What is Content Management?

7th March 2025

No matter the size of your organisation, the sector it operates in or how long it's been established, you’re going to own a variety of digital content.

You might have a simple one-page website or be a completely digital-first business, but you’re already managing your content to some degree.

In this article we’re going to explain what content management is, the key processes of digital content management and how to identify the right system for your needs.

Content management definition

Content management is the process of creating, editing, storing, organising and delivering information. This might be digital assets such as images and video, physical media such as photographs, as well as blog posts and website content.

Content management also involves managing the asset lifecycle, which includes the stages a piece of content moves through, from creation through to archival or deletion.

How content management works

As mentioned above, a content asset progresses through the content management lifecycle. This process might look slightly different for each organisation, but typically this process involves seven stages:

Planning
Creation
Storage
Editing
Publishing
Removal

Note that this process is more all-encompassing than the digital asset lifecycle which relates to a specific asset.

Planning

What is the piece of content that you want to create? This step can be quite short, for example, ‘I need a suitable stock image for my blog post’. Alternatively, it can require time and input from multiple stakeholders if the content asset being produced is more complex, such as an industry whitepaper.

Creation

Like the planning stage, the amount of work required during the creation stage depends on the content being produced.

In the stock image example, the creation stage is simply downloading the file and perhaps doing some basic image editing. By contrast, if you’re creating an hour-long podcast episode this will require multiple days of recording and audio editing to get the content ready for publication.

Storage

Once the content asset is signed off you’ll need to store it in a suitable location. If you have a dedicated Digital Asset Management (DAM) system this will be the central repository for all of your digital assets, although some organisations rely on less effective solutions. These include Google Drive or Box, medium-specific third-party platforms, or content might even be saved to employees’ local machines.

This will depend on what sort of content you’re creating—for example, you might host your podcast on Acast or SoundCloud, while you might host all of your video content on your YouTube channel—but you should also have a single source of truth for all of your content. A DAM is ideal because it’s designed to manage all kinds of digital assets, with robust security, sharing and search functionality. Although solutions like Box and Google Drive can offer scalable digital storage, they lack the advanced features a DAM Manager needs to effectively manage the content management process, such as strict version control, metadata-based search and granular user permissions.

Editing

Also known as ‘versioning’, the editing stage of the content management lifecycle is the process of moving a content asset from its initial draft version through to the final product. Again, the work required and number of people involved during this stage is dependent on what you’re producing.

Publishing

This is the point at which your content is presented to your audience on the platforms it’s intended for, be it social media, your website or physical media.

Removal

In this context, ‘removal’ can refer to archival or deletion, although note that it’s rarely best practice to permanently delete content assets you’ve created and / or paid for.

There are a number of reasons a content asset should be removed, including the asset becoming out of date or no longer relevant, or expiration of usage rights, but the amount of work involved will depend on how widely the asset was originally published.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) system

Before we explore the different types of CMS, let’s take a look at Digital Asset Management (DAM).

Although a DAM does manage content assets, it’s not categorised as a CMS. Rather, a DAM is the single source of truth for all digital content assets and supporting documentation, as well as brand assets, marketing collateral and sales material. This makes it easier to organise, store, retrieve and share images, videos, documents and more. The key difference is that a DAM manages the organisation’s entire library of digital assets, while a CMS will have a more specific function, for example managing the design of your website or a certain campaign.

A DAM system will often be administered by a DAM Manager, but it will be accessible to multiple stakeholders across an organisation, with each user’s permissions controlled by the DAM Manager.

A DAM should integrate with your CMS to allow seamless sharing between the two platforms though. For example, ResourceSpace integrates with Drupal, WordPress and Joomla, allowing you to select images from the DAM directly in the respective CMS interface, without having to log in to ResourceSpace first and download the asset you need.

Types of Content Management Systems (CMS)

There are multiple types of content management systems that serve different purposes, with each of them often working in tandem with each other.

Web Content Management System (WCMS)

A WCMS manages all of the assets used to create a website, including media files and web page templates. They can also be used to support the building of websites even for people that don’t possess advanced coding expertise.

Examples of web content management systems include WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Wix.

Component Content Management System (CCMS)

The difference between a CCMS and a standard CMS is that it organises and stores content at a more granular level. Instead of managing content at a page level, it takes the individual components (including words, phrases and images) and stores them in a central location. This allows for the maximum level of reuse for an organisation’s content, acting as the trusted source for all content published across different platforms.

Document Management System (DMS)

As the name suggests, a DMS is designed to be a paperless solution to storing, organising and managing a business’ documents.

A DMS will allow for automated uploading, processing and sharing of documents within an organisation without having to print them off first.

Learning Content Management System (LCMS)

An LCMS is a dedicated content management system that’s specifically designed for developing, storing and delivering educational content. These systems combine the functionality of a CMS with those of a learning management system, making it ideal for educational institutions, corporate training providers and e-learning vendors.

Identifying the right content management system for your needs

Figuring out which CMS platform is right for your business depends on a number of factors, but the ideal scenario is to make sure, whichever CMS you choose, that it integrates with your DAM system so that the two can work in conjunction with each other.

What types of content and processes need to be supported

What do you actually need to manage? Let’s take a look at a couple of examples:

1. A small business with a limited digital footprint

Gary’s Garage is a local mechanic with a single physical location. They have a website for taking enquiries and bookings, but don’t have a social media presence and have a small budget to play with.

The business will need a Web Content Management System for hosting the website content, ideally providing easy-to-use templates they can use to create a brochure site with a contact form.

The business should also consider a free DAM portal to ensure any photos and documents are backed-up, away from the main website, in the event of a hack or system failure.

2. An international blue chip corporation

InterMart is an international chain of supermarkets with hundreds of locations worldwide and a significant digital presence. They have websites and social media profiles tailored to different languages and geographic locations, as well as a huge sales and marketing content library.

InterMart needs a WCMS that can host custom-built websites, and an enterprise-level Digital Asset Management system that can be integrated across its entire tech stack. The DAM will also need to be configurable to the needs of multiple teams around the world.

The organisation might also have a requirement for multiple CCMS and DMS, although a DAM can often offer much of this functionality.

CASE STUDY: TOMY

ResourceSpace is a DAM system trusted by all different types of organisation, from educational institutions and charities, through to commercial global corporations.

To find out more about why ResourceSpace is trusted by businesses all over the world and how it can integrate with the various content management systems in your tech stack, why not get in touch with the team? Alternatively, you can book a free, no obligation demonstration below.