Content is the foundation that every business is built upon. It covers everything from slide decks to explainer videos, marketing content and more. Content also reflects a business’ brand in all areas and consequently, without efficient content creation processes, staying on-brand becomes much harder. In this way, the process of content creation becomes crucial to drive operations forward.
Despite its importance, content production remains highly inefficient. Most businesses have set up complex infrastructures that make it a long and bothersome process, significantly hindering employee productivity. Additionally, human error needs to be factored in: without the properly organised structures set in place, it is easy for employees to get confused and use outdated or disparate content. This all leads to disorganisation and total ‘content anarchy’, with disparate content being used simultaneously. There is a clear need to opt for tech solutions that standardise and automate content, allowing employees to create it without bottlenecks.
The proliferation of inefficient content management
In today’s tech driven, hybrid working age, missing out on a well-oiled content infrastructure leads to a number of inefficient business outcomes; hindering productivity, damaging brand integrity and negatively impacting employee wellbeing. For instance, content reviews are often one of the biggest pain points for employees, creating huge productivity blocks. Global research shows sixty percent of UK workers state their company’s process for reviewing and approving content delays other work. Even after multiple rounds of review, ninety-four percent still find errors in approved content.
Inefficient content infrastructure, riddled with human error, also affects the ability to create compliant content, which is extremely important for industries like legal and financial services. Without efficient access to compliant materials, employees are faced with a conundrum: should they spend time trying to hunt down the latest brand-approved collateral, or use whatever they have saved to their desktop? The answer is often a resounding “whatever works best’’. In fact, forty-eight percent of workers in the UK are often not confident that they are using the latest company approved content.
The road to efficient content: automation
Automated content solutions enable teams to ensure content remains accurate, on-brand and compliant. In companies lacking automation, IT infrastructure requires employees to search for materials, as opposed to automating, or ‘pushing’ content to employees, leading to human error accumulating.
Through smart content automation, making sure that all content stays in sync and adheres to corporate guidelines becomes much simpler. Companies can make it easier to locate and use the latest brand approved content and employees can create things like documents, videos or social media posts easier and faster, allowing them to focus on their more meaningful work. To reach this level of productivity, business leaders must look for a solution that connects tools across their tech stack to create better workflows. For instance, if an employee is working on a slide deck, they shouldn’t have to jump to Salesforce and then to their DAM (Digital Asset Management tool) to find the information they need. Instead, every piece of content they need should be automatically served to employees within the application they’re already working in. Similarly, if they are seeking to publish content on social media, they shouldn’t have to browse through endless folders to find the most suitable images or videos to post. Instead they should be able to open up LinkedIn, and easily have compliant copy and approved brand visuals directly served to them within the application.
Employees should be supported with the right technology to allow them to better perform in their roles without the monotonous hassle of browsing across all content repositories to find the most up to date pieces needed.
Adapting to the future of work
Hybrid and remote working exacerbates the issues raised above as inefficient content infrastructure, combined with the difficulty of being separated from colleagues, leads workers to use their own solutions and makes collaboration more difficult. Indeed, two-thirds of UK workers regularly turn to colleagues for information as to where certain pieces of content are located. Limited face-to-face interactions make this more difficult and slows down the completion of tasks, often leading to off-brand or incorrect content creation. This results in a negative impact to overall team efficiency and a business’ brand. With jobs becoming increasingly dependent on technology and automated processes, it only makes sense for content creation to follow suit and adapt to this new paradigm, getting rid of repetitive and unnecessary tasks to improve workflows.
Automation, in short, is the future of content generation. Not only does it save valuable time, but it can also empower hybrid teams by getting rid of monotonous tasks. Additionally, it can strengthen a business’ brand and boost its message across all platforms, turning content anarchy into enabled content.
