As content creation and publishing become more automated, personalized and truly multichannel, the traditional content market is transforming. At the same time, software giants such as Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Google are taking a more active role across the entire content lifecycle.
For traditional content companies, these moves represent both potential new competitive threats and opportunities to forge fresh partnerships.
Preparing for these challenges will require internal reorganization as well as rethinking third-party relationships.
Identify and Magnify Core Content Strengths
As new players enter the market, now is the time to reexamine whether or not content creation and publishing will remain your primary business. With analytics providing more insight into customers’ interests and buying behavior, you can make such a significant decision based on knowledge rather than intuition.
In some cases, content may end up being a key driver for consumer attachment to your newer business ventures, such as events or products, rather than the primary revenue generator.
In looking to serve up content to new audiences and via new channels you may also want to consider how best to present or reimagine your content, so it fits its new medium. You may also want to rationalize which channels and which audiences you aim to appeal to and focus on in the future and which markets you may choose either not to enter or to no longer play in.
Form Short-Term Content Partnerships
Partnerships will play a more prominent role for many content companies, particularly if you choose to limit your own market focus. Teaming up with a community of like-minded content creators and managers is one way a single company can effectively compete with much larger entities moving into the market.
New alliances may well be formed on more of an ad-hoc basis, with companies joining forces on particular projects for a matter of months rather than years and then going back to competing in other areas.
Reorganize Staff to Realize Content Automation Benefits
Once you have determined whether or not to shift your core business and where partnerships make sense, ensure you have the right resources in place to meet your future needs.
As traditional content creation and management tasks become more automated, companies can move employees to higher-value positions within their organization. For example, think of a task like color correction, which in the past was an issue requiring a team of editorial staff, whereas now it’s heavily automated and relies on IT rather than editorial support.
In the future, your employees’ roles will focus more heavily on content creativity, storytelling, active curation and two-way engagement with content consumers as you create more personalized content for communities or individuals. There’ll also be more in-house analysis of content consumers’ behavioral data and decision making based on those insights. The end goal may be one where consumers can actually customize your content to provide the ultimate personalized end user experience.
To prepare for this reorganization, you will need to invest in training and retraining for employees’ new roles and responsibilities.
