 |
 |
 |
content news
Content News Issue 1 , April 2003
Welcome to the first issue of Content News. Many of you found out about this newsletter via our white paper, "The Top 25 Things Every Content Management Vendor Should Know About What Their Customers Want." If you haven't downloaded it, please feel free to download it now. Feel free to send the URL for the white paper to anyone you know who is choosing a content management system, thinking about implementing content management in their organization or developing a content management system. Also, I welcome your feedback on the white paper, this newsletter or my site -- send it to feedback@contentcompany.biz.
Best,
Hilary
Marsh
Editor, Content News
President, Content Company
Unsubscribe
instructions:
To unsubscribe, please send a message to contentnews@contentcompany.biz
with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
Subscribe
instructions:
If this newsletter has been forwarded to you or you are reading it online,
you may subscribe by sending a message to contentnews@contentcompany.biz
with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
Thanks for reading!
IN THIS ISSUE:
Feature Article 1. Content Management Strategy: What is it, and why do you need one?
Feature Article 2. What I Learned at Content Week
Note 1. Upcoming Net Content/Chicago meetings
Note 2. Recent updates to the Content Company website
FEATURE ARTICLE 1: CONTENT MANAGEMENT STRATEGY: WHAT IS IT, AND WHY DO YOU NEED ONE?
WHAT
IS A CONTENT MANAGEMENT STRATEGY?
Think about your website:
- What content is currently present?
- What information do your audiences need, but does not appear on your site?
- When is each type of content updated?
- Does your content have a consistent voice and tone, no matter what section of your organization it comes from?
- Is each piece of information factually consistent, both with other sections of the site and with content that is delivered through other media (print marketing, television advertising, etc.)?
- Does the content in every section of the site consciously convey your brand message?
- Do you have a plan for creating, managing, publishing, archiving and deleting each kind of content?
The answers to these questions are your content management strategy. "Content management" is the process for publishing content on your website. A content management system (CMS) software tool can automate many of these steps, but your organization needs to do its homework in order to set intelligent, appropriate rules for your content.
WHY DON'T ORGANIZATIONS HAVE A CONTENT MANAGEMENT STRATEGY?
- Because they don't know they need one.
- Because they don't understand what it is and how it can add value to their organization.
- Because they think a content management strategy equals the purchase of a software tool
- Because they don't know anyone who can help them develop one.
- Because the people who know the company needs a content management strategy do not have the final budget authority to bring in the resources to help them develop one.
WHY DO ORGANIZATIONS NEED A CONTENT MANAGEMENT STRATEGY?
Every organization-- corporate, nonprofit, association, etc. -- needs a content management strategy. Not just because it makes the Web publishing process smoother, but because Web content is an essential part of your business strategy, whether you know it or not.
EXAMPLE
Your business may want to sell more products to its current customers. However, each product is owned and managed by a separate line of business. Each product is marketed individually, to a group of customers "owned" by that line of business. Each product's promotions are conceived and designed by a different team, and this information is not shared among teams. The legal department reviews literature from one product, but another group does not submit its material to legal for review. There is no central repository for tracking what legal has reviewed and what changes it requested, nor any way to ensure that legal’s changes are made.
On your website, these separate but parallel tracks come together in a way they may not have before:
- Each team wants its product featured most prominently on the home page. There is no one to make that decision based on the business's priorities, so it falls to your webmaster to choose a product or design a solution.
- The person who updated the information for one product leaves, and its content is not updated. Therefore, when a customer does a search on your site, he receives inaccurate information. Seeing inaccurate information is likely to cause that customer to mistrust all the information received from your site.
- Each product may describe the company in a slightly different way (number of employees, year founded, etc.) or use a different version of the company logo (size, color scheme, even an old logo). Each line of business may use its own brand more prominently that the company's brand -- or they may omit the company brand altogether.
- The legal department will be able to audit information from all departments and business units.
The Web reveals these gaps, and many companies are finding it unavoidable to develop a strategy and assign a budget to manage content.
Stay tuned for next month's edition of Content News, where we will explore the elements of a content management strategy.
Content Company can help your organization develop a content management strategy that adds value to your website and makes sense for your corporate goals and culture. Contact us at info@contentcompany.biz if you are interested in our help.
FEATURE ARTICLE 2: WHAT I LEARNED AT CONTENT WEEK
In January I attended Content Week, a national content management conference held this year in New Orleans. Here are six pieces of information that I took away with me:
1. Once your business has set up content management rules, build them in to your templates and CMS. For example, if you want to create links between content items, make a list of related links a required field in your content entry templates.
2. Metadata can help your site be more findable on search engines, and can make your content be more findable within your site. Your efforts in developing metadata will be more successful in the long term if they involve multiple parts of your organization.
3. The quality of the writing on your website can make or break your visitors' experience -- it must be clear, brand, consistent and appropriate for the medium.
4. Creating a usable site is easy and inexpensive if you build it into your Web development process.
5. For your intranet, if you can't address all employees directly due to time/hardware constraints, address their managers and give managers tools to address their employees effectively.
6. Not managing your content is more expensive than managing it.
If you could use to add knowledge like this to your organization, contact Content Company at info@contentcompany.biz.
NOTE 1: UPCOMING NET CONTENT/CHICAGO MEETINGS
Tuesday, April 22: Spotlight on Nonprofits
Tuesday, May 27: Measuring the Value of Online Content
Tuesday, June 24: Spotlight on Healthcare
Tuesday, July 22: How Content People Can Work with Information Architects
Net Content/Chicago is a network of diverse content professionals. We host monthly events covering topical issues for the online content industry. Net Content/Chicago is a SIG of the Association for Multimedia Communications.
NOTE 2: RECENT UPDATES TO THE CONTENT COMPANY WEBSITE
RESOURCES
I have added a resources section -- sites and articles I had bookmarked. The resources section has 12 subsections:
CRM (customer relationship management) & customer service
information architecture, user-centered design, usability
personalization & customization
I am still checking the links, so please be patient if some of them are dead.
CASE STUDIES
The first case study, of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation website, is up.
SHARE THE NEWS
Please feel free to pass along Content News to friends or colleagues, as long as you forward its complete contents, header and footer. Your friends and colleagues may subscribe by sending a message with the word "subscribe" in the subject line to contentnews@contentcompany.biz
AVAILABLE ONLINE
Content
Company Services
Plan your content
ABOUT CONTENT NEWS
Content News is the monthly newsletter from Content Company where we share our learnings about and insights into content management and other issues related to content, lists our latest projects and reports on other tidbits.
ABOUT CONTENT COMPANY
Content Company provides a variety of content services, from content management strategy to content development. Content Company helps organizations achieve dual goals: to fulfill their business goals and help their audiences (employees, customers, partners, etc.) meet their needs.
Our clients are corporations, associations and nonprofit organizations. Our projects have included intranets, public websites, newsletters and video scripts. If you are interested in disucssing how we can work with your organization, please feel free to contact Hilary Marsh, Content Company president, at hilary@contentcompany.biz
Content News, April 2003, No. 1, copyright © 2003 Content Company, Inc. You are welcome to pass along this newsletter, as long as you do not change the content, you keep the opening and this closing material, and you notify Hilary Marsh at hilary@contentcompany.biz. Hilary Marsh retains copyright of this material.
Read other issues of Content News
February
2004
January
2004
December
2003
June
2003
May
2003
©2003, 2004 content
company, inc. all rights reserved.
content company logo and "plan > create > manage" are
trademarks of content company, inc.
