How Content Management Systems Can Help Streamline Your Brand

Too often, businesses spend significant amounts of money on content infrequently utilized, before being archived and forgotten about forever. Managing your content like this is both ineffective and illogical: It’s like ordering a three-course dinner but only eating half of the starter.

On a graph, the engagement of a piece of content roughly resembles a bell curve. For example, an article will typically gain the most participation shortly after it’s published — not as soon as it's released — before quickly petering out as it disappears from people’s social media feeds and timelines. Once this engagement comes to an end, many brands will consider the article, well, expired.

But in almost all cases, this content is far from dead. In fact, marketers are missing out on huge opportunities to extend the shelf life of all its content while accelerating communications that further increase customer engagement as a result. The key to unlocking these benefits lies within content management platforms, which can help marketers realize the exceptional value of what they’re creating.

Below are five benefits that can be enjoyed through this technology:

Universal file formatting
While not all enterprise content management platforms are enabled with this feature, the best options allow users to store all content using an easily editable agnostic format. It is far easier for users to make any necessary amends or edits to files — whether it’s a Word document or a PDF — without the complications involved in opening up each one using different programs and saving them down as various file formats.

Teams can adjust content to fit specific markets, and quickly see the benefits of this. The page layout and product details may never change, but the local service fees and percentages per month may vary wildly.  Marketers feel more confident that brand integrity is maintained while local branches can create promotions specific to their markets.

Finding content quickly
We all know how frustrating it can be to spend 20 minutes searching every folder on the corporate network for a single piece of copy or a Photoshop file. Not only complicated, but annoying especially if the network is shared across multiple sites or international offices. Entering the black hole of lost content is a deep, dark path. To know something exists yet be unable to find it has been known to throw marketers off a cliff.

With enterprise content management technology, however, what used to take 20 minutes can be reduced to a matter of seconds. Each piece of content now tagged with metadata, can then be used to search for the desired piece of content using relevant keywords or phrases. For companies, this is highly productive especially for those that produce content for a variety of different localities. Metadata can be used to differentiate an article written in French, for example, from an identical article written in English.

Extending and maximizing the use of content
Imagine that a client has booked in a photoshoot to promote its latest product. Once complete, most agencies would work with the client to choose a small selection of the very best photos before using them to run a campaign on a specific marketing channel. The process may seem well and good, but there’s also a massive swath of perfectly suitable photos that are neglected or overlooked, and they shouldn’t be.

By uploading all of these photos to a content management system, users can quickly get an excellent glance at each shot and determine which ones could be repurposed as an additional part of the campaign on a different channel. Individual systems will also allow you to preview how the content might look on that channel to help determine its effectiveness.  

Add in relevant metadata and supporting documentation about usage rights and you are on the road to proper rights management. 

Maintain consistent branding across all sites
For companies with multiple sites across multiple countries, it can often be challenging to ensure all content created retains a universal consistency and tone of voice, especially with so much created on a daily basis.

Currently, many large clients use content management platforms as a kind of ‘brand hub,' allowing them to keep one eye on everything that’s coming out of each office or locality. Any content that might be engaging for a specific audience can then be repurposed, while other pieces might merely serve as inspiration for future campaigns and/or activities.

Avoid mistakes
In recent times, a newspaper published a story on its back page about the signing of a major football star to a new team, but accidentally used a photo of a rapper instead. An action that quickly provoked outrage across social media platforms, and the newspaper’s brand reputation compromised. Next step? They had to deal and address such a fatal blow to their reputation costing time and money.

Crucial mistakes such as these can be easily avoided with enterprise content management systems, thanks to the use of metadata and the intuitive organization of all files. Content now shared, reviewed, and approved by others within your team to ensure any errors, corrected before being shared with an audience.

Conclusion
Content management systems are without a doubt the most effective way of not just boosting your content output, but ensuring all of it is engaging to your audience and of the highest quality. Whether you’re a business with a single office or a large brand with sites in numerous countries, this technology adapts to the way you work and maximizes the effectiveness of your marketing.  

To learn more about improving your digital asset management and increasing the efficiency of your processes, check out our free guide: Future-Proofing Your Digital Asset Management and Creative Production.