Are you wondering how the content management process works? Wondering how to optimize how your organization creates and manages content?
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Great content doesn’t happen by accident. If we could review the most successful brands when it comes to content marketing, we’d discover that all this success comes as a result of just one factor – an amazing process to create and manage content.
The most recent Content Marketing Benchmark report from the Content Marketing Institute confirms this. According to the report, 62% of brands that are the most successful with content have a documented strategy and process.
At the same time, only 11% of the least successful companies work to a predefined process.
This guide will help you understand what the content management process is, what it looks like, and how to manage your content strategically.
So, let’s do it.
What is a Content Management Process?
Content management process defines how your organization creates and manages content. It outlines specifically how things are done, and by whom in the entire content production cycle.
And so, the content management process outlines how you take each content from a new idea to a completed asset, but also, how you store it, update, if necessary, and archive.
What’s more, the process also defines how you allocate resources like people, technology, and processes to deliver a powerful content strategy.
At CELUM, we use the Create, Manage, Route methodology to explain the process.
- The Create part focuses on planning and delivering the perfect content for any point of the customer journey.
- In the Manage stage you manage content end-to-end to fully utilize your marketing assets across all digital touchpoints.
- Finally, the Route stage is all about overseeing the delivery of the content to relevant channels to fuel your sales and marketing strategies.
The difference between content management, content strategy, and content governance.
We’ve all three terms in this guide already, and let’s be honest, they look so similar that it’s easy to consider them the same thing. They’re not.
We’ve already discussed that content management defines how content production is done in your company.
Content strategy, on the other hand, outlines how you are going to meet the audience’s needs with content. For that reason, the strategy focuses on what you need to publish, what goals you want to achieve with content, and so on.
Content governance however, is a system of organizing the entire content production process, from goals and objectives, project management processes, to all steps and tasks required to complete it. It covers everything from content creation to content management, to content routing.
What a Typical Content Production Process Looks Like
Look at the three definitions again, particularly what we’ve said about content management. It’s clear that it includes elements of content production and management. So, let’s review how the production process happens, typically.
Before we go any further, though, please note that we’re only covering the most common elements of the production process. Your organization might follow a different process. It might include some of the elements we’ve listed below, but it might also require additional steps.
This is perfectly natural, of course. Each organization is different, and will require a different process.
Overall, however, you can expect to see the following elements in a typical content production process:
- Project ideation
- Briefing and planning
- Collecting and organizing
- Task planning with deadlines, due dates, and milestones
- Content production workflow
- Reviews, feedback, and revisions
- Final signoff
- Archiving and storing the asset
- Routing
Note that all these steps fit into the “Create – Manage – Route” framework we’ve discussed above:
- The first seven elements form the Create part. At this stage, the asset gets planned and created.
- Element #8 relates to the Manage stage. That’s when you decide where you’re going to store your finished asset, upload it to that location, tag and organize with metadata, and more.
- Finally, the process concludes with a stage at which the finished content gets routed to its final destination. It could be the website, social media campaign, or any other channel where you plan to publish it.
Lass uns also über diese beiden Elemente näher sprechen.
How to Manage Content Strategically
We’ve covered quite a lot of information about managing content in this guide already. You know what content management is, and the elements of a typical content production, for example.
What we need to discuss now is how to create a content organization and management system for your organization.
Let’s start with what you need – Content management tools.
To manage content properly, you will need:
#1. A content hub to store media files and assets
A DAM (digital asset management) system will help you organize all assets and media files you use when creating content – brief documents, style guidelines, visual assets, brand assets, text files, images to videos and more.
With a solid DAM software, your content creators and everyone involved in editing and publishing of your assets will have easy access to whatever files they need to complete their tasks.
TIP: CELUM (disclaimer: this is our tool) lets you store all assets you need to produce great content. With CELUM, you can organize all files, and add context with metadata, assign tags, and more.
#2. A project management system to organize the work
This tool will help your teams collaborate on projects, and allow you to collect and process feedback easily.
TIP: We’ve compiled a list of the best content collaboration platforms on the market today here.
And here’s how to use those tools to manage content:
#1. Specify processes and workflows to organize media assets
Most content you produce requires several media assets. These could range from simple visuals like the company’s logo and other brand elements, to videos, audio recordings, and more.
A content hub (or DAM software) will allow you to manage thousands of files at ease.
However, for it to work, you need to first define standards, workflows, and processes for managing content.
Take file naming, for example. Without conventions, your files might end up labeled with names that only their creators can understand. As a result, others will struggle to find those files or identify recent revisions.
A defined tagging system will help you organize assets logically. Metadata will make them easier to find, and so on.
#2. Set up a production workflow to keep the production process in check
Let’s not beat around the bush – You may have the best production process ever. But it will mean nothing unless project managers use it to organize their teams’ work.
Dedicated content collaboration software like CELUM allows you to create workflows for all the common project types. These workflows can define how the work should happen in each project.
Project managers and owners, in turn, can use those workflows to create their projects, ensuring that everyone always follows the same predefined process.
#3. Specify roles and responsibilities to ensure accountability
You know, it’s true. When everyone knows what they need to do and when, work happens.
But there is another side to this – Roles and responsibilities make everyone accountable for their elements of a project.
With roles, responsibilities, and deadlines, tracking everyone’s input is easy. So is finding potential bottlenecks or problems with the process.
This is also where workflows will help you ensure that everyone does what they need to do.
Your workflows will define roles and responsibilities, after all, and ensure that no task gets skipped because it wasn’t assigned to anyone.
#4. Streamline feedback and reviews
The review and approval process is one of the most problematic elements of content management. Many of our clients cite this as their most challenging part of the process.
For many of them, the review stage is when projects get held up. Others report that feedback is never acted on, and many important comments get lost in endless email chains.
Luckily, the solution to this problem is simple – Implementing an online proofing tool that allows you to streamline and centralize the entire review and approval process.
An online proofing tool will help you:
- Make decisions faster. Online proofing tools eliminate those tedious back and forth conversations over email. With all feedback centralized in one place, they make it easier to discuss projects, collect feedback, and focus on getting things done.
- Manage assets, drafts, and revisions better. With proofing tools, you no longer waste time locating the latest versions of assets. Instead, everything is in one place, easily accessible to everyone.
- Speed up project delivery. Streamline review processes mean that work gets done faster. Simply.
- And finally, reduce project costs by eliminating mistakes and held-ups. Centralized communication and feedback result in fewer errors, delays, and reworks. This improves not only the quality of your content but also significantly drops production costs.
Looking to streamline content management?
