With digital channels becoming the key platform to reach your target audience, creating high-quality content for omnichannel content delivery is more important than ever. Yet, managing content across these channels is challenging, especially without transparency and a centralised, overarching view of all the content at that stage.
Many content teams struggle with disjointed and chaotic processes. Different teams and individuals might work in isolation, using various tools and methods and lacking clear roles, responsibilities, and communication channels — the result is duplicated efforts, inconsistent quality, misaligned messaging, and wasted resources.
What’s the solution to problems like these? You need a transparent and standardised approach to content creation, distribution, and measurement to streamline workflows, improve collaboration, enhance relevance, and ultimately drive better results for your business.
Many people often use the terms 'content production' and 'content production processes' interchangeably. While they are related, they refer to different functions:
Content production includes creating content like blogs, videos, infographics, or social media posts. It involves conceptualisation, research, writing, designing, editing, and publishing content. Content production aims to create high-quality content that engages and informs the target audience and generates results for the business.
Content production processes, or content operations, refer to the structured approach used to create content. It involves the step-by-step processes that ensure your team creates content in a timely and organised manner. Content production processes typically include goal setting, planning, resource allocation, content creation, editing, approval, and distribution.
You need to start by defining your goals. What is the aim of your content? How many channels will you need to optimise your content for? Which customers are you attempting to target? Defining your goals will help you create focused and targeted content.
You need a central location to store all your digital assets, including images, videos, and documents. If you leverage a digital asset management (DAM) platform, mark this as the single place where your team should store every asset. Your DAM platform should also connect with your task management software to link digital assets through workflows, track versions and reduce errors, such as using the wrong version of an asset when completing the task. By having your content centralised and connected to workflows, everyone can easily access the approved assets needed when creating content, reducing the time and effort required to reuse, update and create new content.
Consider all the content production process stages, from ideation to publication, and define the tasks and responsibilities for each stage. You should also specify how assets will move through the workflow and the platforms handling this. For example, your Marketing Resource Management (MRM) platform might manage the next steps and send assets through the workflow.
Establishing a schedule is a crucial step in the content production process. Setting realistic timelines for each stage of the content production process is essential. You must consider factors such as the availability of team members and the complexity of the content created. Establishing a schedule will help you keep track of progress and ensure your team can create content promptly and efficiently.
Creating and managing content can be challenging, especially if you do not have the right platforms for storing, editing and sending content through the workflow. Fortunately, several tools are available that enable your business to streamline content production processes and improve the efficiency of marketing efforts.
DAM stores all digital assets in one central location, from images and videos to documents. With a DAM platform, your team can easily search and find the needed assets without going through countless folders or asking colleagues for help. This saves time and reduces the risk of mistakes that can occur if someone uses outdated files.
A DAM system can also help you maintain consistency across all your digital channels. By providing all content creators access to the same set of approved assets, you can ensure that your branding is consistent and professional across all channels, from your website to your social media accounts.
A Content Operations platform allows you to manage all aspects of your marketing operations in one place. It streamlines your processes, improves workflows, and aligns your marketing efforts with the business objectives. It provides a centralised platform for managing marketing assets, workflows, and budgets and enables collaboration and communication across teams.
A Content Operations platform also includes the tools needed to create, publish, and promote content on multiple channels. A Content Marketing Platform (CMP) makes it easy to manage your omnichannel content creation process from start to finish, such as blog posts to social media updates and email newsletters. This means your team can create content for all channels in one place and can focus on creating great content rather than worrying about the logistics of content production.
PCM tools enable you to manage all aspects of product content, from creation and management to distribution and updates. With a PCM system, you can easily define your product hierarchy, organise and distribute enriched product content across all your channels, including websites, e-commerce platforms, email newsletters and social media and deliver content at scale through programmatic content publishing. By connecting your product and marketing teams, it reduces the time and effort required to launch new products so you can get your products to market faster.
With PCM, you can maintain consistency across all your product-related content. With a PCM system, you can ensure that all your product descriptions, images, and specifications are accurate and up-to-date in all channels, providing customers with the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions.
Refining content production processes is essential for any business that wants to succeed in today's digital landscape. By defining goals, mapping processes, and implementing best practices and technologies, you can enhance your content quality, relevance, and consistency, while reducing costs, risks, and inefficiencies.
Tools such as DAM, CMP, MRM, and PCM enable you to streamline content production processes and create high-quality content that engages and informs your target audience. By adopting best practices and leveraging the latest tools, your business can create high-quality content that engages and informs your target audience and drives business results.
With over twenty years of experience, we deeply understand the nuts and bolts of content production. We can implement the platforms you need to store digital assets, manage workflows and distribute the final product. We have experience implementing omnichannel content platforms, like Sitecore Content Hub, for our customers and have delivered solutions aligned with their marketing and organisational strategies. Please visit our Sitecore Content Hub page for more information.
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