Great for filtering content and managing workflows
December 15, 2015
Great for filtering content and managing workflows
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Kapost
We're using Kapost in our marketing department. We're a start-up, with about 5 years of content now, but before Kapost we had no way of archiving or organizing this content. In order to try to get as much use out of each asset we create, we've created about 8 tags -- so the content can be accessed again and again based on querying a certain customer segmentation, for instance. We also use Kapost to track our workflow. We have a content driver push the copy through each stage, but this provides a very visual outline of who has seen it (from writers to design to execs, etc.). Now that we've had Kapost for a while, I'm in the process of working with our content strategist to pare down our workflows and tags even more based on how we've been using it. And we've been using it a lot.
- Filtering: If you make the most out of your custom details and custom fields, you can gain newfound access to materials that may have long been lost in the ether. It's really easy for us, for instance, to see all of our videos at once. Or everything targeting a certain buying stage. Or you can keyword search to see everything on one topic.
- Workflows: It's really nice to lay out "who sees what when" in a digital way, because everyone involved on an asset can easily see what stage things are at. You can also set deadlines to tasks, which seems a bit more firm than a casual email, because you can visually see how meeting your deadline fits within the whole timeline.
- Calendars: The calendar feature is nice for us because we have a blog, so we can see when everything is (supposed) to go live. It's easy to see when I, as a copy editor, should be expecting work, so I can align my day accordingly. Way better than the old-fashioned "mental note" system.
- Updating custom fields: Some time in the past few months, we had added new options under a certain custom field and had named them "New -- namehere," to alert our Kapost users to the new tags so they wouldn't just skim over them. We thought we could eventually just delete the "New" part. But when we went in to do that, it treated it as a whole new custom field, forcing us to retag a whole slew of content. It would be nice if you could *edit* custom field names, not just add and delete them.
- Search functionality: This is probably the biggest problem. It's obviously very useful to be able to keyword search, but the Kapost search algorithm only seems to work if you write your search term in order and verbatim. e.g. "Orlando Zoo animals" will not pick up content called "Orlando animals."
- Submit button: When you create content, there's a "submit" button and a "publish" button at the top right of the screen. I have no idea what the "submit" button does. We usually just hit it to make it go away. I'm not sure if it provides any sort of functionality. The pages in Kapost autosave every few seconds, so it doesn't seem to be a save feature. If it doesn't actually do anything, they should probably remove it.
- I think we're able to reuse content a lot more often, which only saves time and personnel resources. By "reuse" I both mean access older content that's still applicable because we can now search for it more effectively, and also to use older content that may have been forgotten as a springboard for other channels.
- Through Kapost, our workflow is really intuitive, obvious, and clean. There are no questions about when things are due, and communication is really effective.
- We've really been able to systemize our process from ideation to publication. We always follow the same steps and store our content in the same place. I think this alleviates some of the ambiguity that exists in workplaces where each team member kind of has there own system. Kapost gives us a visual of our shared workflow, our shared timeline, and has internal communication features, so comments on files don't get lost in emails. We all feel in sync.
To be honest, I've only joined the team here at SolidFire this quarter (it's my understanding that before Kapost, there was no content management system, though). But in the past, I've used WordPress way more extensively than we do here -- effectively as the in-house CMS. WordPress is great for a lot of things, but I think it encourages viewing your content in a chronological way. I don't feel bound in that way by Kapost at all. I'm almost always looking at Kapost through some sort of customized view (you can select certain custom fields/details to view, and then save that view for yourself or others to see). I enjoy this. I feel like this encourages us to not forget about older content, to continue to be inspired by it, and to not have our copywriters and designers create new content when there's perfectly good stuff sitting in Kapost. Once you've really gone through and tagged your content, Kapost is a beautiful thing for a marketer.