Content and its management has become increasingly important to the enterprise in recent years. This is especially true due to the changes that we’ve seen take place over the course of the past decade when it comes to social, local and mobile (SoLoMo). In the enterprise, producing content alone isn’t enough, it’s also necessary to effectively manage it so that it can be captured, stored, and delivered to the relevant audience whilst supporting business goals and objectives.
In the modern enterprise, the answer to this lies in the content management system (CMS), which affords content creators and marketers the tools they need to effectively and strategically manage content.
Adaptive Marketing
The intersection of content and SoLoMo has meant that it’s now necessary for marketers to become Adaptive. This is due to the response time that SoLoMo demands – for example, the use of social media in marketing is widespread and demands that enterprises monitor platforms constantly in order that they can respond quickly to any query or complaint. It’s expected by users that the enterprises that they interact with on social be speedy and appropriate.
Enterprises then not only want to make the most of social, but also local and mobile, two areas that are becoming increasingly entwined. Geolocation can now be used to send targeted and personalised content to users on mobile when they’re looking for local services. Employees also expect to be able to utilise social, local and mobile much as they do in their personal lives.
This means that in order for an enterprise to control content, it’s also necessary to ensure that employees have the necessary tools they need to respond quickly to customers, whilst following policies and procedures that govern content.
Challenges in Governance and Control
However, one of the biggest challenges faced by enterprises is not necessarily in the intersection of social, local and mobile itself, but in governance and control. As we generate a tremendous amount of data, it obviously becomes more difficult to manage. This is especially true when it comes to compliance, as it’s often the case that information is taken out of the enterprise premises into satellite offices, personal devices and cloud applications.
Shadow IT is of course something that can be managed with policies and management, and mobile device management apps allow us to have some control over how personal devices are used, but it still creates a headache for the enterprise with regards to content control.
This means it’s necessary to:
- Understand the content generation and distribution process as well as its location and level of importance.
- Implement automated classification and apply policies to further protect content.
- Have a system in place that allows for the auditing, tracking and controlling of sensitive content once it’s away from the premises and in the hands of remote employees, suppliers, contractors and so on.
- Have the ability to ‘federate’ the content policy in order to cover moves between local technology, mobile devices and the cloud so that it can be effectively protected at all times, from anywhere.
Further to all of this, it’s also necessary to ensure that data is made an integral part of the marketing process. Data has become extremely important to enterprises as it allows them to make faster business decisions based on trends and KPIs. With this in mind, it’s also necessary for enterprises to have the necessary software for extracting structured and unstructured data so that it can be analysed and used to improve business processes and customer communication.
When it comes to the latter, a CRM should also make up a part of the overall business intranet so that data can be pulled in from here in order for the enterprise to act on it.
Content Marketing and the Enterprise
Content marketing is a large part of many enterprises’ marketing activities and a strategic approach should be taken to this too. Studies have found that enterprises which don't produce a content strategy document are less likely to be in a position to prove ROI and for content marketing efforts to be as successful.
According to the Content Marketing Institute,“Enterprise marketers are the most challenged group we've studied in terms of how successful they are at tracking ROI."
The study found that overall, just 31% of enterprises have a documented strategy in place, whilst 42% has an undocumented content strategy, and 20% don’t have any at all.
"Enterprise marketers who have a documented content marketing strategy are more effective and less challenged with content marketing when compared with their peers who have a verbal-only strategy or no strategy at all," the report said.
Clearly then, strategy is lacking in many enterprises, but this can be easily overcome with the right intranet tools and CMS. The strategy should also perhaps include at a minimum reference to the overall content control strategy too. Planning is everything in business and without it, it’s difficult to gain any real, measurable value from the content that the enterprise produces, especially in these more complex times of SoLoMo.
Read the rest of the blog series