do it better.

What is a content backlog?

A content backlog is a digital document where you add, rank, sort, and delete a list of all possible content ideas in order to select only the best. It’s your team’s source of content truth. Every time you have capacity to create more, draw an idea from your backlog.

Backlogs are useful because people rarely make their best marketing decisions on impulse. The meme that seems clever in the moment often seems churlish by the light of the next day. With a backlog, you sit on those ideas and return to them. Often, they don’t age well, and you can quietly delete them. But other times, they grow more exciting with each review. That’s how you know you have a winner.

How to Build Your Content Backlog

1. Create a Google SHEETs doc

Create a Google Sheets doc or a Notion page that the entire marketing team can edit, and any outsourced writers can at least view. Choose one person to own and maintain the backlog, but give others access so they can add and comment on ideas.

Here’s a template you can copy and borrow.

2. Talk to your readers

This step really should be called “ideate,” because that’s what you’re doing—generating ideas—but my timeless admonition here is to begin this process by talking to readers, customers, or buyers. Even if you already deeply understand your readers, talking to them is almost always more generative than brainstorming on your own. Ask them, “What’s something you believe that few others do? What’s something you wish everyone in your industry would stop doing? What’s top of mind for you right now? What are the hot topics?”

Supplement these conversations with internal ones. What content do salespeople need? Do customer success reps have a particular question that everyone asks, and they wish they simply had a one-pager to answer it? What’s funny or trending in your space right now?

Humor in particular can be revealing. As political scientist Timur Kuran shared on NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast, if you want to understand what many people are feeling but don’t feel comfortable voicing, look at memes and jokes in their space. Humor often reflects hidden preferences and pains. That can make for unusually compelling content, like our Dead Broet’s Society study, which triggered something of a commiseration avalanche among B2B marketers. For two weeks, our site traffic was 24 times higher than usual.

Note everything you find. Have others note what they find.

3. Add ideas to the backlog

Add your ideas to the backlog’s section for unsorted ideas. Because it’s faster, I keep a note in my note-taking app where I drop links and bullet points, and then once per week, add them to the backlog

More is better. Avoid self-censorship—sometimes, ideas that seem too simple or too complicated to work end up being winners. The data storage company Segment holds brainstorming sessions and one joke—having ads that greeted the reader but got their city wrong (to highlight the annoyance of bad data)—evolved into a national billboard campaign and put them on the proverbial map.

4. hold a monthly backlog meeting

Set a periodic, one-hour backlog meeting to sort through. I recommend once per month or once per quarter.

In a Backlog meeting, you gather and rank all the content ideas you find there from best to worst (while also considering practicality). A Backlog meeting works best when people have been adding to it periodically—there must be new ideas to sort—but it can work as a brainstorm. For instance, begin by asking, “What are people hearing on sales calls? What have you read lately that excited you?”

Go through the ideas quickly—each person pitches theirs, and people decide whether it’s moved up into the backlog or not, and which priority it’s assigned. (No need for precision—you’ll perform a final sort later.)

As moderator, have strong opinions. Break ties and get people talking. Interpret people’s silence as a mandate to do as you please. Often, this’ll spur people to react: “No, that doesn’t go there!”

I haven’t tried this one myself, but if you have a big group and the content is relatively expensive to create, you can make voting easier by distributing a stack of monopoly money and letting each person spend it on their favorite topics. Rank the topics based on “dollar value.”

Once you’ve decided what goes into the backlog. Ask, “Is this the order we should create things in?” Perform some final arranging.

At the end, delete the bottom 20 percent of ideas. Yes, delete them. If someone loves an idea so much they want to copy it down to add again later, so be it. Culling makes room for new, better ideas. If it’s a truly great idea and it’s deleted, it will eventually return.

Fenwick’s Backlog meeting agenda:

Beforehand, appoint a meeting manager who’ll run things.

1. Any ideas we don’t have down? (Add them) 

2. Quickly review content goals

3. Walk through unsorted ideas top to bottom—reorder as you go based on excitement level. “Also take notes on the things people excitedly blurt out, even if they seem like a joke at the time,” says Riviera Lev-Aviv, a Writer & Strategist at Fenwick. “These things are easy to forget if you don't capture right away, but can be very funny and memorable. Also good to remember to capture things that the team is fired up about and show that you’re listening.”

4. Confirm that the top 10-15 ideas reflect the order of priority—rearrange as needed

5. Agree to tackle the content ideas top-down. Conclude the meeting

 5. Assign topics based on the backlog

The backlog is your source of truth for all content planning and strategy. If you assign topics weekly, allow people to select topics from the backlog starting top down. Let them pick topics that they’re uniquely interested in or suited for. If one of your writers or strategists is really not in love with an idea, let someone else (usually the person who came up with it) do it.

Some exceptions:

• Don’t let it stop you from moving quickly. If you suddenly realize you need social copy to promote an ebook, don’t force it through the backlog. Just create it.

• Make exceptions based on asset size. A definitive guide isn’t the same as a blog post. Adjust as needed based on people’s capacity.

• If you’re running a newspaper-style publication that traffics in timely stories, you’ll likely sort and manage your backlog with much greater frequency. You will probably also cull more ideas—perhaps every story that’s grown old.

if it works, keep it

Over time, promoting the good ideas and culling the bad will increase the overall quality of the content you produce. So-so ideas that previously might have occupied your time sink to the bottom and disappear, leaving more time and attention for the best.