To set marketers up for success and create impactful content strategies, a tech stack is required that leverages digital asset management, prioritizes workflows to bring order to the publishing process, and supports scalability and flexibility through easy integrations and automation, says Meredith Rodkey, VP of platform product management & solutions at Brightspot.
In 2020, content plays a key role in every business – not just for publishers and media organizations but also for marketers. Marketers see strategic value in regularly producing useful and compelling content to engage with today’s consumers where and how they want. In recent years, content creation evolved in response to expectations for “always-on†and omnichannel delivery. COVID-19 has accelerated this trend as people spend more time online and rely heavily on websites for information and purchasing.
A recent survey from The Next WebOpens a new window found that 76% of internet users have been spending more time on their smartphones amid the pandemic. It is clear that content creation is more important and more demanding than ever, and marketers need the right technology to keep up. Today, back end tools help editorial teams with success in this effort. There are three elements that your marketing tech stack particularly needs to carry out a consistent and efficient content creation strategy.
Learn More: Why You Should Ditch Keyword-Lead Content Marketing Strategies
Leveraging DAM as a Foundational Tool for Content Creation
Marketers care about creating engaging brand experiences through consistent content. This is where a Digital Asset Management system (DAM) comes in. Surprisingly, many organizations today have a “no DAM†approach, with files distributed across the company and no good way to find and reuse them. This is often not a willful decision, as many marketers are not involved in the tech solution purchases and do not inherit products and processes. No matter how the situation developed, lacking a solid DAM apparatus can be confusing and costly due to issues like stock imagery licenses that are not being used efficiently.
A DAM solution acts as a business’s central repository of assets within a content management system (CMS), including audio files, PDFs, images, social media content, and more. This makes it easier to be organized and achieve important brand consistency, which leads to better digital storytelling and higher loyalty and engagement from customers. In fact, according to a Lucidpress reportOpens a new window , consistent presentation of a brand has been seen to increase revenue by as much as 33%.
Given that the right DAM solution is so important, there are some key elements to look for:
- A powerful search engine that makes finding and editing content easy. Many DAM solutions also leverage AI to drive intelligent search, analyzing images and videos to identify objects, text, and activities. Search can also integrate with existing repositories, solving a common pain point.
- A DAM system should also have editing capabilities available in one place so that you can edit assets without having to leave the CMS. This is only one of the benefits of tight integration between a CMS and DAM.
- Accessing the DAM should be simple and allow the right users to share content with various licensed sites.
The Importance of Workflows for Content Creation Success
A key issue that content marketers face is disorganization and lack of collaboration. This results from unclear and undefined roles and permissions, which create bottlenecks in the content process. Today, many content marketers are seeing the benefits of a “newsroom approach†to content creation, where everyone has a specific role, assignments are seamless, and the entire team is focused on their respective projects at hand.
This brings us to our second key consideration in what to look for in a tech stack to efficiently manage the content creation process. To adopt such an approach, marketers need strong solutions that understand how people work and allow them to create custom workflows to do so. A CMS should enable creators to assign unique transitions and statuses for digital assets, including steps for reviews, edits, and rejections; everyone on the team should know their assignments and where the work stands. It can also be helpful to have notifications, which alert users as assets move through the workflow. For instance, an employee will be notified to review the content at a certain step in the process, and if they have edits, the workflow will automatically send the edits back to the writer.
Scalability and Flexibility Within a Content Strategy
To keep up with market demands, content marketers have to push content quickly to multiple channels – from mobile to IoT – and often do not have time to enlist IT support. To create a high volume of content efficiently, marketers benefit from solutions that have content modules, content types, and authoring capabilities readily available with no configuration needed. For efficiency, marketers should also be able to package content together and edit those projects directly, with auto-tagging and SEO at their fingertips. The editorial team benefits, too, from being able to collaborate seamlessly with access to different assets regardless of the sites they manage, and the ability to push content out to any front end, be it multiple different sites, social media, or a mobile app.
Learn More: Â Build Your Brand’s Bottom-Line With Cloud-Based Digital Asset Management (DAM) Solutions: Q&A With WidenOpens a new window s
For marketers to accomplish their content goals, Forrester recommendsOpens a new window choosing an extensible CMS with application programming interfaces (APIs) that can accept third-party data such as CRM, DAM, and marketing automation. It recommends then using the combined data to feed personalization efforts. It is important to select a solution that frees content creators from traditional backend complexities such as integrations and data modeling, allowing them to quickly manipulate content as their businesses change and grow.
Digital transformation is only speeding up as organizations and publishers look to get ahead of customer demand. To set themselves up for success and create impactful content strategies, today’s marketers will benefit from a tech stack that leverages digital asset management, prioritizes workflows to bring order to the publishing process, and supports scalability and flexibility through easy integrations and automation. With these three key factors, marketers can meet customers where they are and build content businesses for the future.