7 Ways to Eliminate Content Production Inefficiencies
Content inefficiencies are costing you a lot of money.
According to research, inefficient processes cause businesses to lose between 20 and 30 percent of their annual revenue.
And when you focus on B2B businesses alone, you discover that inefficient content production causes medium sized to larger businesses to overspend on average $958 million per year.
Which, in light of the expansion of B2B content marketing activities, has to be improved:
A recent study found that B2B organizations with more than 250 workers who use content marketing allocate about 55% of their annual marketing budget to content creation.
And the costs of advertising it are not even included in that.
That's a significant amount of money, making process improvements in content development even more crucial. By doing this, businesses may maximize the ROI on their marketing investments while also enhancing their bottom line.
Which is where systems like digital asset management (DAM), which streamline all of your content operations, come into play.
For businesses wishing to manage, edit, share, and distribute all of their digital assets, a DAM offers a "single source of truth" with the option to limit or enable access to specific users and/or stakeholders.
It helps businesses (especially enterprise companies with thousands of assets) optimize their content operations and get rid of workflow inefficiencies.
In this article we take a look at 7 ways in which companies can eliminate inefficiencies from their content production processes, all with the help from a DAM system.
Table of contents
7 ways to eliminate inefficiencies from your content production processes
Establish a single source of truth
Streamline your workflows
Gather insights from content analytics
See opportunities for repurposing content
Integrate with other apps
Improve your content security
Invest in content automation
7 ways to eliminate inefficiencies from your content production processes
Establish a single source of truth
Having one place to manage all approved versions of content is an easy way of making sure you eliminate your content production inefficiencies.
Why?
Because it not only ensures that everyone remains on the same page regarding what brand message to put out on all your channels, but it also places them in a secure, centralized location where they won’t get misplaced or misused.
That way you don’t have to slow down on the content you’re producing in fear of losing them amongst shared drives, random folders or personal employee computers.
To make it simple, here’s the three main reasons why your company needs a single source of truth for all digital assets:
You’re better equipped to navigate through the digital landscape (having one source of each asset improves clarity in terms of publishing on digital channels)
A single source improves access rights and permissions
You improve efficiency with everyone on your team only dealing with content from one shared location
Streamline your most common content workflows
Picture the scene:
Your new retail product line is about to hit the market, and your teams are working consistently across both your marketing and sales departments to finish all the content that's being created for that specific line.
Throughout these processes, there’s multiple stages where certain content needs to be approved or disapproved, with room for improvement, feedback etc.
With a DAM however, you skip the chaos of revision and sending pieces of content through lengthy email chains to get that final approval.
A DAM can help you streamline your asset distribution to boost your marketing campaigns' effectiveness and get more value for your investment. The tool ensures that your assets are repurposed and delivered on time and in the most efficient way possible.
DAM makes it easy to distribute newly created content across both teams internally but also externally to multiple channels simultaneously - helping you maintain a consistent brand, communicate more effectively with your audience, and drive engagement.
By keeping your brand assets in sight and accessible, you can also attract more customers to your business.
Gather insights from content analytics
Nothing is worse than putting time and effort into producing new material that will never be used.
In order to determine exactly what content you should concentrate on producing moving forward and what content you should steer clear of, you need to look for solutions that assist you in gathering the required data and insights about your digital assets.
The majority of DAMs available today include content analytics, which will enable you to increase the effectiveness of your content creation.
By leveraging content analytics, you can get valuable insights into what works and what doesn't, and make data-driven decisions that lead to success.
Modern DAM systems include a plethora of analytics and insights to help you identify the assets that are most popular with your audience. This information is accessible across regions and different area codes.
You can quickly track how people search for assets and how frequently they download or stream them with the DAM system.
Additionally, by integrating Digizuite DAM with the Power BI dashboard, you can rapidly create reports and see where downloaded assets are located.
This all makes it much simpler for users to access data on specific assets and assess their performance. Additionally, you'll be able to make better decisions and produce even more effective content in the future with a higher-level overview of content performance.
See opportunities for repurposing your content
This next point follows seamlessly from the previous point above.
Once you get that overview over your highest performing (and your lowest performing) content - you can see new opportunities for reusing that successful content.
Which helps you save time and other resources as you’re actually focusing on what works versus what doesn’t.
What you’re left with is the ability to bring old content to life (again, and in a different way) and, ultimately, you improve each and every step of the content lifecycle.
Integrate with third party apps for better collaboration
Making sure your DAM easily integrates with your other apps is a surefire way of getting rid of bottlenecks and inefficiency within your content production processes.
Integrations makes it 10x easier for both internal and external teams to quickly get their hands on the assets they need without having to go via other places or people - which slows them down.
DAM systems should be able to seamlessly connect with collaboration and communication tools like Slack, and Teams, and also creative tools like Adobe Creative Cloud and Canva.
Improve your content security through access permissions
One of the biggest setbacks that can have a significant negative impact on your content creation and distribution is getting fined for releasing wrongful content or being at fault for false claims and off-label marketing (which highly-regulated industries like the life sciences is at risk for like no other).
A DAM tool can help you comply with the rules and regulations for producing content, and make sure to adhere to proper digital rights management - helping you restrict access to content determined by when or where you want to use it.
DAM helps you easily assign rights and permissions to users so that only the right people get their hands on the right content - meaning that it's safe, secure and ready to be used appropriately each and every time.
This saves you time and money in regards to tracking down how assets are used and in which way - meaning you can use resources on much more important things like creating better and more content.
Invest in content automation
Another way to cut down on content inefficiencies is just by automating and speeding up the processes overall.
Enter: Content automation.
DAM tools can help automate the processes of both content management and content distribution:
With an automated approval-for-use workflow, you can be sure that only approved content is being used.
This includes the right terminology and adherence to the correct terms and conditions.
Plus, automating tagging and categorization ensures that your content stays up-to-date and relevant over time.
A DAM system also automates workflows that notify you when content has expired, making it an excellent platform for enterprise content management.
2. Content distribution:
A DAM tool makes social media campaigns and strategies run more efficiently and smoothly. With automated distribution, your content can be shared simultaneously across multiple channels, including through our Hootsuite integration.
DAM best practices
Once you get your DAM system up and running, here are two best practices to keep in mind:
Train and incentivize everyone to use the system
It’s essential to ensure everyone (especially your creative team and marketing) is using the DAM in their daily content processes. To achieve this, it's crucial to train every individual based on their role, and incentivize or implement consequences if necessary.Revisit taxonomy structure regularly
Your data model is a living, breathing thing that evolves as you continue to add assets to your DAM. Metadata that was once relevant may no longer be applicable to all assets in the system.
By training and incentivizing individuals to use the DAM and revisiting the taxonomy structure regularly, you can get the most out of your DAM solution.
This will help you make strategic decisions that optimize your content creation, management, and distribution.
Conclusion
The amount of content that’s being produced today isn’t going to be slowing down anytime soon.
In fact, an overwhelming 83% of organizations are expanding their budget for producing content.
Which means that avoiding any form of inefficiencies and time wasted in terms of managing this content is key.
One of the main benefits of a DAM tool is that it helps speed up and improve the way you produce, manage and distribute content on all your channels.
Here’s 7 ways you can eliminate inefficiencies within your content production processes, with the help of DAM:
Establish a single source of truth
Streamline your content workflows
Gather insights from content analytics
See opportunities to repurpose your content
Integrate with third party apps
Improve your content security and access permissions
Invest in content automation
Interested in learning more about Digizuite and how DAM can help benefit your business? Get in touch here.
