The Struggle is Real for Content Management and Technology [New Research]

For the third year, Content Marketing Institute conducted its 2019 Content Management and Strategy Survey, sponsored by Vennli, to get a snapshot of how marketers are using technology tools to help create, manage, deliver, and scale enterprise content and marketing. Got a management strategy? Further, 59% say they have a documented content management strategy. These findings align well with other research that suggests businesses are taking the management and scalability of content as a strategic business function seriously. Content strategy and content management, while facilitated by technology, are, fundamentally, human processes. As you put together your strategies, your stories, your technology for managing all your content – and the means to optimize based on your measurement of it – you should do so in the context of a foundation for managing a much slower human capacity for change. You design technology models and processes not on “how things have always been done” but through optimization of the strengths of your team and organization. It’s nice that everyone has an interest in creating content, but, as my wife will tell you, “Just because everyone has an opinion doesn’t mean everyone has good taste.” Not all content should be published. For content to have strategic value, the business must acknowledge that not everyone is equipped to create, manage, or change it. Learn what’s in your “leather box of tools” and you’ll spend more time on quality activities.

Author: Robert Rose / Source: Content Marketing Institute

When I graduated college, my dad gave me one of those super-duper, deluxe tool sets. It had everything. There was a 330-piece socket wrench set, a two-gimbal palm, 24 screwdrivers, a hex set, two claw hammers, eight pairs of pliers, and on and on. I had no idea what to do with it all. I tried to learn, but never used any of it well.

Thirty years later, that toolbox sits dusty in the back of my storage unit. In my office is a leather box that I’ve had for the last decade. It has a total of two screwdrivers (one flathead and one Phillips head), a hammer, a couple pairs of pliers, and a Leatherman multi-function tool. I’m happy to report that in my household I’m not known as the “fix-it guy” nor the “helpless guy.” That little box has gotten me through most household projects. I operate from the strategy, if I can’t fix it with what’s in the box, it’s probably something I shouldn’t be messing with anyway.

That’s kind of where we are with content technology. We’ve been given the super deluxe toolbox – and we’re spending a whole heck of a lot of time trying to figure out what the hell a two-gimbal palm is.

The research headline in a word: awash. Marketers are awash in new technology options but primarily still using brute force to find their way to deeper and more meaningful strategies.

Got a management strategy? Yes, we do, thank you

This year’s research suggests businesses are taking strategic content more seriously. This is good news. In fact, more than three-quarters (76%) of those surveyed say they take a strategic approach to content management. Further, 59% say they have a documented content management strategy. Although we expanded our respondent base from last year, this stat has grown since 2018, when 43% said they had a documented strategy for managing content as a business asset.

And these strategies have some teeth. Most respondents say their content management strategy includes: business goals/objectives, defined roles/responsibilities, measurements/KPIs, desired outcomes, defined workflows, timeframes, and even content governance specifications.

These findings align well with other research that suggests businesses are taking the management and scalability of content as a strategic business function seriously.

However, most businesses still struggle to mechanize and automate content at scale.

Got the tools? We’re hacking our way

We saw a tech usage trend continue from the last few years. Forty-two percent have “not yet acquired” the right technology to manage content across the enterprise. And another 42% say they “have acquired the technology but are not using it to its potential.”

Only 16% of the respondents say they have the right technology AND are using its full potential.