In the highly competitive digital landscape, it’s imperative for media & publishing firms to deliver outstanding digital experiences to their audiences. We analyzed the main reasons for this in part one of this guide, and then took a look at the key CMS and architecture considerations for delivering these great experiences in part two.
In this third and final installment of the guide, we’ll be focusing on the people and team considerations essential for creating great media & publishing websites. Let’s get started.
Positive correlation between great people and great business outcomes
Before we go into the specific considerations, we need to first highlight the intrinsic positive correlation between a great employee experience and a great user/customer experience.
Essentially, the more valued your people are and the more you nurture psychological safety among your team, the better the output that your team produces, whether that be in-house or outsourced teammates.
With this in mind, let’s go over the key considerations for crafting a team that’s dedicated to creating great media & publishing websites that meet the changing habits and needs of digitally-savvy audiences.
People considerations for media & publishing website development
There are three main areas we should cover here: the company culture in general, a focus on learning, and the decision of what to keep in-house versus what to outsource.
People-first company culture
The first priority should be a people-focused company culture that fosters good collaboration through a psychologically safe environment. Communication should be on a high level to allow for smooth and efficient collaboration between different teams and departments, without being rigid or disrupted by silos. It should be based on frequent feedback loops and constructive criticism.
When hiring new employees or looking for potential partners, one of the key things to consider should be culture fit. Making sure that your new team mates share the values embodied in your own culture will make it much easier to integrate them into your existing processes and workflows, which will further facilitate good collaboration and ensure everyone strives towards the same work standards.
Focus on learning/upskilling
Speaking of company culture, a focus on learning represents a win-win for both employees and the company. Some of the key elements here are:
Good & accessible learning resources
Proper onboarding of new team members and partner companies’ team members
Options for additional training and/or upskilling where necessary or desired
Staying up to date with technology trends and innovations in order to consistently deliver top-notch digital experiences
Learning and upskilling are especially important when it comes to working with AI. We already discussed the importance of responsible AI usage for media & publishing in part two of this guide.
Disclosure of AI-generated content should be a given, but for instances such as news organizations, it’s also essential to be as resilient as possible against misleading AI content, e.g. being versed in checking whether a piece of news or other content has been generated or altered through AI.
All of this is key not only for alignment on internal policies and maintaining trust with your audiences, but also for ensuring you comply with existing as well as any future regulations on privacy and AI, such as GDPR and the more recent Digital Services Act.
In-house vs. outsourcing
The final area we need to cover is the decision of keeping it in-house versus outsourcing. Consider what you have in house and what you lack to both empower your employees as well as deliver the best experience and content for your audiences.
For something such as artificial intelligence, you may want to invest into a long-term AI strategy by streamlining in-house AI capabilities as much as possible, or you might decide to outsource most of it and prioritize other aspects of your business, depending on your particular use case.
Generally, working with external service providers brings a lot of flexibility, as you’re able to quickly get the required expertise without an extensive and costly hiring process, especially if you’ve found the right long-term partner that can help you scale as needed.
On top of that, you get to decide on the level of partnership that you want, i.e. if you want to outsource an entire service (if you need managed services), a full team (e.g. a front-end development team versed in a new framework you’re using), or a a partial team (e.g. augmenting a particular area such as design with currently required expertise).
In cases where you do have the right expertise in-house, you can also decide to just boost your team with a few extra people, and in this case outsourcing comes with the benefit of easing the burden on existing employees to enable them to focus on what they do best.
Conclusion
This three-part guide has covered the importance of great digital experiences for media & publishing firms and the key considerations for creating resonating experiences consistently and sustainably.
Media & publishing firms need to be particularly mindful of changing audience habits and breakthroughs in both software and hardware. Responsibly and effectively working with AI technologies will be an increasingly important factor for media & publishing companies and a top skill for their employees.
In case your media/publishing firm is looking for ways to enhance its website and/or the experiences for your audience, learn more about how a partnership with Agiledrop can benefit you and feel free to contact us if you’d like to discuss more.
Posted by Tim on 03 Dec 2024 in Business,Experience
