This feature has been written in partnership with Purple. Hear more in our Media Briefs episode with senior digital consultant John Rahim, discussing how a reliable content management infrastructure is fundamental to protecting core revenues in a rapidly changing publishing environment.
In the fast-paced world of digital publishing, a robust, scalable content management system (CMS) plays a pivotal role in shaping success. It empowers publishers to streamline workflows and distribute content effectively, but also to engage with and deliver on consumer needs and optimise monetisation.
The right CMS is the backbone of modern digital publishing; choosing the wrong one for your business can mean disrupted or inefficient workflows, poor management of your content and missed opportunities for audience engagement and monetisation.
No single issue defines the challenges faced by publishers today. It’s a cliché, but change is the only constant and having the ability – and the infrastructure – to adapt is crucial.
John Rahim, Senior Consultant in digital publishing at platform provider Purple, says a flexible CMS is fundamental in keeping up with changing customer needs. “Our approach is different to each individual publisher, but one issue that comes up quite often is that someone’s existing CMS hasn’t really moved with the times and doesn’t allow them to deliver the sort of content that their customers are engaging with. It often doesn’t have the interactive features and capabilities needed for a fast-moving newsroom or editorial team.”
Upgrading a CMS can be an arduous process for publishers. Content – published weekly, daily and hourly – is where the core revenue lies. So, both operationally and commercially, it is vital that any new technology implementation supports existing workflows.
John cites the example of print publishers going through the transformation to digital-first publishing, but where print remains important. Their first question, John says, is ‘can you support us with a CMS which goes directly through to print templates?’.
Most publishing organisations have moved from a print-first to a digital-first workflow over the last five years. That doesn’t mean print has suddenly become unimportant. The processes and workflows within those organisations need to continue to support print output although in most cases this is now secondary to their digital channels.
“Who knows what’s going to happen to print,” says John. “People have been talking about the demise of print for more than 15 years, and it’s still with us – I’m sure it’s going to have legitimacy for many years to come and we have ensured that our systems are able to deal with print as well as digital.”
CMS tech driven by social media
Technology is moving quickly and the way audiences are consuming information is changing equally fast.
John says that, working in a company providing content management solutions to publishing companies, he finds that it tends to be social media companies that are driving the most rapid changes. And for him, the importance of social media distribution cannot be underestimated, especially when it comes to being able to push content out quickly and schedule posts.
“Unless you’ve got applications internally that are modular and can move with the times and actually be able to produce content and deliver it effectively, you’ve got a problem,” he says.
Change in the content marketplace is a continuous process and keeping on top of developing trends is crucial in being able to deliver the sort of content that audiences want. From Purple’s standpoint, that means making sure content management publishers need to rely on are robust, scalable and tested.
John says Purple’s technology is updated pretty much on a quarterly basis. “We’re continually speaking to clients about the features that they want and then adding them on an incremental basis depending on how popular or mission critical they are,” he explains. “You have to have the confidence that those particular platforms are going to be suitable to requirements, long term, and that your software is intuitive to use” says John.
He highlights big shifts in content consumption over the last four or five years. “During the pandemic, the younger demographic – 18 to 24-year-olds – were very much consuming content directly from what we’d call authorised or respected news sites. Now what we’re finding is that the same audience demographic is getting most of their content directly from social channels.”
From a workflow perspective, publishers need content management solutions that can efficiently repurpose content through multiple channels. John gives the example of video content, which even a year ago publishers were not creating directly out of the CMS. “It was normally done by social media teams, he says. “However, companies now want to have the workflow process streamlined.”
AI, good or bad?
If social media has quickened the pace of change in content distribution, AI is threatening to supercharge it.
Johns remembers speaking with publishers 15 years ago about the rise of the internet. The big question for everyone at that time was, is the internet a good thing or a bad thing for publishing? The same question is being asked today about AI, but John thinks that is too simplistic. “It’s more a case of how you deal with it to address the needs and requirements of your customers effectively,” he explains.
“I guess there are two ways of looking at it, “John says. “The first is how do you use AI as an efficiency tool which you use to make your life easier when it comes to resting, modifying content for multiple different channels and monetisation.”
Purple’s focus on AI is very firmly on workflow efficiency, helping publishers to work faster and more effectively. “What we’re not doing is replacing journalism,” says John. “We’re not replacing people who are writing content, we’re just facilitating the ability for the content to be repurposed in other legitimate ways.”
He explains that integration with an LLM (Large Language Model) allows you, within the CMS, to be able to create multiple versions of the same content. “It also allows you to change metadata and descriptions which would allow you to do A/B tests much, much quicker.”
John doesn’t believe anyone has cracked the AI conundrum and sees a lot of concern about AI being used as a middleware to create and distribute ‘original’ content without human control. “Perhaps in the next few years, that will change and people will be comfortable to read and hear AI generated content. But it’s still early days and I think there is a lot of road, currently, for companies to use AI in a more effective way.”
If you would like to hear more from John, he will be talking about Purple’s tools for efficiency, automation and workflow management at a free webinar on Thursday October 10th. For more information and to register, see here.
Purple is a leading digital publishing platform for publishers, providing comprehensive solutions for modern publishing. Based in Berlin/Germany with an experienced team of 70 employees, Purple has been supporting publishers worldwide since 2007. Today, over 600 brands in 10 countries rely on Purple.
The platform consists of three core modules:
- Purple Editorial: Purple Editorial is an AI-powered headless CMS and editorial system that enables highly efficient workflows and reliable content distribution across multiple channels.
- Purple Experience: Purple not only offers an advanced editorial system but also solutions for creating apps and websites. This module allows publishers to deliver a seamless and engaging user experience that is consistent across all digital channels.
- Purple Growth: To maximise reach and audience engagement, Purple provides various audience development features. These help publishers better understand and target their readers, fostering long-term growth.
Purple offers Purple Essentials and Purple Pro, different products tailored to meet the diverse needs of publishers of all sizes. Purple is ideal for multichannel publishing and supports multibrand publishing, allowing publishers to manage multiple brands efficiently through a single platform. With these comprehensive and flexible solutions, Purple is the preferred choice for publishers aiming to succeed in the digital world.
