“Content management isn’t a software problem at all. It’s a process problem.”
– Jeffrey Veen
It’s the Process That’s Important
Having a content management strategy in place prior to selecting a CMS is more important than most people realize.
Typically, people or organizations pick a CMS with the expectation that it’s going to automatically solve all their workflow issues. This approach usually leads to disappointment or even scrapping the CMS and go with an alternative solution.
This is not a failure of the CMS – it’s a failure to recognize that content management is a process that needs to be examined, planned for, and executed in a way that fits the organization and the nature of the content itself.
- Content Plan
- CMS Decision
It doesn’t matter if you’re a single individual needing to find a more efficient way to reuse an update content or large organization needing to create, track and repurpose content over multiple channels. If you don’t have a plan in place prior to selecting a CMS, you allow the CMS to dictate your process, not the other way around.
Planning
Step 1: Team Analysis
- Team size will vary based on the size of the organization.
- Team members should include both those that work with content and decision makers
- Team tasks include:
- Audit existing content workflow
- Identify current problems
- Structure content workflow that’s ideal for organization
- Each department that creates, works with, approves, or touches the content in any way should be consulted.
- Keep the team active to oversee workflow
- Keeping the team together makes it easier to identify inefficiencies before they crop up or predict how needs might change.
Step 2: Content & Workflow Strategies
Once the internal processes are reviewed, the team can then begin to craft strategies for content workflow
- Content strategy – what the actual content is.
- Workflow strategy – defining the workflow for how internal teams are going to create, publish, and organize the content.
Content Strategy
The content strategy should focus on identifying all types of content that will be created and managed by the internal teams and how this should be organized and categorized.
- Identifying all types of content that will be created and managed by the internal teams
- Identify how this should be organized and categorized
- Create the categories, tags, and other types of metadata should be identified and structured
- Define the relationships between content types relate to each other
Workflow Strategy
The workflow strategy should focus on the path of the content as it moves through the organization.
- Focus on the path of the content as it moves through the organization
- Create a tracking document that lists all of the steps the content takes – from creation to submission to editing, approval and finally publishing
- Consider including: editing, versioning, archiving, and content reuse
- Measuring the complete process will help teams identify the necessary requirements
All of this should then be analyzed through the filter of what’s achievable in your organization, taking into consideration factors like manpower, corporate culture, and the commitment level to building an efficient constant workflow.
Step 3: Choosing a CMS
Now that you have a complete understanding of the requirements, it’s time to start architecting your CMS.
This could be something that you build internally (which might create a custom solution) or the process could result in searching for and finding a CMS that’s going to enable your workflow best.
This entire process is necessary to identifying how content moves within your organization in order for you to find a CMS solution that enables your organization to work the way that it should based on its structure and content needs.