Content is not Just a Commodity
For your CMS implementation to be successful, you need to go beyond just planning on how content should be managed – you need a to have a content strategy.
A content strategy should define the themes and goals of the site’s content, then, you can define the processes in place to help realize those goals.
Taking time to define a content strategy means that you’re going to put plans in place to not only govern the creation, usage, and publishing of content, but to determine what type of content you’ll create and what makes that content useful to your organization.
Defining Goals
What are your site’s goals?
Every individual, organizational, or corporate web site has a goal. It’s a lot easier to review your content by asking how well the content matches or serves these goals.
Developing a Framework
Create guidelines for the purpose content should serve:
- Does the content serve a purpose
- Does the content stay on message
- Is this content in the right voice
- Use this focus to create a content strategy framework
- Your frameworks can include:
- Writing style guidelines
- Publishing policies
- Metadata structure and terms
- Defining article relations
- SEO strategy
- Keywords
- Link building
- Social media
- Other policies
- Guidelines on the types of authors needed
- And more.
Your content strategy will be a guiding factor in your content lifecycle.
Policies that guide the content lifecycle include:
- Policies that guide how content is collected
- Placement – where content fits on your web site
- Lifespan – how long content is going to remain online
- Archive – the tactics and polices regarding archiving
- Other processes:
- Distribution channels
- Marketing campaigns
- Re-purposing content
- Rules for analyzing contents success or failure
All of this may sound like a lot of steps and a huge time commitment but you’re ready doing it… Your content creators, editors, and publishers already make decisions based on the quality of the content, its relevance, and other factors.
The question you really need to ask yourself is this: Are those decisions good ones?