MARKETING
8 Content Lifecycle Management Stages (And Best Practices)
60% of the content created by leading brands becomes “just clutter,” as Marketing Week puts it, impacting neither consumers’ lives nor business results.
A pretty dreary statistic for content marketers, right?
But when you dive deeper into the study, it actually reveals an opportunity. The problem isn’t that consumers don’t want content — it’s that brands aren’t managing content effectively.
This brings us to content lifecycle management, or the process of developing, publishing, organizing, repurposing, and retiring content during its lifecycle at an organization.
In this article, we’re going to cover the different stages of managing this process so you can get the most out of the content you create.
Stages of content lifecycle management
When managing the content lifecycle, there are 8 different stages you should go through to do it effectively. Let’s take a look.
Stage #1: Establish your overall content marketing goals and strategies
Without a content marketing goal (and strategies to help you achieve that goal) you’ll essentially be flying blind with your content.
No wonder having a documented strategy is a common thread among top-performing marketing departments — CMI’s 2022 state-of-the-industry report shows that 62% of top performers run their content marketing with a documented strategy and only 11% of bottom performers do the same.
So before doing anything else, it’s important to first establish your overall content marketing goals, and then strategies to help you hit them. A good way to do this is by asking yourself and your team a few simple questions. What’s the point of publishing content, for example? What are you hoping to achieve?
For many businesses, content marketing goals include one or more of the following:
- Drive organic traffic to your website.
- Generate sales and revenue.
- Nurture leads through the different stages of the sales funnel.
- Build loyalty with existing customers by providing resources and education.
- Encourage people to take a specific action like signing up for your email list, making a purchase, registering for a course, or downloading a digital product.
- Improve the conversion rate on your website.
- Establish industry authority by becoming a thought leader in your space.
Then, attach strategies to your specific goals. Let’s say your overall goal is to drive organic traffic to your website, for example. What strategies can you use to achieve this? A good exercise for this stage is to write out a simple chart like this for each goal:
Content marketing goal: Drive organic traffic to our website
Corresponding strategy: Publish frequent, SEO optimized blog articles
Content marketing goal: Nurture leads in the middle of the sales funnel
Corresponding strategy: Publish high-quality customer stories (case studies) on our website
Stage #2: Determine the resources needed
Once you’ve established your goals and corresponding strategies, it’s time to figure out the resources you need to achieve them. For the content lifecycle management process, this can be anything from funding to personnel to software — and everything in between.
Going back to the goal of driving organic traffic, for example, if you’re going to be publishing frequent SEO optimized blog articles, here are some resources you’ll probably need:
- Funding for internal staff, freelance contractors, or an outsourced agency
- Staff or contractors to strategize, write, edit, and publish content
- The right MarTech software to keep everything organized and allow collaboration
- SEO tools to optimize your content and automate keyword research
By identifying these needs upfront, you can set priorities for your funding requests using minimal resource expenditure.
Stage #3: Set up your content team and arsenal
Now that you know what you need for content lifecycle management, it’s time to assemble your team. Most of the roles on content marketing teams can be split into three general categories — management, strategy, creation, and distribution.
The Content Marketing Institute goes into further detail, outlining the following roles as critical to large content marketing teams:
- Chief content officer (CCO) or director of content marketing – Responsible for setting the overall goals and integrating content across departments.
- Content strategy director or content strategists – Responsible for the development and flow of content as an asset throughout the business, including how the content gets distributed.
- Content manager (aka managing editor) – Responsible for project management and overseeing the day-to-day operations of the editorial calendar.
- Content production director (aka creative director) – Responsible for managing how your content looks across departments and channels.
- Audience development manager – Responsible for developing subscription assets (email lists, social media followers, etc.) and building engagement across different media. This person may also be in charge of distribution.
- Influencer wrangler (aka subject matter expert manager) – Responsible for managing content created by internal and external influencers or experts.
- Technical content manager – Responsible for facilitating content marketing processes with technology
- Content writers, designers, and producers – Responsible for creating the actual written or visual content.
Stage #4: Determine your distribution plan
When determining your distribution plan, remember that content distribution can be divided into four main buckets — owned, earned, shared, and paid.
As a quick review, owned media channels are those that your company owns like your blog, your website, your email and SMS list, and more.
Earned media is basically publicity. In the past, this meant being featured on a morning TV show or radio spot. Today it refers more to unpaid mentions by influencers or on channels like podcasts or blogs.
Shared media, on the other hand, refers to social media channels and other online communities. Content in this bucket includes user-generated content, product reviews, customer interactions, shares, retweets, and more.
The last bucket, paid media, is your typical paid advertising for content promotion. This includes everything from PPC to paid influencers marketing to native ad placement.
Of course, many of these buckets overlap and can be used to augment each other — which is why it’s so important to develop a distribution plan. You’ll also want to consider the following:
- Your business – Different types of businesses need different distribution methods. An established B2B company, for example, is likely to find success sharing content like case studies and long-form blog posts on owned and shared media, whereas a small B2C startup will probably have more success using paid influencer marketing.
- Your audience – B2B customers are typically found on LinkedIn (with 80% of B2B leads coming from LI alone). Gen Z customers, on the other hand, are typically on TikTok. In fact, eMarketer predicts TikTok will surpass Instagram in total Gen Z users in the U.S. by the end of 2021 and Snapchat by 2023.
Stage #5: Set up approval and quality assurance processes
The next stage in the content management process involves setting up your workflow in a way that streamlines the approval and quality assurance process. Otherwise, it’ll be a struggle to keep track of all the different pieces of content that have to move from one desk to another.
Here’s an example of a streamlined workflow in action:
- Your content director sends a request for a podcast episode to the content manager.
- The content manager then assigns the script to a writer and editor, with a deadline.
- The writer turns in the script for approval and it’s automatically routed to the content manager, who likely has the script going through at least one round of revision.
- The content manager eventually approves the script and it’s automatically passed on to the podcast director, who can then contact the narrator, schedule recording, and pass the raw files automatically to production.
- Production finalizes the script and it goes straight out to the podcast.
This type of system streamlines your quality assurance process, while automatically passing the content to the right roles as soon as it’s signed off on. The people responsible for approval will always get the content in a timely manner and there’s no chance of content getting published without approval.
There are many software solutions out there that can help you create these workflows — Welcome being one of them. 😉
Stage #6: Start content creation
Now it’s time for the main event — actual content creation. This is a big stage and it includes everything from strategic planning to keyword research to writing and production.
To manage this process and keep everything (and everyone) organized, it’s a good idea to have some systems in place first. A good project management software or content marketing platform will usually do the trick.
Welcome‘s content marketing platform, for example, enables teams to create faster, repeatable processes to deliver content your audience will love. Here are a few specific ways our platform helps with content creation:
- Keep a pulse on what’s going out across every internal and external channel. Our powerful-yet-flexible calendars allow you to easily visualize what’s going out, to whom, and when.
- Centralize the way your team plans every campaign. Plan the effort, craft the communication strategy, and ensure everyone can help amplify the story using tools like shared campaign briefs, project workspaces, and collaborative content editors.
- Create and proof content of all formats with our built-in editor. This allows you to author an original piece and upload content directly. That way, your team can create, proof, and version work — all in one place.
- Leverage real-time search data and recommendations that help inform your content strategy, optimize content so that it ranks well for search, and ensure it resonates with your audience.
- Invite internal and external contributors to create, review, and approve content. Whether you work with a staff of writers or an external agency, you can easily empower your team with the tools they need to collaboratively perfect every brand story.
Stage #7: Repurpose your content
Repurposing content means using elements of an existing piece to create a new piece that serves a new or different marketing purpose. It’s much easier and less time-consuming than creating content from scratch.
Plus, it’s an excellent way to get the most out of each piece, without having to reinvent the wheel each time. Examples include:
- Changing content into a new format: Turning a blog post into an infographic.
- Breaking up long-form content into a series of shorter pieces (or vice versa): Using content from a 10-page white paper to create several shorter blog posts.
- Changing content to suit another channel: Taking a 2,000-word blog post and breaking it up into 5 bite-size LinkedIn posts.
- Changing content to suit another audience: Turning a written case study into a video to target younger demographics.
- Changing content to suit another stage of the buyer’s journey: Turning a series of blog posts into an ebook.
Stage #8: Keep updating content (or retire it)
The last stage in the content lifecycle is to keep your content updated — especially evergreen or high-performing pieces. Also known as revamping, this process ensures your content remains relevant and continues to serve its purpose.
For example, let’s say you have a high-performing blog post about email marketing that was published in 2019, before the pandemic.
Revamping the piece by adding new information to the original article keeps it relevant and ensures that it continues to provide value to your audience.
You can do this by adding new statistics that have emerged since the article was first posted or by updating the recommendations to reflect current trends.
In the case of content that’s truly outdated, the final step of content management is to retire it and take it out of circulation. This reduces clutter and keeps your web presence fresh and timely.
Best practices for choosing content lifecycle management software
1. Make sure you need it
Before choosing any new type of software, it’s always important to make sure you really need it. You don’t want to overwhelm your marketing stack with unnecessary or overlapping tools.
With that in mind, think about whether you’re experiencing the following pain points related to content management:
- Siloed teams within your marketing organization.
- Lack of collaboration, leading to wasted content and duplicated efforts.
- Lack of a centralized system to store and manage marketing assets.
- No real insight or reporting on how your content is performing across channels.
- Lack of visibility into marketing campaigns, including their progression and performance.
- Collaboration is primarily done via email and spreadsheets.
- Inefficient workflows and approval processes that slow down content and campaign production.
If these sound all too familiar, it’s probably time to add content lifecycle management software to your stack.
2. Determine what’s most important
Once you’ve figured out that you need CLM software, it’s a good idea to take a good look at your current situation to determine what’s most important. Ask your team the following questions:
- Where are our current processes falling short?
- How would a content lifecycle management solution fit into our daily workflow, both as individuals and as a team?
- What are our main goals as a marketing team?
- How do we currently execute and measure our goals?
- What are we lacking based on the pain points listed above?
Then, use the answers to these questions to prioritize what you need most out of a CLM platform. For example, if your team is managing campaigns mostly via shared spreadsheets, you might place emphasis on finding a platform that improves collaboration and workflows.
Or maybe you’re lacking a central place to store campaign assets. In this case, you’d want to prioritize a platform with marketing resource management capabilities.
3. Use as few tools as possible
Once you’ve identified exactly what you need your content management system to do, it’s important to look for a solution that uses as few tools as possible. Otherwise, it can get overwhelming (and ineffective) pretty fast.
For example, imagine coordinating all of the stages of the content lifecycle using a separate project management system, SEO tool, content development tool, asset management solution, content distribution tool, marketing automation platform, email marketing tool, etc.
If that has you stressed out just thinking about it, there’s an easy fix — Welcome. (Sorry! We can’t resist one more shameless plug, lol.)
Welcome’s software combines just about everything you need to manage the content lifecycle into one, easy-to-use platform. Plus, our software is designed to integrate easily with your other systems, giving you one central place to manage everything.
4. Prioritize integration
Speaking of integration, making sure your software plays well with others is another best practice when choosing CLM software (or any MarTech solution for that matter).
Because even if you’re careful to select as few tools as possible, you’re still going to have other platforms and systems that your CLM will need to work with.
Welcome, for example, was built to bring software and people together – that means a centralized platform that integrates with the marketing tools you need most, from Marketo to WordPress to Jira and everything in between.
5. Avoid compromising on quality
When choosing software to help you manage the content lifecycle, it’s important not to skimp on quality. One of the best ways to make sure you’re not getting duped is to read through unbiased and verified reviews on sites like G2 or Gartner’s Peer Insights.
These will often give you an honest idea of a software’s level of quality along with insights into what kind of customer support you can expect from them. Of course, no single review should be weighed too heavily, but an overall theme or score can be very useful.
You can also ask other colleagues in the industry if they have experience using any of the solutions you’re considering. If so, you can gain valuable insights by listening to their experiences — the good and the bad.
Content lifecycle FAQs
What’s a content management process?
The content management process is the overall coordination of your content lifecycle, from idea to finished product. It involves things like coordinating with various stakeholders, organizing interdependent tasks, and distributing content to the right channels.
What skills does a content manager need?
A good content manager needs to be highly skilled in the areas of organization and communication. Their main role is to guide a piece of content through its various stages and creative influences and deliver it on time, on brand, and on budget.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you’re feeling more confident now about managing the content lifecycle at your organization. If you follow the steps outlined here, you’ll be on your way to producing “clutter-free” content in no time.
Here’s a quick recap:
Stages of content lifecycle management:
- Establish your overall marketing goals and strategies
- Determine the resources needed
- Set up your content team and arsenal
- Determine your distribution plan
- Set up your approval and quality assurance processes
- Start content creation
- Repurpose content
- Keep updating content
Best practices for choosing content lifecycle management software:
- Make sure you need it
- Determine what’s most important
- Use as few tools as possible
- Prioritize integration
- Avoid compromising on quality
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MARKETING
How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals
A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.
The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.
The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).
Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.
Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.
So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.
1. See journalists as your audience
Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.
Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.
“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”
Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.”
Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”
Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.”
2. Learn the media outlet’s audience
Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).
PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.
WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’”
3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)
Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.
“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”
At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”
While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”
BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”
4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency
Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.
At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.
Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.
“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”
5. Measure what matters
Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.
“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”
To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:
- Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
- Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
- Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
- On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.
But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.
“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”
Don’t fear the merger
Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”
But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
MARKETING
Trends in Content Localization – Moz
Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.
Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.
Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.
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