Choosing content technology

[Reyed Mia (Apprentice, DIU)]

Choosing content technology

- In order for your content to be organized and effective you should consider choosing content technology. Using only spreadsheets to keep track of content is not ideal. For many years this is practically all I used to keep track of what different content that I had in the pipeline, but over time I determined that it's difficult to collaborate with folks using spreadsheets and it's hard to keep track of the different content that you're creating. So content technology helps you run the business of content including collaboration, coordination, creation, and publishing.

There is a ton of different marketing technology out here. Here's just basically a sampling from Chief Martec's Marketing Technology Landscape. And content marketing, is a sub-set of all this technology but still remains to be a big question mark. What do you choose and how do you choose it? What are the different types of marketing software, because there are multiple types. You have project management and production software, which is primarily what we'll be focusing on in this video. Website content management, competitive content tracking, content applications, and content-creation marketplace platforms.

So there's a wide variety of technology and as content marketing continues to grow as a discipline, this is only going to get more complex. Content project management and production platforms help you organize and run the business of content marketing. They help you prioritize and assign tasks, project manage your different pieces of content. No doubt, you probably have a ton of different content pieces going at any one give time, so these platforms help you manage that process. They help you collaborate with multiple stakeholders, if you have four or five writers and reviewers involved in every content asset, this is critical.

They help you keep track of content projects to know where a specific asset is in its production timeline. They help you create an overall editorial calendar so that you can have a holistic view of all of your content across your organization and have everything in one place. Ask yourself questions before you delve into choosing a content project management platform. How many people do I need to collaborate with? What's the current content creation process look like? Who needs to approve content? There's many organizations that have multiple approvers.

What are the steps needed for approval? And, Do we have separate workflows for different content assets? I know for myself, at my job at Marceto, we have multiple different workflows and approval workflows for different assets. So it's critical to map all of that out before you choose a technology. So the next step, once you know what you're looking for, is to vet vendors. So how do you do that? Watch some demo videos. Do some research, see who's out there. Ask questions of the vendors.

Ask them how they support all the different things that you need to do within your content organization. Have them show you workflows that are similar to your own. Ask for references. And then ask for a trial, if possible. Those are all ways to help you vet out your particular solution. Next you'll want to make a decision and onbord your team. First, meet with the stakeholders, go over you options, and decide on what project management platform to bring in-house. Next, you'll want to create a roll-out plan. This could include training, mapping out your processes, and different things that you'll need to keep in mind when rolling out the new solution to your entire organization.

Next, you want to make sure that you map out any workflow or approval processes that you might have. This is critical because you'll take those processes and put them directly into the tool. Then you want to train your team. Gather out all the people that will using your platform, get them in a room and take them through the new process. Consider having the vendor come in and doing a direct demo, or you could do it yourself. And then onboard any external vendors that you're currently using. So any writers that you have, or designers, might also be using this tool so make sure you take time to train them on how to use it as well.

So now that you have a good sense of all the questions and considerations to take into account when choosing your content project management platform, do some research, choose the vendors, and make a decision.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/content-marketing-foundations/choosing-content-technology