Creating enterprise content requires the collaborative effort of individuals across the organization and with different roles. For example, content writers, graphic designers and subject-matter experts each have unique responsibilities and skillsets that contribute collaboratively to the success of the overall content creation and delivery process. Working together in collaboration, they must produce highquality, effective content that supports business objectives and influences external audiences.
This is the second of a series of blogs that examines each stage of the content lifecycle – from creation to publishing – and everything in between. Today, let’s look at how members of the enterprise content team work together in collaboration, and how automation can make it easier, faster, and more efficient for teams to create and manage content throughout the lifecycle journey.
Work Effectively Individually and Collaboratively Together
A content development team cannot do without the crucial contributions of subject-matter experts (SMEs), content writers, and content designers, each an essential contributor to ensuring valuable content is tailored to support multiple output channels and audiences for optimal consumption. Collaboration is key. SMEs have topical expert knowledge and are hired to impart this knowledge into content that is relative to their target audience. Content writers create written content in a way that is engaging, informative, and influences target stakeholders. They also play a big role in conducting research, organizing information, writing drafts, and helping to structure content for easy readability while revising content based on feedback. Content designers must ensure the visual elements, such as images, pie charts or video clips to help tell the story – complement the written component and feature that WOW factor that supports the organization’s ability to really engage with audiences.
There is a time during the content lifecycle where each of these individuals is highly productive and works independently. However, when the time comes to collaborate to ensure consistency, more must be done beyond open communications and manual reviews and editing processes between these teams.
Taking an automated approach to managing workflows across these teams significantly streamlines the review and approval processes, freeing up SMEs, writers and designers to focus on more strategic opportunities to support the enterprise content strategy. Content collaboration is made seamless, allowing for real-time feedback and communications that transcend geographical boundaries and time zones. Team members can better collaborate, ensure industry standards are being followed, compare documents and even branch off new “child components” that support content development and refinement in parallel and without impacting the original content.
Creating engaging and informative content requires teamwork and collaboration. The SMEs provide insight and expertise, the content writers provide clarity and structure, and the content designers help communicate complex information visually. With content automation, this team can create informative, engaging, and effective content that resonates with the target audience and contributes to the business bottom line.
Learn more about Quark Publishing Platform (QPP) NextGen.
Read Quark’s Top Tips for Next Generation Enterprise Content Lifecycle Management.