What is Content Lifecycle Management (CLM)

In order to have a successful online presence, content creators must produce relevant, engaging, and valuable content. Content Lifecycle Management (CLM) is the business process of organizing and managing your company’s digital content in a way that optimizes its creation, publication, distribution, archiving, and eventual deletion. In this article, we will define Content Lifecycle Management, discuss its importance to companies, and outline 8 steps to help your CLM thrive.

Why invest time and energy into Content Lifecycle Management? An efficient management system will:

• Help you save time and money on creative development by reusing existing content.
• Ensure that your content is high-quality, relevant, and on-brand.
• Maximize the reach and impact of your content strategy.
• Help your organization track and analyze the performance of your content.

The Seven Stages of Traditional Content Lifecycle Management

Traditional Content Lifecycle Management consists of seven stages. Let’s begin with a quick review of each:

1. Conception – This is the stage where content is first created. Content creation includes the ideation, content planning, and research phases. The planning stage is the bedrock of all content operations. Content strategists spend the bulk of their time in this phase generating a solid management plan.
2. Production – In this stage, the content is actually produced or sourced. This might involve writing, design, photography, video production, etc.
3. Distribution – Once the content project is complete, it needs to be distributed to your audience. This might be through your website, social media channels, blog posts, or email marketing.
4. Engagement – Once the content is distributed, you need to encourage your audience to engage with it. This might involve promoting the content, providing calls to action, etc.
5. Analysis – In this phase, you analyze the performance of the content. This might involve looking at information such as website analytics, social media metrics, and engagement rates.
6. Optimization – Based on the analysis, you can optimize the content to improve its performance. This might involve making changes to the headline, changing the call-to-action, etc.
7. Archiving – Once a piece of content is no longer relevant, you need to archive it. This ensures that old content doesn’t clutter up your website or other channels.

In the abundance of digital content that is created today, CLM has never been more important. By following these steps, you can ensure that your content is properly managed and performing at its best.

If you’re looking for a tool to help you with content lifecycle management, be sure to check out OpenAsset. Our software makes it easy for AEC and Real Estate firms to manage digital assets throughout the entire lifecycle. From uploading and organizing files to tagging and sharing content, we have you covered.

The Importance of Investing in Content Lifecycle Management

When you consider how much time, energy, and resources go into developing quality digital content assets and images, then it makes perfect sense that they should be managed as carefully as any product or service.

The fact is that poor content is bad for business. For example, statistics show that 68% of customers will leave a website if the content is poorly written, outdated, or blocked by a popup. It ruins the whole user experience and creates a negative association with your brand.

Content lifecycle management provides the framework for ensuring that your digital content assets are kept up-to-date and on-trend, with consistent branding – ultimately driving better business results. Without a CLM strategy in place, you risk losing control over your content, which can lead to inconsistency in branding and marketing, decreased ROI, and frustrated customers.

The Benefits of Content Lifecycle Management

There are many benefits to investing in Content Lifecycle Management:

• Improved ROI: By managing your digital content assets and images throughout their entire lifecycle, you can ensure that they continue to drive value for your business.
• Increased Efficiency: Content lifecycle management can help you streamline your content development process, making it more efficient and effective.
• Improved Quality: By managing your digital assets throughout their lifecycle, you can ensure that they are of the highest quality and meet the needs of your audience.

Ready to launch CLM? Follow these steps for success!

8 Steps to Efficient Content Lifecycle Management

So how can you optimize your content lifecycle management process to ensure that your digital assets continue to drive value for your business? Here are eight steps to get you started:

Step 1: Define Your Content Lifecycle

The first step to successful content lifecycle management is to define the stages of your content lifecycle. This will help you determine which processes and tools are necessary to manage your content effectively.

Step 2: Identify Your Content Assets

Identify all of the digital assets that you have. This includes everything from images and videos to website content and blog posts. The most efficient way to achieve this is with a winning DAM solution.

Step 3: Invest in the Right Tools

Once you have defined your content lifecycle and identified your assets, it is time to invest in the right tools. There are a number of Content Lifecycle Management (CLM) platforms on the market that can help you manage your content more effectively.

Step 4: Classify Your Content Assets

Once you have identified your content assets, it’s time to classify them. This will help you determine which assets are the most important to your business and which ones can be archived or deleted.

Step 5: Organize Your Content Assets

The next step is to organize your content assets. This includes creating a system for storing and retrieving files, as well as setting up a workflow for managing assets. Here are just a few benefits of utilizing a DAM solution to organize your content assets:

• Improved searchability – Content assets can be easily found and retrieved with the help of a robust search function.
• Version control – With a DAM system, you can keep track of different versions of an asset and revert back to older versions if needed.
• Access control – You can decide who has access to which assets and set up permission

A quality DAM solution will allow you to easily organize your digital files with tags, categories, and other metadata. OpenAsset, a project-based DAM solution, helps you manage digital assets throughout the lifecycle with ease. With our powerful tools, you can easily find and organize all of your content in one place. We make it easy to track and manage your content from start to finish.

Step 6: Create a Content Calendar

An optimized content calendar will help your content team plan and publish your pieces in a more organized and efficient way. This tool can also be used to track the performance of your content and make necessary changes. Here are some of our favorite go-to platforms:

• ContentCal
• Trello
• Asana

Step 7: Develop Your Distribution Strategy

Your distribution strategy should be designed to reach your target audience and achieve your marketing goals. There are a number of ways to distribute different stages of content, just remember that not all channels will be right for every piece of content. Try leveraging these channels to their fullest potential to stock your digital content distribution arsenal:

• Social Media – Use social media to promote organic brand awareness and share your content with a wider audience.
• Email – Email can be one of the best ways to segment your audience, promote new content, or drive traffic back to older pieces.
• Paid Advertising – Boosting web content with paid ads can help you reach a larger guaranteed audience and achieve measurable results. Be careful not to overuse them!
• Website – Great customer experiences begin with a first impression on your web page. Accurate content, easy access, and the ability to interact with vendor channels are a must.

Step 8: Monitor and Evaluate Your Content

Once your content is published, it’s important to monitor its performance and make changes as needed. This will help you ensure that your content is meeting the needs of your audience and achieving your business goals.

Content lifecycle management is an important part of creating successful content. By following these eight steps, you can ensure that your content is well-managed and effective. Content lifecycle management can help you save time and money while creating high-quality content that meets the needs of your audience.

Using OpenAsset to Manage Content Lifecycles

A premier software system is a must-have for managing digital assets throughout the lifecycle. Recent field data shows that while 97% of businesses reported that content marketing is part of their marketing strategy, only 19% boasted of having an advanced content marketing strategy. The difference? Leveraging the right tools to take your digital marketing strategy to the next level.

OpenAsset is a digital asset management solution that helps AEC and Real Estate marketing teams save time and money by managing digital content from a central location. Digital assets can be sorted, tagged, and organized by project for easy retrieval. With OpenAsset, there is no need to search through multiple folders on a server for the best quality image- simply enter a few keywords into the search bar and the relevant asset will appear!

OpenAsset is trusted by some of the world’s leading AEC firms to manage project images and digital assets throughout the lifecycle. Request a demo of OpenAsset today to see how our software can help you streamline your digital content and elevate your strategy.