Publishers and brands: revolutionize content creation workflows with publishing software

The economic landscape adds further pressure due to cost-conscious consumers, downward pressure on budgets, and the need for higher efficiency. In this context, using publishing software to improve content creation workflows is a smart move for growth- and revenue-focused publishers. And not just for book, magazine and newspaper publishers. For anyone involved in publishing content at scale - including brands, agencies, retailers, and ecommerce. By centralizing content workflows in a cloud-based publishing platform, publishers transform their processes and unlock new platforms. And that means expanding their reach, readership, and revenue. From streamlining and automating manual processes to repurposing content and leveraging 24/7 global production – content creation software makes publishers more productive and profitable.

If your publishing strategy for 2024 is focused on digital transformation, content creation and publishing software should be at the top of your agenda. But what is it? And how does it help publishers prosper in a changing and challenging market?

Contents of this article:

• What is publishing software?
• Features of content creation and publishing software
• How does publishing software improve content creation workflows?
• Top 10 benefits of content creation and publishing software
• Why use a centralized system for content creation and publishing?
• Which businesses need publishing and content creation software?
• Implementing a centralized content creation platform: three best practices

What is publishing software?

Publishing software is any platform that helps traditional and digital content publishers to create, approve, design, publish, and distribute content at scale. In the context of this article, we're talking specifically about publishing software that provides:

• A single central space (typically online/in the cloud)…
• Where everyone involved in your content creation workflows can collaborate…
• To create content in the most efficient way possible

It's productivity tech that streamlines the publishing process by providing a single platform for content creation, editing, approval, design, and distribution. We'll use terms like content creation software and publishing software interchangeably throughout this article - just know we're talking about the same thing.

Features of content creation and publishing software

Content creation and publishing software typically includes the following elements:

• Content creation tools – From built-in text editors to print and web design tools (including seamless integrations with the tools you already use, like Adobe Creative Cloud)
• Task management – Automatic task allocation and reminders keep work progressing through your content creation workflows, prompting the next contributor once the previous task is completed
• Collaboration features – real-time collaboration tools let multiple team members work simultaneously in the same content – including comments, annotations, and version control
• Digital Asset Management – Instant, intuitive access to all of your approved images, video, audio, graphics, et cetera, via integration with your Digital Asset Management platform
• Production tools – Templates and automation quickly create content – ready to publish directly from the system, or route to graphic designers for further development
• Project management tools – At-a-glance status for every project – including contributors and progress – from a single dashboard
• Standardized workflows – Standard content creation workflows that increase resource flexibility – allowing anyone to work on any title from anywhere, with no disruptive learning curve
• Automation – Automated workflows that eliminate manual tasks – from approval processes to image resizing to layout
• Distribution tools – Tools or integrations for publishing and distributing content across multiple channels – like websites, apps, print outputs, and more

How does publishing software improve content creation workflows?

Publishing software has so much functionality that it's hard to describe. It's easier to just give you an example. Below, you can see what a simple book publishing workflow looks like before and after implementing a centralized content creation platform. But remember, it isn't just traditional publishing businesses that accelerate and improve their processes with publishing software. Any business that profits from content will benefit from a centralized content creation system.

As you can see from just this simple example, there are time savings at every stage, and far less scope for human error. Projects move seamlessly through the workflow, and project progress is easy to monitor and manage. Imagine these efficiencies multiplied across your entire portfolio and it's clear how a centralized platform reduces cost and time-to-market, while maintaining rigorous editorial standards.

However, this is just the very basics of what publishing software can do…

Top 10 benefits of content creation and publishing software

We'll go into some of these in more depth below. But here's the headline news.

1. Workflow efficiency – Streamlines and automates publishing processes, reducing manual tasks and improving overall workflow efficiency
2. Efficient collaboration – Facilitates collaboration among team members by providing a centralized platform for collaboration, real-time editing and commenting
3. Version control – Manages versioning and tracks changes to content, preventing conflicts and enabling easy rollback to previous versions if needed
4. Time and cost savings – Reduces turnaround times and lowers operational costs associated with wasteful processes
5. Increased visibility – Enhances visibility into the content creation process, allowing users to monitor status and proactively address bottlenecks
6. Higher security – Implements robust security measures to protect sensitive content, with user roles and permissions ensuring controlled access to different parts of the platform
7. Content flexibility – Automatically codes content so it can be automatically designed/displayed for any platform
8. Content repurposing – Improves searchability, discoverability, and repurposing of content by systematically applying metadata tags and descriptors
9. Multichannel made possible – Facilitates the addition of digital channels to traditional print-based publishing portfolios, without commensurate increase in headcount
10. Resource optimization – Standardized content creation workflows allow for more flexible resource allocation across titles and brands

Why use a centralized system for content creation and publishing?

If you just want to optimize your existing publishing processes, a centralized publishing platform can deliver time and cost savings. However, ambitious publishers think bigger, using digitization to unlock whole new channels and revenue streams. Here's a deeper dive into the most metamorphic benefits of using a content creation and publishing platform.

Enhanced content creation workflows

As the table above shows, a lot of time and effort is wasted unnecessarily in traditional publishing workflows. There are little things that add up – like sending proofs and queries back and forth via email – and big things that are clearly wasteful – like running print and digital teams in parallel.

A content creation platform streamlines every element of the process – from receiving and processing written content, to simultaneously getting it into design for print and digital channels. This translates into big savings (like having one editor for print and digital content, instead of two editors working exclusively on each channel). Processing content more efficiently means you get projects over the line faster, increase your capacity, and have the potential to generate more income.

Standardizing your processes also increases the flexibility of your workforce. Disparate processes across different teams make it hard to move employees where they're most needed – for example, between magazine titles when one team is feeling the pressure. By creating standard processes, you can deploy your human resources more efficiently, evening out peaks and troughs in workload, and using idle capacity.

Read how Der Spiegel – one of Germany's leading news publishers – combined their print and digital teams for optimal efficiency

Global collaboration and cost efficiencies

Publishers can't ignore the benefits of a globalized workforce. Remote work is more prevalent than ever and of course, you need to provide a way for your remote team to work seamlessly together. But you can also increase your capacity and augment your team by using freelancers to fill gaps and prevent bottlenecks – anything from sub-editing and copywriting, to graphic design and production skills. Furthermore, you can benefit from workers in different timezones to take your business from 9-to-5 to 24/7.

A cloud-based publishing platform is accessible from anywhere in the world with internet access. You can design an optimal global workforce and workflows to get your content polished, perfected, and published faster than ever.

Discover how global publishers leverage WoodWing's digital publishing services – based in Kuala Lumpur – to create content around the clock

Multichannel publishing and digital diversification

There's no denying the demand for digital content. You only need to look at newspaper and magazine publishing to see the trend in black-and-white. Print subscriptions are in decline, being replaced by digital and hybrid subscriptions (often comprising web, app, and print access). We've written at length about how digital publishing offers opportunities for publishers to grow their readership, reach, and revenue.

A centralized content creation platform lets you publish effortlessly to print and digital channels. By diversifying your channel mix, you can increase your revenue streams and build a more viable subscription model. You can streamline commissioning (planning to share content across multiple platforms) and easily repurpose content from one channel or brand to another. Optimizing your production systems to seize the multichannel opportunity can seem, but doesn't have to be, overwhelming.

Read how WoodWing's Creative Workflow Services can help you understand your options and redesign your content creation processes using the latest publishing software

Quality control and risk mitigation

The online world is full of unchecked, unvetted, free content. Publishers can rise above this noise – and demonstrate the value of paying for their content – by providing quality content that readers can trust. However, quality assurance is challenging in complex, multichannel workflows.

A centralized content creation platform makes it easier to collaborate and create quality content – from online collaboration that gets your experts working together in real-time, to automatic audit trails and version controls to understand the context behind any amends.

Automation – such as automatically flowing copy into design templates – reduces the risk introduced by human interventions, such as cut-and-paste errors and omissions. Plus, integration with your Digital Asset Management system lets designers choose and re-use authorized imagery.

This all means you can create and publish content faster, confident that quality standards have been maintained (perhaps even improved).

Learn how educational publisher Porto Editora transformed their editorial workflows, reducing proofreading rounds without reducing quality

Which businesses need publishing and content creation software?

It isn't just the publishing sector that benefits from content creation software. A centralized content platform is essential for any business that publishes a high volume of content to support its sales, marketing, and brand goals.

Print-based/book publishers

Traditional print-based businesses are the most likely to benefit from digital transformation. Unlike digitally native content brands – that have created fit-for-purpose processes from scratch – traditional book publishers often struggle with legacy print-based workflows. Rather than trying to amend print-based processes to fit the new multichannel landscape, book publishers need a wholesale review of how they create content – and how they monetize it.

Download our expert-informed eBook – Digital Transformation for Publishers – to understand the opportunities for print publishers in the digital landscape.

Magazine publishers

Magazine publishers often have multiple titles under their umbrella – and those titles publish content in print, online, and via apps. Having evolved from print to multimedia, magazine publishers often suffer with the same unfit legacy workflows as book publishers.

Adopting a centralized publishing platform lets magazine publishers redesign and optimize their content creation workflows for multichannel publishing – creating standardized processes that allow greater workforce flexibility, and coordinating and repurposing content across different brands.

How Hearst Magazines digitally transformed their processes to create innovative digital products

Retail and supermarkets

Large retail and supermarket brands juggle a lot of multichannel content creation – from content on their ecommerce sites, to in-store printed collateral like catalogs and POS materials. A centralized content creation system slashes the time it takes to create this material through automation.

For example, integrating the platform with your PIM and DAM to automatically pull product information and images into catalog templates. Or allowing photographers or suppliers to upload product images to the system, before they go through an automated quality control process.

Learn how Dutch supermarket giant Hoogvliet reclaimed control of its content creation challenges

Agencies

Agencies can leverage a centralized content creation platform to deliver impactful, engaging content for clients – with less stress, risk, and confusion. A publishing workflow system provides a central hub for all staff to work on multiple projects simultaneously.

See how Medium Rare agency boosts creativity and control with a content creation platform

Implementing a centralized content creation platform: three best practices for publishers

Think transformation, not digitization

The digital opportunity for publishers isn't just about digitizing your existing processes. It's about unlocking new digital platforms and revenue streams. Don't limit your ambitions to just digitizing your existing processes. Work with an implementation partner/consultant to understand how others in your industry have leveraged publishing technology to unlock whole new processes and platforms.

Embrace the digital future

Print isn't dead. But it's becoming more niche. Embrace the opportunities that the digital future offers publishers – from data analytics to continuously improve your offer and appeal to readers, to advertising opportunities via your owned digital platforms. Think how to reposition print as a value-add to your digital subscriptions. And consider how to digitize and repurpose your print archive to add value to your digital offer (for example, to create a strong content library when launching an app for your readers).

Adopt a content-first approach

To be fully flexible and open to opportunity, stop thinking about specific publication channels altogether. Focus on how you can create high-quality content that is ready for use on any channel. What does that mean in practice? Well, without getting too technical, a publishing platform like WoodWing Studio can code individual content elements – think title, subtitle, introduction, body copy, et cetera – so that it can be easily formatted and published on any platform. This makes it easier and cheaper to experiment with emerging channels and see what works for your audience.