The 7 Stages of Content Lifecycle Management (and How to Improve it)
How much control do you really have when it comes to your content?
And not to mention every single stage it goes through, from creation to distribution?
Content has a lifecycle - from when it's produced, to when it's managed and in the end, distributed throughout the customer journey.
Hopefully, sparking engagement, retention and conversion.
But how much focus do you have on how that one piece of content is actually used to its full potential, in comparison to the focus you have on how it's affecting your consumer?
It might be shocking, but 70% of content produced by B2B companies ends up not even being used.
In addition, 60% of content ends up as useless clutter.
That means that the content lifecycle within the B2B industry needs to be improved, or at least enriched, in one way or another.
Optimize your content journey with us
Explore the vital role of content lifecycle management. We guarantee practical tips and advanced insights.
In this article, we describe the content lifecycle, some common challenges with content lifecycle management and how you can improve each stage of the lifecycle itself.
What is content lifecycle management?
The content lifecycle can be looked at as the process regarding which changes a piece of content goes through during its “lifetime”.
Basically, the series of steps regarding developing, posting, categorizing, organizing, repurposing and retiring content.
Content lifecycle management is important, and especially for enterprises.
Why?
Because managing content stands as the core of your business - which is connected to how much risk you’re taking, how much you’re getting out of your resources and content, and…
How good of a product or service you can provide with your content experiences.
How well are you able to conduct every single stage of the content lifecycle, making sure no valuable content gets left behind?
Challenges with content lifecycle management
As content management itself comes with a lot of challenges, so does content lifecycle management.
Take a look here at the most common obstacles:
Poor handoffs and handling of content between teams: 30% of marketers dealing with content have reported that they feel like their efforts aren’t effective enough. Projects can be significantly slowed down by bottlenecks, etc.
Being able to produce content for multiple channels, and multiple people: Large organizations today need to be able to produce enough content to meet the demands of the omnichannel consumer, which is easier said than done.
Maintaining good content quality: Not only is it difficult to make sure the handoffs of content throughout the organization is being done efficiently, but it's also important to make sure that the content is kept up to date and up to a good standard.
With these challenges in mind, large companies like enterprises should be looking for new ways to improve their content lifecycle, so that they can overcome these challenges and see that beloved return on investment.
In the next section we take a closer look at the 7 stages of content lifecycle management, and how a digital asset management (DAM) platform can help supercharge your organization's content loop.
The 7 stages of content lifecycle management
Capturing content
The first stage of content lifecycle management takes a look at what your organization already has when it comes to content.
What have you produced, what is in your archive?
This part of content lifecycle management can happen at different times of the cycle but is typically in the start.
You often take a look at what images/videos/PDF’s/documents you have, where this content is coming from - and what you should focus on creating more of (or less).
Metadata is a huge part of this stage.
Analytics s important, too – to ensure you have the right data to take action.
So how do you optimize this stage of your content lifecycle management?
A DAM platform is highly skilled beyond the means of just managing assets - it efficiently manages assets by their metadata, meaning that it's much easier to:
> Identify content
> Manage content
> Retrieve content and
> Track the exact usage of content
So, when you need to speed up the way you capture and handle your content, a DAM will make it easier for you to find the assets faster after you’ve tagged them with the right keywords and metadata.
Preserving content
Preserving content is a huge part of the content lifecycle management process.
You don’t want to risk losing your content, or not realizing what valuable content you already have lying around.
This part of content lifecycle management (CLM) is about how your organization plans and decides on how the captured content will be stored - in other words, how well you’ll protect your assets.
There’s multiple ways to preserve content - you can either set some guidelines when it comes to how to handle the content (typically located on multiple computers and/or local drives), or you can use tools that will take care of the storage and handling all for you.
Enter: Digital asset management.
A DAM tool serves as a “single source of truth” for your digital assets. Look at it as a historical archive that includes all the assets your company previously owned and now currently owns, and that will take in any new asset that your company produces.
This helps bring all of the marketing content and collateral together, which you know is ideal for better preservation of assets together.
The key benefit?
Both internal and external teams are assisted when it comes to finding an approved piece of content thanks to the centralized library and organization of assets.
Categorizing content
This stage of content lifecycle management is all about review.
Once you efficiently start to group all the content you have, you’ll be able to review them for:
> Compliance
> Repurposing
> Maintenance
It’s important that everyone within your organization is onboard with how things are going to be categorized. So that a) you keep everything standardized and b) that you avoid the mistakes of not knowing which content belongs to which product, etc.
DAM software can help you with a more clean and cohesive way of categorization by two ways:
It will organize assets into the right categories based on their metadata, making it easier to search for and find on the fly
Modern DAM’s often include AI capabilities - which will automate the categorization, tagging and governance protocols. This will definitely make the CMO’s life easier, as it takes much less time to narrow down on exactly which images are suitable for a new website, for example.
Once you gain more control of which assets are grouped together due to relevancy and similarity - it's much easier to make sure the right content is used at the right time and reused when necessary.
Processing content
Processing content boils down to figuring out its intended use - on multiple levels.
You’ll typically start asking questions, like:
What can I use this image for, beyond this campaign?
How accurate is this piece of content?
What does this content mean for other larger processes, like for example sales?
When you start mapping out these processes it's important to keep in mind that they’re typically rooted in the foundation of all the categories you created in the previous steps.
Which assets belong together, and for what purpose?
Processing of content could take long periods of time, provided you don’t have the tools to ramp up the speed of things.
That’s where DAM comes in, which helps you save excessive amounts of time just by its multi-faced capabilities of content management.
DAM is able to efficiently automate how you process content, so that you no longer have to spend lots of time figuring out which piece of the puzzle a certain image belongs to.
In addition, DAM will also get everyone working together by breaking down silos and giving the same access to assets for all, so that there’s no room for misunderstanding of what content exists or which to use when and where.
Publishing content
The distribution of content is a huge step in the content lifecycle.
After all, you’ve already done the work of creating, managing and organizing your content - it's about time for it to hit the target audience and give you the results you want.
It's important to note, however, that this step will depend on a few factors, like:
> Content grouping
> Content type
> What kind of process
Most commonly, marketers, graphic designers and other teams use CMS systems in order to revise content and see which ones to post to which channel.
A best of breed DAM will include integration capabilities to CMS platforms such as Sitecore and Optimizely.
A DAM will:
Coordinate data from different sources before delivering them to the omnichannel
Reduce time-to-market by streamlining the processes of content distribution, due to its automating capabilities
Reduce costs of delivering content as it makes sure all content is up to date on all relevant platform
Archiving content
This step is important in order to see what content is able to be used for multiple purposes and occasions, and which content can be repurposed.
But also, what content just didn't cut it. Not all content is created to last a lifetime, sadly enough.
This step typically includes looking at what content needs to be archived because it either clashes with both external or internal regulations.
How can it be stored for now, but perhaps pulled from the archive to be used later?
Once you find a sufficient way to archive your content, it’s super easy to recollect and find it for a later occasion, say you need a product image that’s already edited to be added in a new campaign later that also involves the same product later.
Regardless, this presents the need for a better way to see what content adheres to the rules and regulations put in place.
A DAM tool will not only provide deeper security for all your assets, but it will also:
Assist both remote and in-office marketers in making sure that all content is always in line with regulatory compliance
Ensure digital rights management thanks to its metadata engine - that way you can embellish your content with date of expiry, rights owner, source and sponsor.
Removing content
The final step of CLM is removing content.
Why would you remove content?
Well, it could be because a third-party photo goes against not only your brand, but also against local rules and regulations.
This is important so that you avoid risks like fines etc. - because that’s oftentimes a consequence if you aren’t able to avoid false claims and off-label marketing.
Again, tools like DAM will help you avoid these fines by adhering to regulatory compliance, by automating processes to approve (or disapprove content), notify you of expiry dates etc.
But when it comes to removing content, another aspect could be that you find out that it isn’t even worth keeping, as no one uses it.
Digizuite DAM includes analytics that help you see meaningful insights about your content - what performs well and what doesn’t.
You can see in real-time what's being downloaded and streamed the most, and which assets are used over which geographical locations.
Again, this helps you see exactly what content is worth keeping, and which content you can toss to the side.
Conclusion
The seven stages of content lifecycle management should be taken seriously if marketers want to make the most out of their content.
Especially when you know that 70% of content ends up not even being touched.
In this article we covered the 7 stages of CLM, and how DAM can supercharge each one, by:
Tagging the relevant metadata
Being a central source of truth
Automate the categorization of assets
Automate the processing of assets
Help deliver content more efficiently and seamlessly
Archive content due to adhering to regulatory compliance, and
Help remove content by seeing which content isn’t performing
All in all, a DAM is a valuable way for larger companies to not only regain control over their assets, but also boost the lifecycle of their assets themselves.
Interested in learning more about how your organization can benefit from a DAM?
Book a call with one of our experts today.
Resources you’ll love:
