Don’t Put Content Strategy in the Corner (Stories from the CMS)
31/08/2017
As a website manager in a large corporate company for many years, I learnt the hard way the importance of managing content in a website CMS (Content Management System).
Day 1: Brand New Shiny CMS – lovingly built to your exacting specifications, with great consideration to achieving both your customer's every whim and wish but also to help your business achieve its short and long term goals.
With the best intentions to follow the great set of user documentation and processes that have been written in collaboration with your development partner you set forth on filling it with content.
You’ve worked closely with either an in-house or agency based design team throughout the build process to ensure your brand is communicated consistently both in the digital space and on every one of your brand touch-points. They have crafted a story through imagery and words that resonates with one and all.
All stakeholders have been consulted on content, given deadlines along with all the necessary specifications (and limitations) of the great functionality the new website has to showcase their area in the business.
…….all sounding a bit too smooth? This is where it starts getting tough! … and your go-live date hasn’t even arrived.
Everyone in the digital team is fully focused on that go-live date and thinks that everyone else in the business is too. This is where your content strategy becomes a critical asset.
Content Strategy
Identify a hierarchal map of content, what is most important to the customer (products/services), what is most important to the business (brand content) and what is most important for the website (SEO). This will work hand-in-hand with the information architecture of your website to ensure nothing is missed.
Start early with a timeline that is communicated to the business stakeholders as part of your website go-live communication plan. Don’t send this initially in an email, run a planning session to bring everyone on board right from the start. From this, break it our over your timeline to smaller group sessions. This may seem like hand holding but think of it as an engagement piece that will ensure your shiny new website has the content that it deserves. Plus with the added bonus that no-one feels that they have missed the opportunity to contribute (this will happen and I will cover that later).
Content Creation
Create templates for content contributors that tells them exactly what they need to provide. Design specification; image types and sizes, content lengths (min max words/characters), format that content is to be provided in.
This will also set out the process for when the content needs to be submitted, to whom, what levels of sign off is required and when it needs to go live.
Internally, there are great project management tools to keep track of content items, in the past I have used Jira and Trello with success as you can assign tasks to people and set timeframes and workflows.
Managing content in the CMS
Once the content has been submitted and you are uploading it to the CMS the thing to first consider is a good naming convention.
Think about:
Article names – do you want to search by date or name
Component names – will they be re-used across multiple pages
Timely documents e.g. price lists. Do they have to be replaced in more than one place and will the name remain the same?
Images – once again will these need to be changed out across multiple locations. Ensure that the specifications for what is optimal for the website are shared and if possible limit the upload of unsuitable items.
Keep on top of keeping your content clean and tidy and filed in the right places, from experience I have wasted many hours removing and moving content around.
Workflow
Does your CMS come with workflow functionality? Consider the people who should have access to your website and allocate appropriate access permissions to them. But remember if you have a small team this may become a blocker if someone is away.
Have a documented publish process that sets out how the workflow process works, who needs to approve any content before it goes live on the website and how the sign off process works. Keep this visible and open so no fingers can be pointed in times of ‘it wasn’t me’ when something is published by accident.
Limit giving logins to the website out to a multitude of people and keep an administrator role to one person or only have your website company have that role.
Managing expectations
Your new website will be well publicised internally and externally as part of your communication plan so expect lots of attention! Sadly not all of it will be good. As part of the communication plan have some responses ready for both internal and external stakeholders.
Your customer services team will have a list of answers; covering all the changes that could possibly affect your customers. You will have covered this off in one of your content creation sessions as this will be used in your website FAQs section also.
All of a sudden, the girls in accounts will become masters in spelling and grammar, one of the product managers remember that they didn’t get that new product copy to you and someone in comms wonders where the such and such a form is. Thank them all kindly for their input and direct them to the online change request form you have set up, letting them know it will go into the publishing schedule for updates.
Stay tuned for more tips and tricks in our stories from the CMS series.
Written by Jael King