Sep 8, 2008
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The Basics of Content Management
Content is Critical
Content is an important part of business –both on the marketing and sales end, as well as when talking about internal communications. On the marketing side, we’ve been encountering content for as long as we can remember. It is used in newspapers and magazines to tell a story, on billboards advertising a service. We read it on labels in grocery stores.
Good Content = Good Business
If you don’t have the proper content or if the content isn’t managed to get your message across, then what’s the point of having it?
Internally, content can be found in various forms including:
- Reports
- Spreadsheets
- Compliance handbooks
- Contracts
- Legal documents
- Emails
- Memos
- Publications
- Intranet websites
- Wikis
- And more!
Regardless of how its found or where its found, its worth keeping an eye on it to see if can be better managed.
Why manage content?
One reason is because you don’t want to duplicate content that is already out there. You want to keep your content fresh. This will insure that you stay ahead of the game. As times change, so should your content.
You’ll also need to change your content if your mission or goals change. The message you send to the reader needs to convey your message at that time so be specific.
Another reason is that by managing the process of creating content, you can become better and faster at it –leaving you more time to do other things, create more content or feel better about switching your content when you need to.
The Basic Process of Managing Content
From a management perspective, content is the creative process of projecting and managing an intended message. Information technology has made the process of creating and managing content an easy competitive advantage in today’s world.
Content goes through several steps:
- Content is created: it’s written by writers or a team of creative professionals.
- Editing: the content is then read and edited for message content, grammar, and punctuation.
- Approval: the content is reviewed, final revisions made and then the content is approved.
- Published: the content is released to its intended audience.
- Time: the content is then left for public or private viewing for a specific amount of time.
- Archived: when the content has expired it is then archived for storage and later reference.
These are basic steps to content development and management. By walking through these steps and having a team or process in place to manage your content, you can turn content creation into the asset it can and should be.
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