Dynamic Publishing Network
Smart + Strong is a publishing company comprised of multiple health-related magazines and websites. Their brands are leading resources for education and support on HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, African American and Latino Health Outreach, Cancer, and Mental Illness.
Looking to re-evaluate their entire digital strategy, Smart & Strong formed a partnership with Kounterattack to envision an entirely new platform and workflow process, tying together their vast network of brands.
Organic Growth Revisited
After years of strong organic growth, new challenges to internal workflows emerged from multiple sources: The fragmentation of brands slowed updates, reliance on separate IT teams to make structural changes, and limited access for administrative users across brand platforms. Also, the UX experience had room for improvement as digital matured, and the old platform lacked an effective SEO and responsive functionality across devices.
Overall, an absence of the right tools stopped Smart + Strong from streamlining their processes and having the flexibility to be as agile as they would like with newer opportunities. With plans to expand the number of brands under their umbrella, a significant update was needed.
A Real Game Changer
Kounterattack provided a custom-built enterprise-level publishing platform that centralized and streamlined across the entire network of Smart + Strong brands. Built for editorial teams working in highly dynamic environments, the solution is an incredibly powerful tool that is very user friendly – empowering users to manage and control the platform without the help of a separate IT team.
Issues within the editorial processes no longer persist due to centralizing everything into one network – allowing for publishing across all brands from a single source. Management tools like network-wide Digital Asset Management (DAM) helped create a streamlined workflow.
When used in conjunction with the new UI widgets and templates, admin users can fully control each brand's configuration and customization. In addition to optimizing the existing brands, the platform also provides building blocks to construct and spawn entirely new websites through a centralized API and easy to use tools. The combined ability to manage existing brands as well as create new brand websites "on the fly" makes for endless possibilities. It gives editorial teams the flexibility and tools they need to thrive in the digital environment.
Smart + Strong now has an all-in-one publishing solution for its thriving network of brands.
