4 Tips for Creating a Content Management System

Why you Need a Content Management System

With the growing demands of social platforms wanting creators to push more and more content, keeping track of the content you’ve created is key to reducing your production workload. A well-organized content management system helps you leverage content you have already made in new and creative ways. I’m sure you’ve been there before, thinking, I know I made something that would be so helpful right now, but I’m not exactly sure where it is. A proper content management system helps prevent those moments so you are constantly primed to maximize the use of your existing work.

Create a system that follows your typical workflow

So, content management systems matter, but how do you make one? There are a litany of different ways to create a content management system that works for you. The key is to make sure that your personal content management system works in a way that makes sense for your workflow. For example, if the majority of your work is done in google drive, it makes sense that you would store your finished content in your google drive, rather than dropbox.

Create a system for organizing your content to make finding it easier

Storing content sounds simple until you remember that as a creator you are likely publishing dozens of pieces of original content each week. From captions, to images, to instagram stories and tiktok videos, there is a lot of content to save for creators. Organizing that content is key to being able to leverage it later. Here are a few different ways you can break down your content to organize it!

• Save content by media type: organize your content by video, photo, graphics and text based assets. This makes it easier to find an image to add to a social media graphic, a video to embed in your newsletter, or images for a YouTube thumbnail.

• Save content by content bucket: If you create your content based on the idea of content buckets or categories, saving the content you have created by this may be useful. This may be particularly useful as subcategories under media types or as a way to organize content on its own.

• Organize by month/date: Another option for organizing your content is to save it by the month/date. This may seem odd initially, but when it comes to repurposing, it can be incredibly helpful to know when the content was live. That way you know you aren’t repurposing something from two weeks ago that someone may still have front of mind.

Know what types of content are most important for your repurposing strategy

You never know what could be useful, so keeping a store of all of your content can be helpful! However, we understand that can take up a lot of computer space. The best types of content to save are educational, entertaining, and high-performing.

If you were to do nothing but save the content that meets these three criteria, you’d be in a great spot for repurposing some of your best work! Not to mention, educational content is likely to be evergreen content- i.e. it will always be relevant. An example may be how to style a white t-shirt and jeans for a fashion blogger, making perfectly baked bread for a baker, or core tips to a great photo by a photographer. These core educational topics are long-lasting and make for easy repurposing later!

Leverage automation tools to minimize time spent

Saving your content and keeping it organized may sound like one more thing to add to your to-do list, but it doesn’t have to be! You can use online automation services to make saving your content run on autopilot. Then simply set aside a bit of time each month to organize and tag your content for easy repurposing later.

Check out our post on 7 things to automate as a creator

• IFTTT: Standing for, “if this, then that” IFTTT helps set up automated sequences. Easily save your Instagram photos to google drive automatically by setting up an automatic sequence to save all new images from your profile.

• Instagram: Download your Instagram content directly from Instagram by going to your settings under security and select download data to get a copy of what you have shared to Instagram.

• Zapier: Similar to IFTT, Zapier allows you to create chained automation sequences. Use Zapier to automatically save new Instagram photos and videos to google drive or dropbox. Not to mention there are thousands of other zaps you can leverage to automate different tasks in your business!

• Instagram: Since IFTT and Zapier are centered around saving new content, you will still need to find a way to save your existing content. Download the entirety of your Instagram profile at once by following the steps from Instagram to download your account data. While it may take a few days, it is a free and easy way to get all of the existing content on your Instagram page in one place.

• TikTok: Download all of your TikTok videos with ease using the data request from TikTok directly. While it does take a few days to receive, you will receive a TXT file of all your TikTok data sent via email.

• Facebook Business Manager: If Facebook and Instagram are your primary publishing channels, leverage Facebook Business Manager as your own personal file storage. This can be sorted based on the type of content that was published (photo, video, IGTV, etc.) and will also share the caption and post date. Simply click the post & download it!