Elevate your brand success with a content supply chain

Highlights

You’ll learn about:

• Content supply chain: Complete end-to-end process for creating, managing and distributing tailored content

• Optimization strategies:

• Use DAM and CMS for authentic customer engagement
• Enhance content search speed for efficient delivery
• Tailor content for specific channels to increase engagement
• Collaborate for brand consistency

Start empowering your brand with a well-optimized digital content supply chain and take the first step towards impactful content strategies.

Keep reading to learn more!

One-size-fits-all content no longer works with customers. They expect you to know their individual needs and provide them with messages that solve their pain points. Content consumption plays a major role in understanding and predicting purchase behavior, pushing us back to 1985 when Bill Gates coined “Content is King.”

With 47% of B2B buyers reading at least 3-5 content pieces before contacting a salesperson, it’s high time brands started thinking about their content strategies and adopting new workflows to keep up with changing customer expectations.

Enters content supply chain (CSC). 

Having the best content supply chain is crucial for companies that want a more agile process of creating, managing, promoting and distributing content across different channels.

As content ideation and creation seem simple in theory, delivering and distributing content across different channels while providing a personalized feel before competitors do is demanding. It’s no surprise that without a proper system in place, the entire process falls apart. 

That’s why forward-thinking companies implement a content supply chain—a powerful set of processes that manages complex content production like a pro and gets things done in a timely manner and within budget.

In this article, we discuss exactly what a content supply chain is, the benefits that come along with it and the different ways to optimize it. 

What is a content supply chain?

The content supply chain is a complete end-to-end process that plans, creates, manages, promotes, routes and delivers tailor-made content across multiple channels and platforms. 

Take retail, for example. A content supply chain within the retail industry focuses on the steps and stages of delivering and distributing content to customers. The starting point is creating content—using unedited videos and images you have. What follows next is creating and routing content to provide a personalized experience through the desired channels and to your target audience. 

The main idea behind a content supply chain is that everything happens smoothly and you don’t face any friction on the way. 

Components of a content supply chain

The components of a content supply chain are:

Content production

During the content production phase, you think, research and develop content to solve your customer’s pain points. You create content assets, like blogs, graphic design, videos, audio and images.

Content architecture

Content architecture organizes and structures your content to increase its impact and efficiency. Developing a framework makes content readily available, indexable and easy to navigate. It means creating categories and storing content using taxonomies, metadata standards and content models.

While a content architecture helps structure content for a specific channel or digital publishing model, it also enables content consumption across other channels. A well-defined architecture achieves consistency and governance while making content management efficient.

Content management

After you create the content, you need to store and publish it. For this reason, many companies prefer a headless content management system (CMS). They provide a centralized platform for storing, indexing and retrieving content.

Information is easily accessible and editable when you store your content in a CMS. You provide updates and maintain consistency across all your digital channels.

Content delivery

In content delivery, you share content on social media platforms, websites, through emails and on mobile applications. The more you share, the more reach and engagement you achieve. Strategic distribution ensures your content is not idle but actively driving traffic and conversions.

Content analysis

To know the effectiveness of your content supply chain, measuring the performance of distributed content is important. Analytics provide insights into how well content engages and converts. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates, time spent on a page and social shares help you understand what’s working and what's not.

Why is a content supply chain important?

Companies of all sizes and marketing budgets use content supply chains for these reasons:

A constant flow of fresh content

Every minute of the day, billions of people use social media or read blogs to learn about or find information about the products or services they need. That’s why sharing fresh content is always helpful—it triggers the recency effect. The recency effect means brands must update and post new content to attract their audience. Why? Customers tend to remember and value the most recent information they view or read. 

More efficiency

The age-old traditional content creation methods are labor-intensive and time-consuming, requiring various tools, technologies, stakeholders and workflows. A content supply chain builds a single source of truth for content, automating your everyday tasks and ensuing collaboration across various teams. However, collaboration doesn’t happen only at the company level. The supply chain makes working with third parties and agencies a breeze.

Case study: How did Contentstack improve content delivery for Extu?

Extu wanted to manage a large volume of content in multiple languages. Their existing content management platform lacked integration with their proprietary technology and multi-language capabilities, resulting in inefficient manual translation processes. Extu chose Contentstack because it allowed multi-language content management, was integrated with Extu’s proprietary technology and was compatible with digital asset management (DAM) systems.

As a headless CMS, Contentstack integrated with DAM. Contentstack helped Extu to:

• Automate and expedite translation processes, reducing risk and increasing efficiency.
• Achieve a 21% reduction in internal user workflow steps.
• Distribute translated content to the market 53% faster.
• Deliver English content to market 21% faster.

With Contentstack’s integration with DAM, Extu scaled its through-channel marketing solution.

This is what Tara Yukawa, VP of Marketing Solutions at Extu, said after using Contentstack:

“Using Contentstack has given us peace of mind, particularly with our internal users who are managing content in multiple languages that they might not speak. So, our users were able to reduce steps in their workflow by 21%.”

To know more, read the case study here. 

Easier to store and share digital assets

Speaking of storing digital assets, a key component of any content supply chain is a headless CMS and a digital asset management (DAM) system. While a CMS stores your text, a DAM houses all your digital assets, cataloged and tagged to increase searchability. The best DAMs manage version control, remove duplicate assets and even resize images. 

How to optimize your content supply chain strategy

Know the voice of your customers

Professional photographs and expertly written content have their perks. However, unless your content feels real and doesn’t answer the customer’s questions, you will lose the battle of creating a seamless customer experience. 

You don’t want to share content that puts your brand in the wrong spotlight and spreads miscommunication. But how do you ensure you tap into your customers' voices and deliver personalized content and experience?

The remedy is a DAM and a CMS—streamlining every aspect of your entire content lifecycle, from ideation to content distribution. These tools collect all the relevant information and data pertaining to a product or service and spreads it across the entire company. 

The result? All users know what information to include when creating content and they know their customers' voices. 

Provide a faster content search

The faster your marketing teams can search for content, the faster you can move from content creation to delivery. To ensure your supply chain falls in place, you need to improve your speed at getting things done, which includes searching for the right content the moment you need it. 

What’s more? Once your marketing team searches for relevant content at a lightning-fast speed, the instance of unused content reduces manifolds. Why? Simply because you will find what you want. 

Partnering with Contentstack’s DAM providers like Cloudinary or Bynder provides you with the search and AI capabilities to help you find content that you need.

Use the right content in the right channel

Another way to optimize your content is to use the right content in the right channel. A social media post will not attract customers if you share it on your website and vice versa.

Customizing your content for every digital channel forms the backbone of the digital content supply chain. Why? It delivers omnichannel experiences. 

Tools like DAM ensure the right content hits the right channel and style. 

Improve your workplace collaboration

The only way your digital content supply chain can work while delivering the desired results is by making sure the people involved are on the same page. Using a DAM, you create a single source of truth. Everyone knows where to search for information and digital assets. That way, you avoid people using different versions of the same file—or worse—choosing outdated content data or information to create and deliver content. 

When different teams share different information about the same product with their customers, you risk losing consistency, which negatively impacts your brand’s reputation. 

Distribute content keeping customers in mind

A big part of optimizing your content supply chain is avoiding content chaos when distributing content. Amplifying the reach of your content gets you going because you attract more customers than ever. 

Easier and seamless content distribution opens new doors. But how do you fill the gap between content management and distribution? A headless CMS like Contentstack is often used with DAM systems to control the content and ensure seamless delivery. With a CMS, you reuse content across different websites and platforms. 

Reducing redundancies in a digital content supply chain

Remove duplicate efforts in content creation

To remove duplicates in your content creation process, identify and remove repetitive tasks. For example, use tools to streamline workflow, generate content quickly and make sure everyone on your team knows the content goals, helping you avoid duplicate work.

Breaking down silos in content development

Encourage different departments to collaborate on your digital content supply chain strategy. For example, create teams with members from marketing, sales and customer service to discuss and ensure the content meets business goals regularly.

Using DAM systems

These tools organize and store content so it's easy to find and use. DAM systems categorize, tag and store content, making sure the right content is available to the right people at the right time.

FAQs

What is the content supply chain?

The content supply chain involves creating, categorizing, distributing and evaluating content. Your reach and engagement increase when you understand what kind of content is relevant and share it on the right channels.

What is a content chain?

A content chain is the sequence of steps through which content is created and shared. It’s the process of generating concepts and then developing, organizing, sharing and evaluating them. This effective approach provides meaningful and compelling information to your target audience.

What is the role of content management?

Content management may be described as the process of managing content at different stages in its lifecycle. This means organizing, storing, maintaining and overseeing content to keep it relevant, accessible and up-to-date. 

What is the content management value chain?

The content management value chain includes all the activities that add value to content from start to finish. Strategic planning, efficient management, targeted distribution and insightful analysis are a part of the value chain. 

Learn more

Building a high-functioning content supply chain sets you apart from competitors. Apart from producing high-quality content faster, it develops more meaningful and personalized connections with your customers. 

To enhance your content strategy and delivery process and know how Contentstack can help you build a digital content supply chain, request a free demo today.