• by Bryan House , September 20, 2012

To thrive in the digital age, marketers at media and entertainment brands are tasked with building profitable relationships directly with their customers, finding new ways to generate revenue from their rich content assets. Every day, they must delight fans by providing free and engaging content, while funneling them to the most valuable properties, personalities or other revenue-generating sections of their site.

It’s a challenge that many marketers face, but in my opinion entertainment companies have the toughest challenge. Each artist, movie, book or other entertainment property is a branded digital experience that must reflect the content and artist, but also must extend beyond a website to multiple interaction points with fans. At the same time, these websites serve as a primary brand hub, generating content and pushing it out across online, mobile and social channels to engage fans where they gather. For these companies, balancing content, community and commerce across web experiences isn’t just challenging – it can be daunting. But having an open source Web Experience Management (WEM) platform can alleviate some of the burden of managing multiple sites, and even contribute to your bottom line by lowering costs and creating efficiencies.

But what’s the right platform for my organization? Here are five criteria you should consider when choosing a WEM platform for your media or entertainment company.

Flexibility: On one hand, flexibility refers to the ease with which a media or entertainment company can add or replace new content. On the other, it could mean the ease with which companies create entirely new experiences for their visitors. Campaign sites are great for short-term engagements, like promotions, contests, etc.

One of the benefits of using a modular, open WEM platform is that you can quickly build digital experiences by adding the features you want, repurposing existing content from other websites, and creating an integrated experience that increases traffic to boost your CPMs and ad revenue.

Scalability & Manageability: For large media and entertainment companies, managing a series of stand-alone websites built using different technologies is inefficient, ineffective and expensive. To benefit from economies of scale,  firms are rolling out websites that built on a platform that enables each individual artist to create branded experiences, while providing the IT team with an efficient, scalable deployment model for new sites.

Multichannel Capabilities: Media junkies and entertainment fans are both mobile and social. They want branded content anywhere and anytime, and they expect access to it across a multitude of online, mobile web, mobile apps and social channels. Your WEM platform must be able to first combine text, images, video, and community features into a cohesive website, and then push that content out to the various channels to deliver a unique experience for each. A great example is web-based radio. Many local broadcasters use open WEM platforms to manage the content for their online and mobile sites, including managing streaming music feeds to smartphone listeners.

Future-Proofing Your Investment: Who knows when or in what form the next Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter will appear? While no platform developer can make such predictions, an open WEM platform has distinct advantages over proprietary platforms in terms of implementing these new offerings.  The open source development model is based around innovation – building integration with the latest social tools, scratching your own itch and contributing code back to the community to see if other developers share the same requirements. As a result, developers and site owners can move at the speed of the web when building branded digital experiences.

Drive Revenue: Finally, your open WEM platform should be able to create and manage customizable experiences that will turn browsers into buyers and drive revenue. Some of the ways firms are using their open WEM platform is by managing access to premium, fee-based content; selling subscription services to fan clubs; advertising special offers or promotions; or linking to ticketing or merchandising sites.

At the end of the day, fans are passionate about their favorite performers, shows and content. Keeping audiences delighted and engaged is paramount, and monetizing those audiences is what keeps the lights on. Open WEM solutions are already helping major media and entertainment companies lower costs and achieve economies of scale while improving their ability to manage and deliver content, and create branded experiences for their audiences across multiple channels.