Content orchestration is the strategic alignment of the people, processes and technology involved in content creation.
Organizations of all sizes – from international brands to independent publishers – can leverage the benefits of content orchestration to create competitive advantage.
On a mission to help organizations reap more ROI from their content supply chain, we’ve rounded up five of the biggest benefits of content orchestration – things your brand might be missing out on….
[Psst… before you read this article, it’s best to know what content orchestration is and involves, so head over What is Content Orchestration? now if you’re not sure.]
1. Brand differentiation
In the digital age, customers have unrivalled choice between brands and can take their custom elsewhere with a few clicks of a button. This makes customer loyalty and lifetime value a key battleground between businesses.
Organizations that use more channels to engage with customers are rewarded with an uplift in purchases, lifetime and LTV. All of which takes a coordinated effort over a growing range of channels.
A content orchestration approach is essential if brands want to win this war for customer attention and loyalty. Without an efficient, omnichannel content supply chain, organizations can’t hope to create the brand buzz they need to generate revenue.
Not simply because content orchestration makes it easier and quicker to get more content to market. But because these efficiencies make time to create BETTER content.
By saving your team from easily automated manual tasks, content orchestration frees up their time and creativity to do more things that robots can’t do. Like brainstorm creative campaign ideas, design artwork that really resonates with your audience, and collaborate to create truly omnichannel experiences.
These activities can help differentiate your brand in a fickle market – increasing engagement, loyalty and revenue. And also help you retain staff by giving them more interesting tasks that challenge and excite them. Win-win!
2. Lower content creation costs
Content orchestration creates a streamlined end-to-end process that eliminates some of the systematic inefficiencies that exist in less connected workflows. Inefficiencies exist in the gaps between systems – the time it takes to move between software, switch between contexts, or communicate between teams.
By creating a single system where everything just flows, you plug a lot of leaks. For example, designers no longer need to leave Adobe InDesign to find, download, convert and import images – they just access your DAM from within their design software and automatically create renditions on the fly. Project managers don’t need to email PDF proofs and manually collate feedback from multiple sources – approvals are online and automatically collated.
These are just a few small examples of the efficiencies that can be achieved through content orchestration. Automations take the savings further. For example, a supermarket could sync their DAM, PIM and design tools to automatically populate catalog templates or ecommerce web pages.
This can significantly reduce the time and resources associated with content creation – giving organizations the opportunity to control costs or reinvest savings elsewhere.
3. Business innovation
Digital transformation is more than just digitizing existing processes. It’s about redesigning them from the ground up, so they’re fit for your organization’s purpose and goals. The content orchestration process engages stakeholders – from individual artworkers to your CMO – in innovation and business transformation.
Content orchestration isn’t just about cost efficiency – it’s about business growth. By introducing more efficient processes and agile teams, businesses are better placed to seize on market opportunities – such as emerging content platforms or new business models.
Read more about software for content orchestration >
4. Faster time-to-market
In many businesses, there’s only room for one winner. The brand that’s first to exploit an opportunity, monetize a meme or launch the hottest new product can make the most sales. So speed to market is a key competitive advantage.
But it isn’t just about getting into production and first on the shelves, it’s also about creating the hype and FOMO that makes those products a must-have. And that relies on having a content supply chain with the agility, flexibility and capacity to quickly mobilise content on multiple channels.
For example, during Donald Trump’s term as POTUS, photos of him enjoying sitting in a truck outside the White House inspired a host of memes. Digital-first media brand BuzzFeed were quick to monetize this moment by producing the picture book ‘The President and the Big Boy Truck’, which they sold via their ecommerce website.
BuzzFeed leverage a number of SaaS platforms to give them agility in a competitive market – including WoodWing Assets – a Digital Asset Management system that provides fast access to their images, artwork and other assets – and Shopify – to manage their online store. [Read more about how BuzzFeed use WoodWing Assets for competitive advantage].
5. Efficient scalable systems
As organizations – and their content needs grow – so does the complexity of their content supply chain. More projects, contributors, digital assets, artwork… And that’s before you factor new channels into the mix too.
If your content operations are already struggling under the pressure, how are you going to scale? If you scale ineffective content processes, you scale the chaos they cause. And that means your system gets bigger, messier and less cost-effective.
Content orchestration lets businesses increase their content outputs in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.
- Standardized processes make it easier to onboard and optimize projects
- Streamlined systems keep schedule and budget under control
- Integrated fit-for-purpose software puts files at your fingertips
- Automations free up your people for tasks that need human attention
This means you can produce more without necessarily increasing headcount, costs or confusion.
Qonqord has been supporting publishers and brands to implement a content orchestration strategy for over 20 years. We know it’s the best way to create value from your content operations. Read our blog on what you need for successful content orchestration for more tips to get you started.
Next steps?
Ready to take this up the chain? Download our executive briefing on the financial, operational and strategic benefits of content orchestration.
Want to find out more? Book a call with one of our content orchestration experts.
Read more about how Albelli orchestrated it’s content creation processes for their consumer website
