How Technology Should Enhance Content
One of the current trends in the content marketing space is technology. The increase in content throughput demanded by the industry can only be sustained with the help of technology.
Many of the reports out there only tackle one side or other of the equation. We’ll attempt to enumerate the different parts where technology plays a crucial role. There are parts we’ll miss, so please leave a comment if you have other ideas or suggestions.
We break down the content cycle into three significant steps: create, distribute and measure. In many ways, it’s the same lean cycle seen elsewhere, especially in software and industrial processes.
Content creation
It’s the creative part of the process. Creative doesn’t mean it lacks processes or tools, but it’s true this phase is one of the most underrepresented in any content technology stack.
- Audience analysis: Any tool that enables the team to do an in-depth analysis of the target audience. Age, location, income, activity patterns, etc. Think of a particular user’s database with education information, perspectives on different issues, etc.
- Content analysis: Tools that analyze what content is being produced, shared and commented in the target audience group. Look at it as Buzzfeed for a particular content team. It not only detects real-time trends, but the most important sources, speed of distribution, etc.
- Content crafting: Any tool that allows you to drag and drop information from other sources and help build the core of the piece. Think of it as a massive scrapbook. Sources can include, news organizations, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Think of as Storify for businesses.
- Wording analysis: Once the content is ready, the title and some parts of the words used in it will require tweaking. Tools that analyze title structure and tell you what verbs get more attention, what words fall flat, etc. Think of it as a tool that will not only examine the current title but could rewrite several versions of the title according to their shareability.
Content distribution
Distribution is another of the critical parts of the content cycle. Once we have our content ready, we need to put it out there, to funnel it to our audience somehow.
- Media dashboards: This is one of the most exploited spaces of the stack. Dashboards enable the team to track different social media channels, lists, subgroups, etc. It allows them to track comments, answers, questions or any other kind of engagement between the audience and our brand and content. Some of them also serve as entry point to other more sophisticated pieces like social CRMs.
- Content timing management: One of the most critical aspects of distributing content is making sure your audience is listening. Timing the content is critical. When and where to publish, how many time zones it spans, how many times to publish the same content, etc. There are currently some excellent tools in this space, like Buffer. That said, there is still plenty of room for development.
- Reuse of third party’s content: Many content strategies not only include your content but the resharing of third-party content. We need tools that capture great content from other sources and funnel them back to the general content backlog of the company. Think of it as an automated curator that will tell you, “Hey, repost this, it’s superb content”, even if the content comes from other sources.
- Promoted content management: This past year has demonstrated that free, organic distribution doesn’t cut it anymore. New tools need to be developed that connect our content and automatically funnel it through promoted channels, as well as organic ones.
- Omnichannel management: Basic social media channels don’t cut it anymore. Hail the rise of the omnichannel problem. There are very few tools that enable content teams to manage the omnichannel. It’s not just basic social media anymore. It’s video, live streaming, podcasts, TV, radio, and much more.
Content performance
One of the most actively developed stages of the content cycle. It’s obvious. Once you put content out there, you need to measure the effects of it and learn from it.
- Content analytics: Most efforts go into measuring the fundamental metrics. Views, Likes, shares, etc. More and more tools, (i.e. Content Insights) are seeking to define new engagement metrics that smooth out link-batting factors.
- Content distribution/virality metrics: Tools that analyze how the content is being distributed across each network. Concepts like vertical and horizontal propagation, distribution graphs, connector identification, propagation nodes, distribution speed, etc. This is also known as network or graph analysis, and while grounded in math, it’s critical for timing content strategy.
- System training feedback loop: One of the final pieces of the puzzle. We need to use all the data gathered through analytics and inform the previous two phases. We need tools to create automatic feedback loops that train the processes or tools from previous stages so they get smarter and smarter. This kind of machine learning mimics how artificial neural networks work, but places it at a system level.
Conclusions
The previous ideas are a just small set of places where technology tools generate incredible value. Many of the ideas highlighted are achievable with current technology. We haven’t exploited more advanced ideas like self-writing agents or similar advanced AIs. They will undoubtedly arrive, but we want to keep this as real and actionable as possible.
Another thing we didn’t cover is the need for all these pieces to be as interconnected as possible. Ideally, we should be talking about a meta-dashboard that articulates each of these stages and tools into a coherent control board.
Technology is changing everything. Any content marketing team that isn’t using technology won’t be able to compete in the professional league of content strategy stardom.
