“There are not enough hours in the day!”, sighs the exasperated editor / sub-editor / journalist as they struggle to publish all the fantastic content they’ve created.
In the May / June issue of InPublishing magazine, we ran a special feature on ‘content creation’, focusing on how publishers can increase the quality and quantity of their output.
A key theme was how, if a publisher gets their processes right, they end up freeing up lots of extra hours for their hard pressed editorial teams.
There were four takeaways that stood out for me, which are achievable for any size publisher:
- Make your workflows linear and logical. If you were to graphically represent the typical journey of a piece of content from inception to publication, would it be a straight line? If not, then each one of those kinks in the line represents wasted time.
- Automate more. If there are mundane repetitive tasks that you are asking your journalists to do, then automate them. Similarly with quality control: have your house style plumbed into your system so that content cannot be published unless certain criteria are met.
- Invest in a proper digital asset management system. All the images you’ve ever used should be in a single repository, clearly tagged, with usage and rights data appended. If you’re not using a DAM, then you will be taking too long to source images or, worse, repurchasing images you’ve already bought.
- Review workflows regularly. Soon after a workflow has been finalised, it can start to degrade. Problems are encountered and workarounds adopted; if left untended, workflows can become unwieldly edifices of time consuming workarounds and system patches.
None of this is complicated. If your systems are inefficient, then tasks will take longer to do. More time is available, you just need to make it.
You can catch James Evelegh’s regular column in the InPubWeekly newsletter, which you can register to receive here.
