Version control. Whether your marketing team is within an agency, small business, enterprise, or startup, keeping track of content versions is a struggle. And the struggle is real for everyone on the team. When multiple people touch content files, things can get ugly. Changes get lost or overwritten, the wrong versions get passed along from one phase to another, and everyone involved in the process – from first draft to design to web authoring – has limited visibility, so fingers may or may not start pointing. Either way, it leads to rework and frustration. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Find Help with an Enterprise Content Management System
Your marketing team can store, share and track files with enterprise content management software. Finding the right system to support your workflow can foster a more productive and in-sync content marketing team. There are three important musts:
1. Find the Right Match for Your Team
Check out your options. Box and Dropbox are two of the most popular enterprise content management software products. Both are cloud-based solutions for businesses of all sizes and provide teams with version control and the ability to communicate within the document using comments. Instead of sending emails back and forth, a history of feedback is right in the file. This can be helpful when moving files from one phase to another – confirming that content is final and ready to move to someone else’s hands.
GatherContent is a popular collaboration platform for agencies and their clients. It combines enterprise content management and collaborative workspaces. Some great advantages of this hybrid platform are that multiple people can work on content at the same time. It keeps everyone on the team in the loop by sending activity notifications. You can learn more and compare all of your enterprise content management software choices here.
2. Train and Test to Make Sure Everyone Uses It Effectively
To help ensure everyone uses the selected platform, it’s important to train your team and give them an opportunity to test it before rolling it out. The two can work hand in hand. Giving everyone hands-on experience before going live helps prevent business disruptions. By testing, the team can make sure the system truly enhances the workflow, and any hiccups can be corrected. When a system supports every role on the team — as opposed to putting up blockers and forcing people to create workarounds — it is more likely that everyone will embrace it.
3. Clearly Define Workflow and Communicate Handoffs
After your team nails down a smooth workflow with testing, clearly communicating processes and handoffs from one person to another is crucial to success. It helps prevent duplicating efforts, overwriting work, and passing along incorrect versions of content. Depending on the selected platform, notifications can be set up to keep everyone in the know.
Seeing Results
Implementing the right enterprise content management system can increase team productivity. Efficiency goes up; costs go down. It also makes for a more cohesive team, which inspires creativity and innovation.
