What is Content Automation?

If you dream of a world with a streamlined content marketing strategy powered by tools and processes, then content automation is exactly what you’re looking for. Content automation benefits your company’s content lifecycle by facilitating smooth, easy and on-brand asset creation.

Content automation is also excellent for empowering non-creatives to customize content while getting it to market at scale with speed. With today’s next-generation, AI-powered content automation tools, organizations can build consistent brand assets on demand without wasting valuable time or resources.

Here’s everything you need to know about content automation.

What Does Content Automation Do?

As the saying goes, “content is king,” and content marketers today are tasked with producing valuable on-brand content at a rapid pace. However, due to the nature of creative content, many issues can potentially arise from this equation. Enter content automation as a solution.

Creative teams often face bottlenecks, as others in the organization request continuous and routine edits. They’re fielding edit requests for small and simple changes, which consume their time and resources. Additionally, producing personalized and nuanced content at scale can be a huge undertaking.

For example, creating these individual routine edit requests can be prohibitive when organizations want to execute an email marketing campaign with personalized assets.

Another big challenge is brand consistency. When there are many different individuals creating assets, there is the risk that brand guidelines will fall by the wayside and consistency will falter. Content automation allows anyone with self-service access to your team’s assets to be a content creator while staying within the approved brand guidelines.

When organizations use content automation, they can strengthen brand integrity (because every piece of collateral is on-brand) while reducing production costs and labor resources and maximizing their existing data and assets.

With that in mind, here are some standard features of content automation.

Content Creation

With content automation, teams can create and produce on-brand content faster and with ease of iteration. In addition, content automation programs are intuitive and enable teams to find what they need quickly.

This means no more time wasted digging for assets, figuring out which version is correct or churning out graphics requests. It also means more campaigns launch easily and cultivate powerful brand storytelling in content marketing.

Multi-Editing and Bulk Creation

Next-generation features like multi-editing and bulk editing allow users to apply copy and design to multiple templates at once, instantly creating multiple versions of an asset.

Organize and Search

Content automation systems enable teams to spend less time searching, whether they have hundreds or thousands of assets. These systems use smart metadata and augmented AI search features to tag, analyze and identify all creative assets. No more combing through folders on the cloud to find the most recent version of an asset.

Content Personalization

Content personalization tools make creating assets a breeze, and users can automatically import details, including email, phone number, address and more, from CSV forms. This means creating dozens or hundreds of personalized assets with just a few clicks.

Lockable Elements

With content automation, decision-makers have complete control, and lockable elements enable certain users to protect brand integrity and choose what design elements are locked down and what can be customized. Content automation can also help with content lifecycle management, allowing users to easily add expiration dates, catch duplicates and easily indicate the most appropriate version.

Access, Permissions and Distribution

With tight permission controls, users can ensure the right team members have access to the proper templates. In addition, content automation enables brand assets to be easily shared, simplifying distribution while maintaining robust privacy controls and user-level permissions.

Track and Analyze

When teams lack content automation, it can be difficult to determine how assets are used and by whom. But with content automation, teams can utilize insights about how much, where and by whom use the assets in order to drive a more effective brand strategy with data. It can also help you track brand goals and content performance.

Benefits of Content Automation

Content automation benefits individuals, teams and organizations as a whole. Here are a few of the main advantages of content automation.

Ensures Brand Consistency

Branded templates enable anyone to create content using approved templates at the ready. These templates will include only correct logos, colors, typeface and formatting, maintaining brand integrity across all efforts. Brand consistency across all channels is critical for an organization’s success (data shows that 77% of consumers purchase an item due to the brand name, while brand consistency alone can increase revenue by 20%).

Saves Teams Time

With a library chock-full of approved brand assets, organizations can use content automation to save time and resources instead of digging for assets in cloud folder systems. This can be critical because studies tell us that teams waste time searching for assets (with more than half of marketers and creatives using Google to find their own company logo). With AI-powered search, teams can swiftly find the assets they’re looking for.

Saves Organizations Money

When it comes to content marketing, time waste is rampant: 46% of marketers say they feel like they’ve wasted time due to downloading and uploading assets using multiple tools. But with content automation, teams can reduce duplicate requests and pare down the work that needs to be done, reducing costs and freeing up resources.

Boosts Creativity

Without content automation, creative teams can become inundated with requests for edits and rushed assets, and this workload becomes a major obstacle to efficient, creative production. With content automation systems, anyone can find the right template and make quick changes when and where they need it. This removes disruption from the creative process and adds time to the creative team’s calendar.

Improves Processes and Efficiency

With approved workflows, clear templates and maximization of existing data, processes can be vastly improved and tightened up with an audit trail. This means an efficient, powerful content automation strategy that helps the organization achieve its overall goals.

Content Automation Streamlines Your Content Marketing Strategy

When it comes to content automation, the keyword is “streamline.” Content automation strategies enable teams to work better and faster while reducing overhead costs, wasted time and improper resources.

This means no more time spent digging for assets or fielding endless requests. Here are just a few ways content automation streamlines content marketing strategies.

Email Automation

You can automate email in bulk from a single template with just a few clicks. You can pull in the right data and make approved changes while working with existing templates or creating new ones.

Social Media Automation

Social media and content automation are a match made in heaven. With the help of content automation resources, social media teams can easily create approved graphics, perfect for posting. No more bottlenecks for the creative team, and no more rush requests.

Automating Ads

With multi-editing tools, one change can be made across multiple assets, saving teams hours across the organization without needing to outsource production.

User-Generated Content

User-generated content is on the rise. Content automation can help creators execute UGC by swiftly providing them with personalized assets for posting and help distribute it by adding approved UGC to your asset library.

If you want to enhance how your brand tackles UGC, take a look at “A Complete Guide for Brands: User-Generated Content” for tips and tricks.

Enterprise Content Management

Enterprise content management (ECM) is made easier with the help of content automation. By facilitating swift and consistent digital asset production, you can manage and produce on-brand enterprise content more effectively.

Branded Templates

Branded templates are always approved and can either be locked down or set free. You can customize these templates in on-brand ways (with the correct fonts, colors, and logos). Say goodbye to inconsistency!

Why Rely on Content Automation?

Content automation is a game changer when it comes to content marketing. It enables smooth asset production, eases workloads and maximizes efficiencies. If you’re interested in using content automation to optimize the abilities of your marketing team, check out Brandfolder Content Automation.

Brandfolder is a content automation platform powered by AI and brand intelligence to help you find and format content more efficiently and effectively – giving hours back to your marketing team.

Stop wasting time searching for or creating duplicate assets. Find out why Brandfolder is the #1 rated DAM and power your digital assets with a smart content delivery network.

To learn more about how to get the most out of Brandfolder Content Automation, schedule a demo with one of our team members.