The world does business differently now. Customers and consumers alike have different expectations of their relationships with brands, particularly when it comes to content. Accelerated by the pandemic, companies have become publishers, pushing out images, video and other media that define their brand and communicate everything that it does.
In this new world, content is everything, and content management is essential to rein in costs, retain control and simplify production and delivery. It’s such a vital strategic priority for business that we’ve chosen it as the theme for our virtual Tech Summit 2021 webinar sessions Content Management Matters. So why does content management matter, and how can you make it count for you?
1. Find your assets
One of the key roles of any content management system is to store assets securely, and make them easily found. Rich metadata, AI-driven tagging, search, powerful organisational features: all of these Imagen features help stakeholders find content quickly.
Not only does this free up whoever would otherwise be dredging through the archives, it increases speed throughout the content workflow, making it more efficient. And with assets that are easy to locate, there’s less money lost in recreating missing work. It’s also easier to find old files, reuse or repurpose them, markedly increasing the ROI on content creation.
2. Stop leaks and losses
Without effective content management, creatives and other stakeholders tend to share content with improvised tools. If you’re lucky you’ll have a content management solution in place. If you’re less lucky you’ll have a shared folder on the network. But otherwise you’re looking at multiple free file sharing accounts, protected by simple ‘p4ssw0rds’ and with no central control.
In this environment, it’s all too easy to lose track of who’s accessing precious IP, with the risk of data or revenue loss. Effective content management through a DAM solution like Imagen centralises sharing, and implements secured access to prevent loss.
3. Collaborate freely
The flipside of controlled sharing is buttery smooth collaborative working – just ask Imagen clients like NatureScot. Instead of a mishmash of freemium file shares, chat windows and emails, Imagen’s content management system combines asset storage, iteration, commenting and discussion in the heart of a managed workflow.
This is particularly powerful for multi-agency, distributed and regional teams, allowing asynchronous collaboration across time zones and regions. It helps integrate third-party and freelance resources within the main workflow, eliminating confusion, improving ideation and resulting in a better outcome.
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4. Approve every message
When your content is organised, it’s far easier to manage associated processes like compliance and approval. With centralised, organised storage, a content management system ensures that stakeholders are working on the right files – and that the end results have been seen and signed off by the right people. It also helps ensure that rights and licences are firmly in place, preventing the cost and embarrassment of draft or unlicensed content making it into the wild.
5. Manage your brand
The modern brand depends on consistent visuals and messaging, but being consistently on-brand means consistently being on top of your assets. Content management is essential to ensuring consistency in branding and marketing, making sure it’s easy to find and distribute the right content. For marketers and comms professionals, content management with Imagen means everyone is working from the same playbook. Across offices, territories and partners, the brand is speaking with one centrally coordinated voice.
6. Slash the slog
It should be a creative process, but all too often, content creation gets bogged down by admin. From coordinating with other stakeholders, through managing files, edits, approvals and distribution, too many people find their creative flow blocked by administrative hassle.
Imagen’s content management features help remove and automate manual and repetitive tasks, helping creatives stay in the zone. Consequently, they can produce better work, and the project can deliver more against its budget.
7. Simplify
An Imagen survey found that nearly a fifth of companies use up to 15 different solutions for their digital assets. Implementing a content management platform like Imagen is an opportunity to simplify, consolidate, and get rid of shelfware. Aside from immediate software savings, the result is a simpler system: fewer platforms, fewer steps, quicker content flows.
8. Manage from one place
By reducing clutter in the tech stack, and integrating creation, iteration, collaboration and approval, a content management system helps you manage the people, technology and processes of content from one place. Centralised security, storage, distribution and analytics help you gain a more complete overview of content workflows, targeting efficiency and improving results.
9. Expand the reach of your content audience
Content management systems – at least cloud-based ones like Imagen – can become the global interface for your content delivery. Media companies including IMG Replay, LADbible and the Premier League lean on our distribution features to preview, stream and share content, for example. Commercial teams can integrate our tight asset control, distribution and consumption metrics to improve the way they deliver sales enablement, and how they understand the customer response.
A content management platform lets comms teams distribute press packs and other information in a controlled fashion, by automating regional embargos for example. Marketers can host their own rich media content, and glean insights from the inbuilt analytics. Logistics and fulfilment teams can work more closely with distributors and retailers, ensuring product information is consistent among resellers. Throughout the organisation, delivery is simplified and accelerated. The insight from content consumption can inform smarter content choices – driving ROI.
10.Prove and improve ROI
With great control comes great accountability. Imagen provides insights and metrics that let teams focus on content that performs. For example, format sales teams can tailor screener content based on what they know about a contact’s preferences, see whether a prospect has viewed it, and use this to target their follow up. Marketers can see which content is getting views, and where they’re coming from. And creative teams can understand which formats and messages are landing, and focus their time and money on hitting those notes again.
Across the organisation, effective content management can bring order to chaos, and provide the tools for achieving more with less. Reducing waste, drudgery and inefficiency allows for more agile content, letting brands respond quickly to events, cut their time to market, and increase their ROI.
As brands lean more heavily on content in the face of rising demand, understanding and implementing content management is becoming ever more important. If you want to understand the challenges, and see how modern digital asset management platforms are evolving to keep marketing, media and content managers ahead of the curve, sign up for our Tech Summit and equip yourself for the future, today.
Content management matters – discover how you can stay ahead of the curve. Watch Imagen’s Tech Summit, Content Management Matters, hear from Amazon Web Services and more.
