According to a recent analysis of the top 1,500 global brands, roughly 60% of all created content has little impact on consumers' lives and business results. So, what can you do to ensure that your content is effective and impacts your business? The answer: content lifecycle management.

Today, we'll discuss exactly what content lifecycle management is, how it can help your business, and the five stages you must go through to apply it.

What is Content Lifecycle Management?

Ok, first, we need to understand what content lifecycle management means. Simply put, it's a process that helps you create, manage, and optimize your content for maximum effectiveness. It's not just about creating content - it's about making sure that your content resonates with your audience and achieving the desired results you set out for.

Content lifecycle management focuses on content from the beginning of its development to the end - ensuring that it's optimized for maximum impact. To make sure your content hits the right audience, at the right place, and at the right time, you need to plan and manage it thoroughly.

How complicated can it be, right?

How Can Content Lifecycle Management Help Your Business?

So, how exactly can content lifecycle management help your business? Well, it helps increase the ROI of your content by ensuring that it's effective and impacts your target audience. Content lifecycle management also helps you understand your audience better and adjust your content accordingly.

All of that may sound enticing. But it also sounds bland, doesn't it? You want something tangible and measurable. So, here are a few ways content lifecycle management can help your business:

• Increase website traffic and engagement: Through content lifecycle management, you can optimize your content to attract more visitors and engage them better.
• Increase brand authority: Content is an excellent way to spread the word about your brand, products, services, and values. Content lifecycle management helps you by ensuring that your content is seen by the right people and resonates with them.
• Generate leads: Optimizing your content can generate more leads, ensure they are of better quality, and even help you turn them into stable customers more easily. 
• Improve customer relationships: By creating content that appeals to your target audience, you can build better relationships with them.
• Boost sales: Of course, the goal of any business is to increase revenue. Content lifecycle management helps you create content that resonates with your audience and encourages them to make a purchase.

Now that we understand what content lifecycle management is and how it can help your business let's take a look at the five stages you need to go through to apply it.

5 Stages of Content Lifecycle Management

Before you dive into producing content, you should have a plan - this is the starting point of content lifecycle management.

Planning

Without a clear goal in mind - and on paper - you'll just be creating content for the sake of it. Now, discussing your objectives with the rest of your team is nothing out of the ordinary for business. But we're not talking about mere discussions.

We're talking about coming up with a plan, running it by your team, and then writing it down in an actionable format. According to CMI research, 62% of top business performers run their content marketing with a well-documented strategy, while only 11% of the bottom ones do it.

Producing

If you've decided to produce written content mainly, you might think you'll be able to handle the production phase independently.

But that's not always true. Sure, you can write the content yourself, but it might be better to outsource content production to experienced professionals who can give your work a well-rounded, professional touch.

Set up your content team, define the roles clearly, and delegate the tasks accordingly. Some tasks you might have to delegate in this phase include keyword research, creating images or videos, writing the content itself, and editing.

You can hire a part-time marketing director to handle the project management and content strategy, a part-time copywriter to write the actual pieces, and an editor or proofreader to review each piece before publication. When hiring for help on your website it’s important to note there're many different ways to approach many different projects.

Publishing

Now that your content is ready, it's time to publish it. Depending on the type of

Once the content is ready, it's time to publish. Depending on the type of content you produce, you may need to use different methods for publishing. For example, if you produce written content, you must distribute it through your website and social media channels.

If you produce video content, on the other hand, you'll need to upload it to YouTube, Vimeo, and other video hosting sites. You can also embed your videos on your website or blog.

Assessing

So you've planned out your strategy. Created high-quality content. And you published it on a strict timeline. Now, all you have to do is sit back, relax, and watch the money roll in, right? Please stop it. You're thinking like your run-of-the-mill low-level marketer.

Unfortunately, there's still a lot of work to be done after the content is published. You need to track and analyze the performance of your content.

This is a very important step in content lifecycle management. The data you collect from replicating, evaluating, and measuring your content can provide invaluable insights that you can use to improve your future campaigns.

Maintaining

We've established that content is an evergreen asset. Once published, you should always keep an eye on it and ensure that the information it contains is up-to-date.

It would be best if you continued to amplify your content by repurposing it into different formats and distributing it on various channels.

Content lifecycle management is an ongoing process, and you should be prepared to invest considerable resources in it.

Need Help With Content Lifecycle Management?

Content lifecycle management is an important job that requires a lot of time and resources. If you don't have a person for the job, you can hire a part-time content director to manage the process and ensure that your content strategy is well-planned, executed, and tracked. 

Boardroom Advisors can help you connect with a part-time marketing director with the right skills to tackle your content lifecycle management needs. With flexible contracts, you can increase or decrease your commitment as required by your business to achieve desired results.

Your content is your most powerful marketing tool. Make sure you have the right people to manage it and give it the attention it deserves.

Author Bio

John Courtney is Founder and Chief Executive of BoardroomAdvisors.co which provides part-time Executive Directors (Commercial/Operations/Managing Directors), Non-Executive Directors and paid Mentors to SMEs without either a recruitment fee or a long term contract.

John is a serial entrepreneur, having founded 7 different businesses over a 40 year period, including a digital marketing agency, corporate finance and management consultancy. He has trained and worked as a strategy consultant, raised funding through Angels, VCs and crowd funding, and exited businesses via MBO, MBI and trade sale. He has been ranked #30 in CityAM’s list of UK Entrepreneurs.