What content strategists need to demand from the CMS guys

Perttu TolvanenWeb & CMS Expert, Partner

North Patrol Oy, 20131

What content strategists need to demand from the CMS guysState of the CMS industry and guidelines to content strategists / September 2013 / CS Forum Helsinki

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Agenda

1. The new game for CMS products – why? what happened?

2. Different approaches for building web presence– Approach 1: One CMS to rule them all (”the elephant CMS approach”)– Approach 2: Same user experience, but many different platforms (”minimalistic CMS approach”)

3. Guidelines for content strategists navigating between these two worlds

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We used to build everything on top of CMSs...

CMS

Website

eCommerce

Website

Extranet

Intranet

Web-site

Web-site

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And I guess it still makes sense… sometimes…

CMS

Website

eCommerce

Website

Extranet

Intranet

Web-site

Web-site

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But some things have changed…

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Two things that have changed the game for CMSs

1. The role of Web CMS is not that given anymore. The heart of many web presences is something else than article content – it might be eCommerce, booking functionalities, product catalog, comparison functionality for university courses or something else. Secondly, some social media services are becoming main storage places for certain content (think YouTube).

2. Mobile devices require that the content adapts to different formats and even channels. And the more strategic the content is, the less we can control the user experience when managing the content.

Eg. eCommerce or booking

CMS

CMS

WebsiteScreens

Product catalog

Partner site

Mobile app

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“Web channel management” in 2013

Campaign sites

Organisation’s website (including

possible sales channel or customer service tools or departmental websites)

Blogs

Discussion forums

Partnership sites

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Partner site

Areas where CMSs are still badly needed…

1. Publishing content, mostly news and articles – in different kinds of streams with different kinds of meta-information attached to it

2. Content streams that must be pushed to external services (eg. social media)

3. External content feeds must be pulled into CMS, enriched and published (because sometimes the ”master place” for the content is not the CMS)

4. Bonus: Previews & testing: Wide selection of different devices has created an increased need to test how the content looks on different devices -> we need illusions of previews to feel safe

Eg. eCommerce or booking

CMS

Product catalog

Mobile app

Product database

CMS

The world of CMSs has divided

1. ”The elephant CMS approach”– Build everything on top of your CMS

– including eCommerce and the booking applications

2. ”Minimalistic CMS approach”– CMS only manages your article

content – you don’t build all your web presence on top of the CMS

Main website

CMS

Product catalog

Mobile app

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1. “The elephant CMS approach”

Campaign sites

One CMS

Blogs

Discussion forums

Partnership sites

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2. “Minimalistic CMS approach”

Campaign sites

CMS

Blogs

Discussion forums

Partnership sites

Main site (eCommerce or

booking, or..)

Business area A

Group site

CMS

The world of CMSs has divided

1. ”The elephant CMS approach”– Build everything on top of your CMS

– including eCommerce and the booking applications

– Easier to understand and manage– Slower and more expensive to build– Small changes easier and cheaper

2. ”Minimalistic CMS approach”– CMS only manages your article

content – you don’t build all your web presence on top of the CMS

– Harder to manage (but cheaper)– Faster and cheaper to build– Small changes harder

Main website

CMS

Product catalog

Mobile app

Market overview

1. ”The elephant CMS approach”– Build everything on top of your CMS

– also the eCommerce and the booking applications

– Mostly commercial CMS products that have a strong interest in seing their CMS as the main hub

– Often eCommerce or ”bookings”

2. ”Minimalistic CMS approach”– CMS only manages your article

content – you don’t build all your web presence on top of the CMS

– Mostly open source CMS products that are built more for developers than content producers

Note: There aren’t yet many CMSs that truly decouple the content management and presentation. Therefore the ”minimalistic CMS approach” should not be seen as the same thing as decoupling (which can really happen in both approaches).

Guidelines for content strategists

1. ”The elephant CMS approach”– Create collections of small content

blocks. Group them, tag them, connect them to functionalities.

– Personalize the experience, do automatic content suggestions, manage the web presence actively!

2. ”Minimalistic CMS approach”– Concentrate to having your content

items in order – don’t worry about how the styles work – forget preview!

– Create a CMS that is natural to your business – talk your business language – don’t talk about content types!

General advice:

1. Identify your core content assets and model and tag them

prepare for content re-use and for the next facelift

2. Design the tagging model so that it can be used as a basis for

making content suggestions map tag relationships to products

and user groups

3. Use the same tagging model in social media services (e.g

YouTube) prepare for doing content suggestions for all of the

content you publish!

Guidelines for content strategists

1. ”The elephant CMS approach”– Create collections of small content

blocks. Group them, tag them, connect them to products and user groups.

– Personalize the experience, do automatic content suggestions, manage the web presence actively!

2. ”Minimalistic CMS approach”– Concentrate to having your content

items in order – don’t worry about how the styles work – forget preview!

– Create a CMS that is natural to your business – talk your business language – don’t talk about content types!

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Elephant or minimalistic?

• 1 point: You have a very commercial web presence that needs to change together with business – and your business is changing fairly often these days!

• 1 point: You have hundreds of different products or other similar items which you can cross-promote and build ”suggestion profiles”. And you want more sales!

• 1 point: Users log in to your site (eCommerce, booking, community, etc.) and you want to offer them personalized suggestions (products, content, etc.).

• 1 point: You have a dedicated web team that has three (3) or more web producers / analysts / SEO specialists who use the CMS for their daily work.

• 1 point: Your web team members are looking at your analytics and other key metrics daily - and thinking about your ”next move”.

• 1 point: Your budget for technical implementation and CMS licensees in your web renewal project is over 200 000 euros.

Count your points!

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Elephant or minimalistic?

• If you scored five or more points from the previous areas you should seriously consider the elephant approach. Book a demo from Sitecore right now! ;)

• If you scored three or four points you might go either way. It depends where you think the future is taking you.

• If you scored only one or two points you should go for the minimalistic CMS approach. Forget personalization, content targeting and all that fancy stuff. Focus to your content.

5/6

3/4

1/2

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Summary (for content strategists)

1. The world of CMSs is divided– Pushing for the ”elephant CMS approach” is natural development direction for CMS vendors, but it isin’t equally natural direction for

customers. Don’t get fooled by the sales pitches! Only if you are doing eCommerce or other ”booking system” should you focus only to ”elephant offerings”.

– It can be even argued that maybe CMSs should be simpler platforms that just enable 3rd party apps and push content to custom front-ends (through APIs).

2. Powerful tools require skilled editors and dedicated web teams that are paid to monitor and optimize the web channel.

– If you have a scattered content force don’t even dream about the elephant approach!

– Instead go for the minimalistic approach and focus to your content!

3. Both worlds can be a heaven for content strategist – they are just very different worlds!

4. And in any case: model your core content well and create a common tagging system that also covers social media services.

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Contact information

Perttu TolvanenWeb & CMS Expert, PartnerNorth Patrol Oy

+358 50 368 [email protected]

www.northpatrol.com

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