Scaling Your Streams With a Content Management System (Update)

 

Picture this: You own an eclectic gift shop, but one without labels or shelves. You’re too busy making new items to worry about where they land in the topography of your store. Customers who are committed to searching might find an interesting trinket here or there but rarely what they came for. Does the average customer leave satisfied? Are they likely to return? Do you have the infrastructure to satisfy a larger crowd if a surge in business comes your way?

Now imagine that store is your repository of streamed content. As you create new content, you toss it into a heap of digital chaos and hope that your viewers can find what they need. That, or you’re only live streaming the content, which would be tantamount to having a hole in the back of the shop where goods become lost to time.

Is it a perfect metaphor? No, but it does speak to a truth that often goes overlooked when it comes to digital products. It’s simple: If you can’t keep your assets organized, you risk devaluing them, losing customers, and missing out on growth opportunities.

   

Your Stream WITHOUT Content Management

You need to take care of your digital assets. Hang them up, so they are easy to notice. Organize them by type, size, and purpose. Even save that live stream that you thought was disposable. You never know when you might see it in a new light or decide to share it with someone who has yet to experience its value. 

A stream without a content management system (CMS) gets lost. Either it’s lost to the ether because it was an ephemeral live stream that went unarchived, or it gets lost in a pile of uncategorized video-on-demand (VOD) assets. 

Any saved video assets can’t effectively be searched. Viewers might see that you have videos, but they won’t easily find the right one and, in the meantime, they’ll get frustrated. 

Frustrated viewers don’t stay viewers for long. You could have highly engaging and helpful content, but it’ll lack value if the viewers can’t find it. In other words, if they can’t find that designer necklace in your store, then you might as well not have it at all. 

Lost viewers and lost value spell lost revenue. It turns out that churning out quality content is only half the battle. The other half is learning how to make that content available to the right people. A CMS streamlines this process while also making a host of other features available that will help you maximize your content’s value and scale up your platform to meet growing audience demands. 

In Summary, No CMS Means: 

• Decreased asset value 
• Frustrated viewers 
• Lost revenue
• Missed growth opportunities 

 

Your Stream WITH Content Management 

We could just turn this on its head and say that a CMS will do the opposite of all the things listed above (i.e. happier viewers, growth opportunities, etc.), but that wouldn’t even scratch the surface of what a CMS is capable of. A good CMS provides functionality that you didn’t even know you were missing. 

Still, let’s start with the obvious. A CMS makes it easy to organize your video assets. In many cases, the CMS will even use artificial intelligence to infer information from your videos for streamlined categorization. The right CMS can do this in batch, so no more staring down your disastrous showroom and wondering where to begin. 

Organized and categorized assets are searchable assets. This not only demonstrates value as a platform, but also helps to reinforce the inherent value of your quality content, which can now be easily found. To top it all off, your viewers will be satisfied with the experience, and a happy viewership tends to grow. 

Of course, viewers aren’t the only ones searching your video database. Analytics tools also benefit from organization and categorization. A good CMS comes with tools built in to help you analyze video performance, viewership metrics, and more. This information can be used to course correct or map a growth strategy as needed.

And what do useful analytics and happy viewers lead to? Revenue (naturally). 

In Summary, A Basic CMS Will Provide: 

• Streamlined organization
• Searchable platform for you and viewers 
• Asset and viewership analytics 
• Ability to smoothly accommodate growth 

 

Content Management for Scaling

What does all of this have to do with scaling your streams? After all, it’s the video content delivery network (CDN) that helps bounce your signal across large distances and manage higher volumes of viewers. So what role does content organization and analytics play in a growing streaming strategy?

It helps to look at this in terms of long and short term strategies.

Playing the Long Game

In the long run, an organized system that makes the most of its available content is one that will appeal to viewers and keep them coming back. What’s more, advanced end-to-end analytics make it easier to see what content is most effective, how viewers are behaving, and more. The long game for content management is all about building a store people want to come to based on data-driven insights and using those successes to expand.

Short Term Scaling Needs

Of course, scaling isn’t just about growing over time. Sometimes unexpected spikes in viewership catch you and your infrastructure by surprise. This could mean more people visiting your site and streaming VOD content at a given time. It could also mean more people tuning into a live stream than you are able to accommodate. Good content management systems come attached to reliable streaming partners with tools, like transcoding for adaptive bitrate streaming, that can help you adjust in a pinch.

 

Your Stream With Wowza

Now let’s explore what an exceptional CMS can provide. In addition to everything listed in the last section, look for these features in your chosen CMS.

• Transcoding and Repackaging – A good CMS will transcode and repackage data for distribution to a variety of playback devices. This sort of functionality also makes workflows like adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR) possible. 
• Flexible Metadata Model – Have control over how your data is organized. Add new fields and categories. Make your organizational system make sense for your use case. 
• API Access – Accessing your CMS with APIs allows for easier integration and more control over the video hosting experience. 
• Live-to-VOD Capabilities – Take live video and repurpose it for VOD access. This comes with expanded monetization opportunities. 
• Clip Extraction and Edition – Continue to make the most of your assets with clip manipulation to enhance content offerings.
• Batch Transfer – Take that existing mess and get started quickly by having your old heap of videos organized en masse. 
• Playlist Generation – Create playlists for corporate newsfeeds, curated channels, and 24-hour OTT streams. You can also use this functionality for in-video ad support. 
• AI and Machine Learning – More than just automatically extracting metadata, AI can provide auto-transcription and topic deletion. 
• Enhanced Security – Easily implement access restrictions through encrypted connections and authentication requirements, including IP whitelisting and digital rights management (DRM).

Wowza Video checks all the boxes thus far, and as a SOC 2 certified company with 99.95% SLA uptime, Wowza has the reliable track record you’d want in a CMS provider and streaming partner. 

In Summary, Wowza Video Makes It Possible To: 

• Organize your existing video assets quickly 
• Reach a wider audience reliably 
• Adapt your asset organizational structure to your needs
• Integrate the Wowza Video API with your existing tools 
• Manipulate and edit live and VOD video assets
• Protect video assets from unauthorized access and redistribution

 

Highlight on Real-Time Streaming at Scale

Wowza Video’s Real Time Streaming at Scale solution combines the CMS functionality of Wowza Video with the ultra-low latency of WebRTC. Reach audiences in an instant and then repurpose your once live content for VOD and by extension a host of new monetization opportunities. 

Highlight on Wowza Streaming Engine with Video

Our Wowza Streaming Engine (WSE) software is a highly customizable, developer-friendly solution that makes it possible to tailor our streaming technology to any of your unique needs. For a while, we were offering our CDN as an add-on to WSE. However, we’re recently started making WSE available as a hybrid cloud solution, making it possible for developers to utilize a builder-focused, on-premises solution that has access to cloud-based functionality, like our advanced analytics.

 

Fortune Favors the Prepared

Having a good organizational structure and effective transcoding capabilities can make it easier to not only attract more viewers but also accommodate them when they show up at your digital door.

Imagine finding out that a month-long festival is coming to town and with it a surge in customers at your shop. You do everything you can to get organized — but it’s too little too late when they take one look at the Armageddon of goods on your showroom floor and decide to check out the boutique across the street. Eventually, you managed to get it under control, but not before the damage is done. If only you had already been organized and had the infrastructure in place to expand fluidly with customer demand. 

Naturally, the latter is a little tricky in a brick-and-mortar setting, but luckily for you the digital world is different. Invest now in a solution that organizes, protects, and scales when you need it to. Don’t waste resources and don’t miss an opportunity take advantage of unexpected growth.