CONTENT MANAGEMENT: Definition, Strategies & Tools

Companies generate a massive amount of data on a daily basis. Few firms are prepared to handle the exponential development in the volume, velocity, and variety of their enterprise data. Fewer yet are equipped to handle and account for that data, as well as make the generated records accessible to the entire organization. While information governance is a well-established practice in government, it has rarely prompted private-sector businesses to invest in an enterprise content management system (ECM).
If you work in content marketing for a company, you may find it useful to learn about the various tools available to help you in content management. In this content management overview, you’ll learn about all the features of content management.

What is Content Management?

Content management entails compiling, organizing, delivering, retrieving, and regulating website or corporate business content.
The internet is the world’s largest resource, with trillions of movies, blogs, photos, and other multimedia such as PDFs. Without content management practices, the digital content lifecycle would go crazy, leaving content on the internet unstructured, unavailable, and chaotic.

What Are the Primary Features of Content Management?

The ability to create content is the first and most significant feature. You also need the ability to edit and update the content as needed. There must be movement in the content.

To provide the content, you also need a set of processes and capabilities. If you plan to host digital content on a website, you’ll need a mechanism to convert the content into HTML code.
If you need content to appear on a mobile device, you must be able to modify the content to fit the screen.

What is a Content Management System?

A content management system (CMS) provides a systematic manner for organizations to supply content. It is a technology that assists businesses in creating, managing, and updating an experience with the appropriate user interface.

A CMS will connect to a separate system that contains all of a company’s content assets, then extract that content and include it in the experience being developed.
One of the most important features of a CMS is the ability of a content editor, who is usually a member of a marketing team, to make changes to digital content when it is in the format in which it will be published.

The content editor can simply preview a website using a CMS and see how it will look when it is finally rendered. WordPress and Drupal are two examples of web content management systems.

Why is Content Management Important?

Because it allows you to regulate the development, publication, and distribution of digital material, content management is crucial. In other words, it assists you in organizing your thoughts and ideas so that people may find and consume your content.

Without content management, the internet would be a jumbled mess of data with no rhyme or sense. Similarly, if your company is like most, you keep data in a variety of systems and information repositories—an approach that has become the norm over the last two decades due to significant advances in information technology. Time is wasted hunting for a certain document that has not been properly managed—and you may not be aware of what other information you truly have. Nevertheless, with a content management solution, you can organize all of that material into a logical system that is simple to access and explore.

Content Management Process

A seven-step procedure is typically used for content management:

Plan: Decide what type of content you want to develop and where you want to publish it in this step.
Create: This process entails coming up with concepts and then putting those concepts into content, such as videos and blog entries.
Store: After you’ve created your content, you’ll need to put it somewhere where people may find it. Companies generally save content on a website, repository, or blog.
Create a workflow: This phase aids in the creation of content that adheres to organizational policies while maintaining quality consistency.
Editing: This is one of the most important steps in producing ready-to-view content for both humans and search engine crawlers.
Publish: This stage entails delivering content to users, such as website visitors over the internet or employees via a company’s intranet.
Archive or delete: When content is no longer useful, the final stage of content management is to remove or archive it.

What are Content Management’s Benefits?

The management of content is not a pointless endeavor. Both businesses and individuals can profit greatly from content management.
The following are some of the advantages of content management for businesses:

Improved efficiency: Content management assists firms in automating and organizing the publishing and modification of content. This increases efficiency and productivity.
Better customer service: With content management, organizations may establish self-service portals where customers can discover answers to their issues without calling customer care.
Decreased operating costs: Automating tasks with content management solutions can help firms save money on labor costs.
Improved online visibility: By streamlining the content management process, search engines can rank and present websites to potential customers.

Individuals can benefit from content management in a number of ways, including:

Convenient information: With content management, people can discover the information they need without having to sift through a mass of unstructured material.
Better Content Control: People can utilize content management to determine who has access to their content and how it is used.
Easy dissemination: Content management makes it simple for individuals to distribute their content via social media, email, and other methods.

Strategies for Content Management

Organizations must have plans to regulate their digital content since managing online and enterprise business content is a complex task. Adhering to these methods is critical to the success of any content management framework:

Map your priorities: It’s critical to identify what’s important to your organization and then connect your content management approach with those priorities. Do you wish to inform users or direct them to one of your company’s products or services?
Determine your target audience: Finding an appropriate audience for your content is crucial to guaranteeing correct distribution and engagement. Market research, keyword research, and sentiment analysis on social media platforms can help you define your target audience.
Identify your content channels: It is necessary to determine which content channels are important to your audience. Finding suitable content channels, whether via email or social media, aids in the development of a proper content management structure.
Develop a content creation process: This includes the entire process of creating content, from ideation to publication.
Use the correct technology: To assist with website content production, organization, dissemination, and performance analysis, a website development platform, analytics tools, and other asset management tools are required.

Content Management Examples

For a variety of reasons, businesses employ content management strategies. For example, a firm might utilize content management to:

Distribute information internally: Companies utilize content management systems to share information internally via a company intranet, such as papers, photographs, and videos.
Publish a website: You can publish a website using content management. This includes storing website files, tracking changes to those files, and publishing changes to a live website.
Build an online store: A business may use content management to build an online store. This includes handling product information including descriptions, pricing, and availability.
Create a mobile app: Companies can use content management to create a mobile app. The management of app content, including text, images, and videos, would fall under this category.

What are Content Management Tools?

Content management tools are software applications that help marketing and content managers to produce, organize, and publish content online. A content management team may employ a variety of tools to achieve their objectives, such as collaborative software, content management systems, and analytics programs. Some programs concentrate on a single principal activity, whilst others may provide several services to a team. A content manager, for example, can use one tool to create digital media and another to publish the content on the web.

What Do People Do with Content Management Tools?

You can carry out the following tasks using content management tools:

#1. Content generation

Several content management teams employ creative software platforms to develop content for an organization’s website or digital channels. These apps let you produce written documents, modify photographs, and generate infographics and other visual resources. The program you select may be determined by your industry and the demands of your organization. If you’re a content creator for a digital marketing agency, for example, you can use a tool that allows you to create a variety of content kinds, such as videos, blog entries, and virtual flipbooks.

#2. Website design and maintenance

Content management system (CMS) platforms enable marketing managers and other content providers to create and edit websites. With these platforms, you may upload, edit, and publish content to the web without writing code or doing complicated engineering activities. Many CMS platforms provide open-source or free software, while others may charge a fee. Several systems offer both free and paid features, allowing you to build a website for free and then upgrade if your organization’s needs change.

#3. Workflow management

Process management software can assist content creators in optimizing their content development process and working more efficiently. They frequently include tools to help you organize project steps, allocate tasks, and track progress. While developing a new website or directing a campaign to remodel an organization’s content, you may find it useful to use a platform that allows authors to upload digital files to the project plan, allowing all collateral to be kept in one location.

#4. Storage and organization

Content management systems and workflow tools save completed digital content, allowing marketing team members to access it from anywhere. You can use these applications to organize content by a marketing campaign or by the position on the website where it will appear when published. By giving all team members access to approved logo files, pictures, and other content, storing all of your assets in a single cloud place will help maintain brand consistency. These systems can also display the brand’s style guide on the platform so that creators can readily discover it.

#5. Site improvement

To assess the effectiveness of certain pieces of content on a company’s website, content management and marketing teams frequently employ analytics packages. Analytics programs can tell content administrators which pieces of digital content drive traffic to the website by analyzing the amount of visits, downloads, or click-through rates a web page or resource has. They can also create information on how long users spend on specific pages of a website and which external links drive the most traffic to the site. These programs can assist content teams in improving their content in order to reach a wider audience.

Content Management Tools

These are eleven tools for content management teams:

#1. HubSpot CMS

Hubspot CMS Hub enables content managers to construct websites from scratch or using configurable templates. This commercial CMS solution interacts with Hubspot’s free marketing tools, allowing developers to include call-to-action buttons and lead capture forms in their content. Hubspot CMS tools and services come in a variety of levels, each with its own set of features and costs. Hubspot’s marketing services, also incorporate security protections and analytics tools.

#2. Wix

Wix is a content management system that allows you to design web pages by dragging and dropping. The content management services are available at several tiers, beginning with a free tool for creating websites and adding content using a Wix-branded domain name and adverts. Wix paid editions offer greater customization possibilities, as well as the ability to use your own domain name and accept payments through your website. Wix features a statistics dashboard as well as extra tools to enhance your optimization capabilities.

#3. Squarespace

Squarespace has many premium tiers of content management, allowing you to create websites with functions that are appropriate for an organization’s budget and goals. Our platform includes several templates and categorizes them by purpose, making it simple to select the design that best fits the nature and size of your company. You can add widgets to personalize the functionalities of your website and add features such as an online store or chat box. For further branding and optimization, businesses and individuals can also buy domain names from Squarespace.

#4. WordPress

WordPress is an open-source content management system that allows you to create a website using a variety of templates. The WordPress developer community has built a plethora of plug-ins that you can use to customize your website and add functionality for commerce, social engagement, and other elements of the business. It enables team leaders or website administrators to establish roles that grant different levels of access to the platform’s tools to specific users. For example, if a content writer has the “Contributor” job on WordPress, they can add content without impacting the website’s appearance or functionality.

#5. Drupal

Drupal is an open-source platform and web application framework for building websites. It offers website themes and lets you customize colors and other style features in the builder interface. Modules for typical website functions can also be added. More experienced developers can alter website tools and functionality using Drupal’s sophisticated programming interface. This platform also includes accessibility and workflow tools, which may be useful for project management chores and content collaborations.

#6. Optimizely

Organizations can mix the various content management services provided by Optimizely to fulfill their specific requirements. You can use their CMS to construct a website for a company, manage projects, and optimize team productivity. Their commerce services can assist for-profit firms with online purchases, and their analytics package allows organizations to analyze the traffic and other user statistics on their website. The analytics software also offers recommendations to assist content authors to improve their SEO and attract more users.

#7. Contentful

Contentful structures its approach to content management and website design around agile principles. If you work for a company that uses agile approaches for project management or development, Contentful may be a good fit. The Contentful toolset offers three levels, including a free platform for individual developers and a customized enterprise alternative. This content management platform contains tools for creating and organizing a wide range of content, as well as blueprints to assist you in building a website that suits the size and goals of a business.

#8. Asana

Asana is a work management application that can assist a content team in completing projects with several steps. You may develop project plans, give responsibilities to team members, and track the progress of the team. The platform features notification systems that notify team members when new tasks are assigned to them and remind them of deadlines. Team members can upload completed text, photographs, and videos to Asana, and the program saves all associated content in a single spot, making it easy to move to a content management system for web publication.

#9. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management application that can assist content managers in optimizing their use of a company’s social media profiles. It offers four levels of service, including a custom-built corporate solution for major businesses. This tool monitors the performance of social media postings across several platforms and generates reports on successful posts, overall engagement patterns, and user demographics. You can use this information to change an organization’s social media posting schedule and content, allowing you to reach a larger audience and encourage users to engage with the organization.

With tools for posting, analytics, and suggestions, Sprout Social enables content management teams to maximize their social media content. This subscription platform provides three levels of service to organizations of varying sizes and needs. Content managers may design social media strategies and apply them to many platforms using Sprout Social. Users can also use the platform to construct workflows, schedule posts on various social media accounts, and generate analytics reports that show how particular sorts of postings boost website traffic and audience interaction.