How Effectively are you Managing your Content Investment?

You have invested in your content operation. Blog posts, videos, podcasts—you name it—are flying out of the door. But how great a return you receive from your content investment will depend on the effectiveness with which you manage it.

Here are six scenarios where inefficiency may be hurting your content investment. Do you recognize aspects of your organization here?

1. Lack of Ownership

   Nobody clearly owns content on behalf of your company. Different divisions have their take on what content means and how to do it. At the executive level, VPs and CXOs fly under the radar with their own content initiatives. Ultimately, the CEO is responsible for the company's content output but she has failed to lay down a clear chain of command for the strategic management of content throughout the business.

2. Absence of Documentation

   Your company has no documented content plan to establish the parameters for content management and what it expects from that investment. Although a chain of command exists, a lack of clearly stated governance hobbles your company's ability not only to do content well but to get best bang from your buck.

3. Failure in Process Implementation

   A chain of command and a documented plan are in place, but the left hand is not sure what the right hand is doing. The processes are laid out, but individuals and teams are not clear what the process means and how it should be implemented.

4. Content Over-Supply

   The content machine is up and running, everyone is drilled, and content is flowing out of your organization like a fresh oil well. Job done? The opposite in fact! Too much free-flowing content quickly becomes a problem of another kind—oversaturation. What an organization needs is a governance mechanism for content creation that controls how much it is producing at any given time.

5. Poor Integration

   Everything is in place, there is discipline around production, but the various content assets don't seem to be gelling. This speaks to a lack of integration in the strategy. Companies should ensure that individual pieces of content not only fit together from a thematic perspective but interlink in rich, intuitive ways that are evident to the visitor. When it comes to content strategy, the sum must be more than the parts.

6. Confusion over Positioning

   You have points 1-5 under control but your content is showing fractures as it scales. This is a classic positioning problem. If you are not crystal clear around your core purpose as an organization and who you’re seeking to serve, this ambiguity will surface as fracture points in your content as your creative reaches a critical mass. This is a critical flaw in the content plan, and must be addressed urgently.

Tackling Inefficiencies

With any large investment, some level of inefficiency is unavoidable—and this is true with content. Inefficiency can creep into content from any number of directions, and always leads to less effective outcomes.

Remedy each of the problems outlined above with conviction—improvements will quickly start to materialize. Your content will be more compelling, more effective, and far less prone to wastage as your company evolves.