Avoiding the Content Silo Trap™, Enterprise Content Management  

Organizations frequently fall into the content silo trap, multiple authors creating similar information, in many areas of the organization. Authors rarely share their information (they work in silos) or are even aware that this information already exists elsewhere in the organization. Technical communicators have been single sourcing for years, this session looks at how to move beyond technical publications to assist your organization with enterprise content management. This session includes a case study from Eli Lilly.

Rockley, Ann and Jodee Clore. STC Proceedings (2002). Design>Content Management>Content Strategy

Better Content Management through Information Architecture

Content Management Systems promise so much: content is easier to publish, easier to update, and easier to find and use. Lots of promises, but do CMSs really deliver? Masood Nasser examines why Content Management Systems often fail and shows how Information Architecture can come to the rescue.

Nasser, Masood. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

CMS Wiki

CMS Wiki is a knowledge base for Content Management.

CMS Wiki. Resources>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Content Management and Information Architecture

Content management is information architecture writ large.

Boiko, Bob. ASIST (2001). Presentations>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

A Content Management Project Presents Unique Challenges

At a basic level, implementing a content management system (CMS) is like deploying any other large software package. Fundamental project management principles must be followed, along with best practice technical guidelines. Beyond this, however, a CMS project presents a number of unique challenges. These must be recognised and addressed for the project to be successful.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2003). Design>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Defining 'Value-Adding Work' of In-House Information Development Groups  

Many in-house information development groups are redefining their role (or seeking to justify their existence) around the concept of 'value-adding work.' But which tasks are value-adding? Finding an answer to this question is critical for the survival of information development groups. Unfortunately, there is no easy, 'one size fits all' answer, because the response depends largely on your point of view. Thus, deciding what is and isn't value-adding may require technical communicators to do more project-by-project task, audience, and media analysis than ever before.

Collins, William L. STC Proceedings (1998). Careers>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Information Architects and Their Central Role in Content Management

The process of content management begins when an organization comes to the realization that it needs a system to manage content. While the interpretation of the term content management (CM) can be as simple as a set of guidelines for organizing and maintaining content, more typically today it means a sophisticated software-based system. A full-featured content management system (CMS) takes content from inception to publication and does so in a way that provides for maximum content accessibility and reuse and easy, timely, accurate maintenance of the content base.

Warren, Rita. ASIST (2001). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Information Architecture of Content Management

When people think about content management, they generally think about it from a systems perspective, focusing primarily on tools and technology. While it is true that content management usually requires a technological solution, it also requires that content be designed for reuse, retrieval, and delivery to meet your authors' and customers' needs. Content management requires that tools be configured to support authoring, reviewing, and publishing tasks, but first, those tasks must be designed. Designing content and the processes to create, review, and publish it is what information architecture is all about. The Information Architecture section of The Rockley Report will focus on the different aspects of information architecture for content management. This article introduces you to some of the components of information architecture that we will cover in The Rockley Report over time.

Rockley, Ann. Rockley Bulletin (2004). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Integrating Content Management with Portals: Meeting Enterprise Information Needs  

Effective communication is a top priority for most businesses. To help create, manage, and access information that is used to conduct e-business, technologies such as content management (CM) and enterprise information portals (EIP) are dominating IT and CIO discussions. We will review how these rapidly evolving technologies come together to provide benefits for enterprise implementers. Given the historical deployment of these technologies, many associate the application of content management solutions to externally facing sites, serving transactional e-business needs; and the application of portals to internally facing sites for general employee access to a wide range of information sources and applications. However, both technologies can provide support for the complete information lifecycle, from information creation to management to delivery.

CAP Ventures. Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy  

Today's businesses are overwhelmed with the need to create more content, more quickly, customized for more customers and for more media than ever before. Combine this with decreasing resources, time, and budgets and you have a stressful situation for organizations and their content creators. To reduce the costs of creating, managing, and distributing content and to ensure content effectively supports your organizational and customer needs, organizations can benefit from a unified content strategy. A unified content strategy is a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source, and assembling content on demand to meet your customers' needs.

Rockley, Ann. E-Doc (2002). Design>Content Management>Collaboration>Content Strategy

Storage and Enterprise Content Management  

Almost one-third of the users reported that more than 40 percent of the storage spending is for unstructured documents and information--I think that percentage will continue to grow annually. Further, AIIM President John Mancini, who prepared the report, found that larger organizations especially are aggressively pursuing consolidation and rationalization of their storage and archiving strategies--but that cost is not the prime motivation behind those activities.

McKellar, Hugh. KMworld (2006). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Structured Content Management in the Enterprise  

As other areas within organizations begin to consider structured content for the same reasons as technical communication departments, technical communicators have a golden opportunity to assist others in their move toward structured CM.

Rockley, Ann. Intercom (2007). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

To Structure or Not to Structure

Behind all the questions about how to model something is a bigger question: do you model it at all? When is it obvious to structure some content, and when do you just throw it into the 'WYSIWYG pile'?

Gadgetopia (2008). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Creating a Content Strategy for Your Website

People are looking for content to help them reach their goals, and you should start any site redevelopment by drawing up a content strategy designed to satisfy the user. We're currently doing this for a couple of our clients, and working through it ourselves now we've finally found the time to revamp our own presence (the cobbler's children and all that).

Moore, David. IQcontent (2003). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Content Strategy

Managing the Complexity of Content Management

Content management systems suck. Or so you would think from the strife heard from analysts and practitioners alike. And yet, many websites regularly publish vast amounts of information with superior control and ease compared to manually editing pages. So where’s the disconnect between what’s possible and the too-often failure of CMS?

Lombardi, Victor. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Getting a Handle on Your Content Types

“Content types” are among the least understood, and yet most potent, aspects of user experience and web design. Most people encounter them for the first time when implementing a grand-scale content management system (CMS) because you have to define content types before building templates for each kind of content you’re going to publish. Because they associate content types so closely with CMS, some make the mistake of equating content strategy with content management. They’re not the same thing, though they are certainly related. Your content strategy specifies the content types that will then be modeled for your CMS.

Content Strategy Noob (2009). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Back-End Designs and the CMS Cycle of Disillusionment

Usually, the one thing missing from the planning of a WCM-driven web site is what's most likely to shoot the implementation in the foot: the functional design of the CMS back-end. The form and function of how the CMS will work, look and feel for the end-user of the system, not the visitor to the web site, is too often overlooked. This is odd: isn't the rationale for getting a CMS in the first place usually based on some kind of ROI in efficiency in actually producing the content and sites?

Bloem, Adriaan. CMSwatch (2009). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Moving from Web Management to Information Management: Four Things You Can Do Now

Web Managers must think globally (information) and act locally (Web) all the while trying to widen your universe and build the internal business relationships which will allow your organization to manage its information more holistically now or in the future.

Welchman, Lisa. WelchmanPierpoint (2009). Articles>Content Management>Content Strategy>Information Design

The Case for Content Strategy—Motown Style

If content strategy isn’t in the current budget, though, how do you convince your client to add money for it? Your client might already realize content strategy can help create measurable ROI. If they don’t, help them understand. After all, relevant and informative content is what their audience wants; content strategy assesses the content they have and creates a plan for what they need and how they’ll get it.

Bloomstein, Margot. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Content Strategy

Manifesto For The Content Curator: The Next Big Social Media Job Of The Future?

A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online. The most important component of this job is the word "continually." In the real time world of the Internet, this is critical. In an attempt to offer more of a vision for someone who might fill this role, here is my crack at a short manifesto for someone who might take on this job.

Bhargava, Rohit. Social Media Today (2009). Articles>Content Management>Content Strategy>Information Design