Q: What is best practice?
A: Best practice in content creation workflows means enabling teams to produce high-quality, on-brand content consistently, quickly, and at scale across all channels. We view this from a content orchestration perspective: people, processes, and tools working together seamlessly to plan, create, manage, and distribute content. Note that it isn’t a single software product or a one-size-fits-all solution — it’s much more like a methodology.
Many publishers’ business models are still largely based on revenue from print publications. This revenue should be used to transform operations into a more channel-neutral way of working. This means creating content in modular, reusable components, allowing for easy reuse and adaptation across all channels — print, digital, and social. Therefore, a best-practice approach uses structured content.
Clear, automated approval workflows reduce delays and errors by ensuring the right people review content at the right time. They eliminate guesswork, cut back on email chains, and keep production moving smoothly. Integrated workflows boost transparency, prevent version conflicts, and free up teams to focus on creativity instead of chasing sign-offs.
AI advancements also present new opportunities to boost workflow efficiency in response to shrinking print margins. AI can accelerate your workflow through content optimisation and layout automation, for example.
With AI fully embedded in your workflow, content can be automatically rewritten for other platforms and target groups, with a different tone of voice where needed. It will also speed up tasks such as writing summaries, generating catchy headlines and subheadings, proofreading, and producing translations. And what about AI fulfilling the task of copyfitting your print content?
On the design side, a lot of manual effort is still spent on repetitive tasks, such as fitting content, visuals, and adverts to the page. Templates are helpful but limited in number and difficult to manage. Alternative solutions are often rule-based, which can result in uninspiring designs and inconsistent content flows within sections.
By integrating layout automation into your workflow, previous human-created designs can be used to suggest the best layout for the content at hand. Crucially, layout automation doesn’t replace the designer’s eye; it frees up time for creative refinement. The time saved by automating dull, repetitive tasks in your workflow enables you to focus fully on the creative aspects, such as storytelling and data visualisation. This allows you to maximise your impact and engage your audience more effectively.
Finally, best practice also means being data-informed: using insights from content performance to continually refine your strategy and improve future output.
Q: What does outstanding performance look like?
A: Outstanding performance in content workflows is defined by speed, efficiency, scalability, and brand consistency — all without sacrificing content quality.
Often overlooked, it actually begins with content planning tools. Done correctly, this can initiate the automatic creation of tasks, documents, layouts, and assignments needed later on, saving time and preventing inconsistencies.
From experience, we know that streamlined collaboration and the integration of digital asset management and multichannel publishing tools can reduce content production time by 40%. A process previously often serial now becomes a parallel process... And the best part for your staff? Editors and designers always have the latest content and visuals at their fingertips.
By using structured content and centralised planning and workflows, and reusing existing assets, companies can scale their content production for web, mobile, and print more efficiently than ever, even doubling output without hiring additional staff.
Outstanding performance means doing more with less, being able to respond quicker to market shifts, and maintaining a consistent, high-impact brand voice across platforms.
In summary, outstanding workflows are built on structure, speed (via automation), and smart collaboration. The right solutions enable publishers to manage complexity, boost productivity, and keep creativity at the heart of their work.
Three top tips
- Build a centralised content hub. Unify content planning, creation, asset management, and multichannel publishing in one collaborative environment. A centralised hub ensures transparency, boosts collaboration between departments and remote teams, and eliminates inefficiencies caused by fragmented tools or siloed workflows. The result? Meeting your deadlines with more ease!
- Adopt structured content. Creating content in modular components — such as headlines, introductions, body text, and visuals — facilitates layout automation and simplifies content reuse across all platforms, now and in the future. It improves speed and efficiency and supports personalisation and localisation, without duplicating effort.
- Integrate your DAM into the workflow. A tightly integrated digital asset management (DAM) system is the backbone of an efficient publishing workflow. It provides fast access to approved images, videos, and design elements — all in one place — while enforcing brand guidelines and reducing time lost searching for the right asset. Alongside this, robust versioning ensures everyone is working with the latest content, minimising errors and avoiding duplication or even fines. When content is finalised, automated archiving keeps everything securely stored and easily retrievable, whether for future reuse, audits, or compliance. Together, DAM, versioning, and archiving ensure your production process stays organised, traceable, and stress-free.
Jeroen and the other contributors took part in a ‘Content Creation Special – Q&A’ webinar on Tuesday, 17th June 2025. You can watch a recording of the webinar by registering here.
WoodWing provides the technology for publishers to create exceptional content — at scale. Our integrated solutions allow you to create, collaborate on, and manage content in one experience, enabling a shorter time-to-market, and easy optimisation for every channel. WoodWing was founded in 2000 and has a global workforce exceeding 200 employees.
Website: www.woodwing.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/woodwing
This article was included in the Content Creation Special, published by InPublishing in June 2025. Click here to see the other articles in this special feature.
