Content Versioning Made Easy: Tools and Techniques For Efficient Updates
Did you know that according to a recent analysis, regularly updating existing content has helped as many as 42% of marketers gain a remarkable boost in their content marketing value?
This enormous win clearly underlines how important frequent content updation and repurposing are. However, without an appropriate starting point, doing so could seem like solving a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces.
To overcome this, ace marketers resort to content versioning.
A facilitator of incredibly essential content management practices, content versioning, is a necessity if you do not want hurdles on your way to top-notch content marketing. Many digital textbook platforms like KITABOO already offer this solution to promote better content management.
But, in this blog, let’s understand how you can execute content versioning and updates and what tools and techniques could be helpful for that.
Table of Contents
I. What is Content Versioning?
II. Why is Content Versioning Important?
III. Best Tools and Techniques for Efficient Content Versioning and Updates
IV. Wrapping Up
I. What is Content Versioning?
Content versioning is a content management feature that involves managing and tracking all drafts and changes made to a piece of content. This includes digital files like Word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, eBooks, etc.
Synonymously, it’s also known as version control or revision control.
The central idea of content versioning is to enable creators to maintain a historical record of all content drafts to facilitate quick assessment. This is also why this function is mainly optimized in collaborative or gradual content generation fields like content creation, software development, and graphic design.
II. Why is Content Versioning Important?
Content versioning is a stepping stone to many different content management best practices. But besides that, it also enables a marketer in a spectrum of other ways.
For instance, regular content versioning:
1. Helps Track Changes
A piece of content goes through multiple stages of development before finally being published. This gradational creative process makes it imperative for the developer to have access to every draft.
After all, that’s how they can assess all the errors, replications, and modifications done so far. But, manually maintaining a folder of such drafts can be tough.
However, content versioning can ease this process. Platforms like KITABOO, with in-built content versioning abilities, let you keep precise track of all changes in the content to give you a bird’s eye view of its evolution.
2. Fosters Content Restoration
As per recent research, it was found that an average content creator spends between 5 and 10 hours every week creating and editing content. Imagine devoting those many hours to weaving a piece, only to finally lose it to negligence.
Content versioning can help you avoid this. It offers storage and restoration facilities to creators and editors.
So, you can always retrieve a piece of content, even if it gets deleted unintentionally.
3. Makes Comparison Easy
The creative process of fabricating a piece of content is arduous and long-drawn.
More often than not, writers create 2 to 3 outlines or preliminary drafts and compare each of them with the other before finally arriving at a clear, final piece.
The main aim of content versioning is to facilitate this entire comparison process. With its help, you can easily juggle and differentiate between individual content drafts to land the best one.
III. Best Tools and Techniques for Efficient Content Versioning and Updates
Statistically speaking, a whopping 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each day. With content generation taking place so recurrently, maintaining an archive of all the older versions of a single piece can become challenging.
This is where the following content versioning and update techniques and tools could be optimized:
1. Documentation
For flawless control versioning, the first technique involves maintaining historical documentation of all drafts or versions of a file with the help of a tool or software.
This can include previous versions of the file, guidelines, change logs, etc. Doing so enables the team to receive a comprehensive view of the evolution of the file and fosters better collaboration.
Recommended Tool: Cloud-based applications like Google Docs or Google Sheets offer exceptional documentation features. Other than these, you can also get help from authoring platforms like KITABOO.
2. Access Control
Specifying the premises of who can actually access and control the changes made to a file is another control versioning best practice. Thus, establishing access control permissions is vital.
This involves clearly defining access authority and setting boundaries to implement that. This helps a creator maintain the integrity of a raw digital file, as its access control only lies with a selected number of authorized individuals.
Recommended Tool: There are many Content Management System (CMS) tools and collaboration platforms that offer this feature.
3. Automated Workflows
A core element of content versioning is tracking errors. Automated workflows facilitate just that. Implementing this technique involves setting up continuous integration (CI) pipelines across the file.
So, whenever you make a change to the file, these pipelines first test and then deploy those changes. It makes the process of content updation more reliable.
4. Branching and Merging
Branching and merging is a content versioning and update technique that helps you declutter different edit versions and maintain transparency.
With its help, you can classify changes into separate branches so that no two modified versions intersect with each other.
5. Descriptive Messages
The usage of descriptive commit messages is another efficient method to promote top-notch content versioning. These messages are generally used when working exclusively with dedicated version control systems.
They simply convey what changes were made in the digital file and why. This helps improve reliability and enhances accountability.
IV. Wrapping Up
Content versioning is a beneficial feature that facilitates the entire content management process.
With its help, you can not only detect errors, track changes, restore content, and compare different drafts. It also helps in establishing better content management practices and, thereby, boosts your marketing efforts.
So, leverage the power of content versioning and update tools and techniques to make content management effective and efficient.
When it comes to leveraging the advantages of a top-rated digital textbook platform, KITABOO is your trusted partner! KITABOO enables authors to create and publish high-quality content with other essential features like version control that offers simple and easy tracking of various versions of your content.
Connect with us to know more.
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