Simplifying Content Approvals with Adobe Express.

Summary/Overview

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Content is king. It’s a phrase thrown around in the marketing industry regularly, highlighting the importance of creating impactful content that tells a story and captivates your intended audience.

Content spans everything from product descriptions on site, to videos for social media to alt text on imagery. With all this content being generated, it’s important you have a clear content approval workflow in place. This ensures you are aligned with the expectations of stakeholders and business values.

Content should be checked thoroughly for consistency, brand alignment and most importantly quality, from briefing to publishing stage. In this guide, we’ve considered how to simplify content approvals to ensure your content reigns supreme and how Adobe Express can help.

What is a content approval process?

A content approval process ensures that there are different stages where content is reviewed and checked before it goes live. The relevant people will need to be pulled in at each stage to assess the content and confirm that it meets the requirements of the business.

We’ve pulled together a typical breakdown of the recommended stages below. This could be used to shape your content approval process as needed.

  1. Ideation
  2. Briefing
  3. Content creation
  4. Quality checks
  5. Legal reviews
  6. Design stage
  7. Final quality check
  8. Staging check
  9. Live review

Different business and content types require varying forms of approvals. In some cases, you may need to obtain budgetary approval before work can begin to cover the cost of studio shoots or paid voice overs.

Adapt the list of approval stages above to your business and needs to ensure content is reviewed, approved and adjusted to match the expectations of key stakeholders and executives.

What types of content need approval?

There are a huge number of content types out there now. Here, we’ve listed some of the ones that should go through a content approval process:

4 content approval process ideas and examples.

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Who should be involved?

Who is involved at each stage depends entirely on the type of content being created, its focus and message.

Content that covers any technical or legal terms and conditions will need to be checked by your legal or risk team, for example.

A typical social media post may need to be reviewed by a content creator and digital marketing manager before it can be approved.

It’s a good idea to consider the types of content you intend on creating or typically create, then create tailored content approval processes for each of these to ensure the right people are involved.

Teams and individuals to consider for content approvals typically include:

Why are content approval workflows important?

The benefits of a strong content approval workflow being in place greatly outweigh the time it takes to set them up and implement them. Content approvals can help you:

Avoid miscommunication.

There’s nothing worse than something being put live that doesn’t match the brief because someone didn’t quite understand the requirements. An approval process gives everyone the opportunity to check in throughout the creation stages to make sure everything aligns.

Prevent live errors.

We’re only human and mistakes happen. An unfortunate typo, an out-of-date message or price, the wrong image being used… all of these can be avoided with a content approval workflow.

Ensure timelines are met.

If you’re working to tight deadlines, a content approval process lays out the expectations for when reviews and approvals are needed by. If these are set from the start, there should be no excuse for delayed content that could impact other areas of the business.

Move content between departments as needed.

If there is no set workflow to follow, sometimes approvals and reviews can quickly bottleneck across departments. An approvals process that spells out who has what to check and when can help alleviate this stress.

Stick to budget.

It’s easy for costs to mount up but setting these clearly at the start of the approvals process can help ensure everyone is aligned so things don’t get out of hand later.

Free templates to support your content approval workflow.

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5 top tips for a streamlined content approval process.

Keep momentum going and move that content from ideation to live with a streamlined content approval process. Tailor yours to your business needs and stakeholder requirements for a workflow that everyone can jump into and use.

Here, we’ve considered some of the key things to refine in your approval process to make sure everything and everyone works together as needed.

1. Define your content goals.

It’s imperative that everyone is working towards the same end goal.

If your content is being created to capture audience attention, everyone from the copywriter to the designer needs to be motivated by this. Define your goals and ensure these are conveyed at every stage of the approval process.

2. List the different stakeholders involved at each stage.

At each stage of the approval process, the key stakeholders should be identified and have the content shared with them.

This ensures that the content is seen by the right people and all considerations are covered. How the brand team looks at content will be different to how the legal team checks it but it’s important they are both included in the process.

3. Keep everything in a central place.

A content approval process is only successful if everyone is using the right documents. It’s easy for things to get missed or the wrong files to be shared when edits are being made along the way.

Adobe Express’s collaborator function is a great tool for this. You can keep everything in one place and simply share people into the project as needed, then they can add comments and recommendations at each stage of the approval process.

4. Ensure briefs are watertight.

Briefs should be always created with the overall goal in mind, and they also need to be checked by a senior lead overseeing the content.

Briefs need to cover all bases, even the things you’d consider to be self-explanatory. It’s important to never assume when creating a brief – include everything you can think of so that anyone can jump in and understand what’s needed from the content.

5. Map out the approval process on a timeline.

Key dates and deadlines for reviews should be communicated from the start. Map out the approval process in the form of tasks, assigned to each key person at each stage. This allows people to see from start to finish when things must happen and align as needed.

How to use Adobe Express for smoother content approvals.

Adobe Express can help you and your team stay on track from start to finish on your content approval journey. Follow these steps and enjoy a smooth approval workflow, whatever you’re creating.

1. Invite different stakeholders to collaborate on a project.

You can quickly create a project for everyone to work in on the Adobe Express platform then add collaborators as needed. These should be all the key stakeholders and reviewers needed at every stage of the approval process. They can be notified when they need to jump in and check content and make suggestions directly in the project.

2. Share the relevant assets or templates with them for approval.

Once stakeholders are added to the project you can get started. Upload the relevant assets for them to approve. You’ll need to select whether they can edit or comment. For stakeholders that perhaps aren’t involved with actual copy creation, the comment function may serve better so nothing is accidentally amended that shouldn’t be.

3. Collaborators can easily add comments to your content.

Collaborators on Adobe Express projects can easily add comments to your content assets, suggesting amends or recommendations or flagging issues with others involved in the approval process. This means everything is kept in one place and all comments are easy to review later.

4. Review and amend your designs to align with feedback.

Once all comments and suggestions have been made, it’s time to review and amend your assets in line with the feedback. Work directly in the Adobe Express project to save time and view comments and approvals with ease.

5. Once approved, save to your favourites for future reference.

You can quickly save templates and assets as favourites in your projects, great if you’re working on new designs that will be reused in the future. Once approved, simply add as a favourite, ready to go for future projects. You can find them later via the Your Stuff section.

6. Repeat the process as and when needed.

Your projects can be saved to refer to later, making it easier to create new ones with the same permissions and roles and responsibilities. Simply duplicate and repurpose for similar tasks in the future.

Editable templates to boost your content review process.

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Goal AND marketing
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Collection ID

(To pull in manually curated templates if needed)

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(Horizontal/Vertical)

Vertical

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sixcols

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(number of templates to load each pagination. Min. 5)

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All

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Most Viewed

Rare & Original

Newest to Oldest

Oldest to Newest

Newest to Oldest
Locales
GB or EN

Premium


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Try Adobe Express for free now

Useful things to know.

What are the key steps in the content approval process?

The key steps in a content approval process will change depending on the type of content created and the overall goal but typically these steps will be followed: ideation, briefing, content and asset creation, quality checks, legal reviews, amends made, live staging checks and publishing.

What is the right content approval process for social media?

The content approval process for social media will need to be adapted depending on what platform you are using and whether imagery is involved. But again, the steps above are typically required with the consideration of marketing manager and brand team approval needed.

What is an example of content approval?

A content approval is a key stakeholder or senior member of the team giving sign off on an asset that has been created. This may be in the form of a comment agreeing to what has been created or passing it on to the next stage of approval.