Content Wasteland – What Would ‘The Who’ Have To Say?

For global marketers, keeping up with content consumption and creation needs is often a never-ending – and thankless – task.

Regardless of whether the content is created in-house or by external service providers, prioritization and implementation involve a lot of internal coordination and approvals. This is precisely the problem in many companies: too many email loops, no clear responsibilities, and whoever shouts the loudest gets preference.

Without a robust content management strategy, costs spiral, content quickly becomes obsolete, and organizations find their marketing teams struggling with expensive, unproductive content wastelands. Taming this beast requires a smart, innovative content management strategy.

While famous rock band, The Who’s ‘teenage wasteland’ warns generations of teenagers not to waste their lives, below we outline key tips and tricks for managing content production to ensure your hard work doesn’t end up in a ‘content wasteland’.

Plan strategically and set priorities (content scoring)

To enable marketing to communicate the right topics in the right place at the right time for maximum business benefit, these topics and their content requirements need to be strategically planned and properly prioritized.

Create a strategic content marketing plan and define your goals, focus topics, messages, and target audiences. Then, prioritize the requests (content scoring provides a road map to what is working) to ensure a smooth flow of projects. The criteria for content scoring should be clearly described so that the evaluation is transparent and understandable to everyone. In this way, content creation can be managed according to the importance and urgency of topics and projects. Organize your topics in an editorial plan and distribute an appropriate editorial calendar.

Create clear briefings and make sure everyone has access to all the information. System-supported briefing document templates should include mandatory fields so that important information is never forgotten. The teams can interact with each other directly in the system on the briefing. Possible queries are thus transparent for all participants, and everyone is always on the same page. If the briefing is updated, it does not have to be sent out to all participants; changes are updated automatically. As a project manager, you have direct access to all relevant information of a marketing project – including change tracking and history – and can ensure its efficient handling.

Automate repetitive workflows

Successful marketing teams do not run their processes via email, but with project and workflow tools. Then, to-do’s can be assigned centrally along a workflow, and everyone is aware of their timelines. Everyone involved knows what they must do by when. This makes it easier for marketing teams to collaborate with internal and external project team members.

Ensure that everyone is working on the latest version.

With the help of online reviews and a single source of the most current version, marketing teams can organize their corrections. Whether print brochures, videos, or banners – coordination processes are simplified, and media production is documented in a comprehensible and complete manner. Everyone involved in media production always has access to the same document online, which prevents the proliferation of versions. With professional review and approval management, you optimize collaboration on various marketing materials and easily connect all internal and external contributors via a central access point.

Document and complete approvals faster and easier than before

With system-supported approval processes, participants are automatically reminded of deadlines. The collected feedback on an asset can be called up so final decision-makers can track changes without having to ask questions. This avoids renewed correction loops of points that have already been discussed. Finally, a digital signature option makes them possible to obtain official approvals conveniently. You are informed of the approval in real-time, saving valuable time at the end of the content production process.

Share content across silos

With a Brand Portal, you eliminate information silos. Media objects are stored in a central database in an up-to-date and structured manner. Using templates, local teams can customize global materials without special graphics software or design skills. This increases the acceptance and usage of the media provided. Digital assets can be shared with team members, customers, and partners at the touch of a button. Through a central brand portal, everyone is always aware of current materials, can locate them quickly,

Analyze how your content is being used

Create custom reports and link your content to data from your web and social media analytics. Get a real-time overview of your target audience’s content usage and track their content engagement. Analyzing user search behavior can provide valuable insight into whether your campaign is trending. Also, check the extent to which your assets are being used as well as redistributed. For example, track the usage of your assets across the web through AI Web Tracing to identify misused or illegitimately used brand materials.

Avoid content wasteland

For global marketers, creating hundreds of documents won’t achieve anything if you’re missing a key ingredient: a sound content management strategy. Today marketers need to create more content than ever before to attract customers and manage your company’s reputation – and you need to create it quickly and without losing quality. With the wealth of content that needs to be created both internally and using outside help, marketers can now use the tips outlined here to manage the process and ensure your content doesn’t end up in wasteland.

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