Use Content Automation to Create Efficiencies for your Publishing Team

Automation has revolutionised the way many sectors work today. Everything from manufacturing to agriculture and food preparation has been transformed by increasing levels of automation and many more are set to both enjoy the benefits and the threats automation brings.

The web and media are no different; in fact, website and content operations are especially well suited to automation. Software can work faster than humans, processing more data at the same time with fewer mistakes. Freeing people from repetition and freeing them to work on important issues.

Publishing brands can benefit hugely from content and editorial automation. Have you benefited from automation yet? Or are you waiting to see what happens?

Automation streamlines the editorial publishing process

While not all publishers and news media organisations use automation in their publishing workflow, a lot of what has been manually actioned by editors previously can now be performed automatically. All without a human being lifting a finger.

Automation is beneficial to many publishers, especially so for those with a network of websites and sub-brands to manage. If the publishing process for a number of your websites is complex, automation can drastically reduce the time taken to get content live. Automation gives huge potential efficiencies for your publishing team, saving time, increasing productivity, reducing mistakes, and ensuring consistency. 

The publishing process can now be defined in your CMS, reducing the time they spend uploading content. Now, it’s done once, with the adjustments and supporting actions flowed out across the various different platforms –  with all the rich metadata, editorial input, taxonomization and cross-linking your editorial, SEO, audience growth and revenue strategies require. Without extra effort from your already stretched editorial team.

Benefits of automation

What can automation do you 

·        Authoring of some content. Some data driven content can be created by AI (e..g sports coverage)

Finding the most effective media assets from your available sources

·        Proofing (Spelling and grammar checks)

Entity Extraction and Taxonomy - Using machine learning to extract tags and categories from content to automatically tag content. Create a great cross-linking strategy and automatically generate hub pages for topics. Great for SEO.

Content Distribution - Build out ways to send content to your audience as needed. Automatically send emails to subscribers. Send top-performing content to syndication services like Apple News and Google News. Send push notifications for breaking stories to subscribers.

Editorial workflow - Stick to your defined workflows, building the management into your CMS. Notify editors when writers have submitted new pieces for review and prevent publishing until all needed conditions are met.

Content repurposing -  Extract and transform content for use in separate channels. Extract a dataset from your web publishing infrastructure that becomes the basis of an eBook, whitePaper or a print edition.

Support Revenue Opportunities - Move content in and out of your paywall as you need. Want to put your old content behind the meter so only subscribers can access the archive? Have automation rules provide that. Maybe you want the opposite? Content over a certain threshold is free to support audience development and SEO efforts.

Automation in the newsrooms

Automation is useful for newsrooms particularly in data sourcing, speeding up the process, improving efficiency and reducing human error. Leading news organisations like the BBC are already taking advantage.

And despite fears that journalists could be replaced by bots in the near future, this seems unlikely, because although a robot might make a journalist’s life easier, technology is still some way from reproducing the nuances of a writer’s tone and style, plus we’re yet to see a machine that can understand cause and effect, or emotional subtlety.

Newsrooms can use automation to eliminate manual, repetitive tasks like proofing, typesetting, formatting and publishing. Leaving journalists more time to come up with creative stories and chase leads.

Newsrooms should be wary of the ethical quandaries posed by AI and automation. In the age of fake news, it’s difficult for an AI to distinguish between fake news and verified facts, and this is where writer’s and researcher’s editorial experience will continue to be hugely valuable.

Get in touch

For some online media outlets and publishing brands, automation is already part of the everyday way of doing things. With the likes of global publishers like the BBC already benefiting, it’s apparent that automation is becoming more mainstream by the day. 

If you think your media brand could benefit from automation, get in touch with Powered By Coffee today to discuss how automation can be applied to your publishing process.