Web Content Management - WCM

CMSWire’s recent article The Seven Hats Content Managers Will Wear in 2012drives home a point that I have been making a lot recently. It’s the point that inspired me to take a full-time job with Lionbridge to scale the Global Marketing Operationsoffering. Engaging audiences with content is hard work and it doesn’t matter that your CMS makes it easy to edit web pages. As the article describes, a modern content manager is a content collector, a context controller, an eavesdropper, a concierge, a right-brain thinker, a number cruncher, and a bodyguard. And that is just to manage a site in one language. For a global site, you might as well add “international (wo)man of mystery” to that list.

One thing you realize after years of content management consulting is that the tools play a relatively small role in a company’s ability to maintain an excellent digital presence. Skills, process, and commitment play a much larger role. If you don’t have those, no technology is going to help you.

Recently I appeared on a CMS-Connected and we talked a lot about web engagement. I mentioned that the market, as a whole, failed to get sufficient value from the content production functionality of upper tier WCM platforms. Most customers didn’t have the process, skills, and commitment to fully leverage workflow and other content management functionality. As a result, many found themselves owning 6 million dollar wysiwyg editors. CMS vendors has responded by shifting the value over to the delivery side with functionality like personalization, multivariate testing, and analytics.

One thing that I wished I said on the show was that, unless customers increase their people commitment (time, skills, and process) to managing their websites, the upper tier CMS vendors won’t achieve value on the delivery side either. So far, I am finding that most customers are under-utilizing these advanced marketing features that were so important in their platform buying decision. If only they had more hats…

If your company runs a website (and what company doesn’t?), I want you to take the web manager out to lunch. You will probably learn that he is overworked and would love to be doing so much more but limitations of time and skills prevent it. You may hear will hear that the CMS didn’t really remove the webmaster bottleneck and all of his time is spent chasing down and posting content. He might confess his embarrassment from how bad the site looks on mobile devices. In short, the web manager has his hands full just getting content on the site and can’t even think about maximizing the reach and effectiveness of the website.

If you hear these signals, your organization probably has a lot of growth to do before it can fully realize the benefits that web engagement functionality promises. You need to acquire some more hats before you go software shopping.

The manufacturing industry has been somewhat slow to accept social media as a marketing tool. This is largely because it can be difficult to see how social media plays into the larger business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategy. That, however, appears to be changing. Acccording to a Forrester report released in March of 2011, 30 percent of global manufacturers intended to increase social media investments in 2012.

As global manufacturers increase their social media spending, the case for small- to mid-sized manufacturers to invest in social media grows stronger. The opportunities are particularly attractive in the contract and job shop manufacturing segments, which have traditionally relied on word-of-mouth marketing to win new business. I’d like to share three ways that manufacturers can start using social media today to improve their brand visibility and win more business.

1. Create a Blog to Tell Your Story

Blogs give manufacturers an opportunity to do more than just promote their brand. Blogs allow manufacturers to communicate with their customers and prospects using a richer form of media with longer-form stories. They’re also a great avenue for sharing company information and providing industry knowledge. Manufacturers can use blogs to announce major company milestones, such as getting ISO 9001 certification, as well as share general industry trends and news. By striking a balance between promoting a brand and sharing useful information, manufacturers can gain a thought leadership position that will help win customers later down the road.

2. Start a YouTube Channel to Enrich Content

YouTube can be a great tool that educates buyers while subtly marketing through video. With the dramatically decreased cost of video production, creating a decent quality video is affordable and relatively easy today. Manufactures should consider creating a YouTube video that provides a demonstration of products and processes, a tour of the factory, or showcases customer testimonials. Of course, the challenge is sticking to a video format that customers find relevant and engaging. As an example, one of my favorite YouTube videos produced by a manufacturer is this Carr Machine and Tool video. The video provides customers a walk-through of how their orders are handled while showing the company’s dedication to service.

3. Use LinkedIn to Help Fill the Sales Funnel

A final tool that I’d like to highlight here is LinkedIn. For manufacturers, getting the most out of LinkedIn requires more than just becoming a member of the social network. Manufacturers can use LinkedIn to prime to sales funnel by using their networks to gain access to sales prospects. Once you get a few hundred contacts, your typical network usually reaches in the millions. This network can be used to get an introduction to a potential sales contact – or at the very least to connect with someone that can help strategize on how to contact the prospect. LinkedIn can also be a great place to demonstrate industry expertise by participating in relevant community discussions. Answering a difficult question in a Q&A forum, for instance, could very well lead to an unexpected contract.

This article is adapted from an original piece by Software Advice, an online resource that reports on manufacturing technology and trends. You can access the original article at: How Manufacturers Can Use Social Media to Win Business.

Social media has fueled a race for humans being chased by clones. Brands are pretending to be human by using social media to personalize their brand message.  Because of the rise of social media by millions of consumers where users go, marketers will follow. But can a brand become human using social media?

A brand is not human but the people behind the brand are human. Corporations are not human but they become containers for humans. Once humans step into corporate and brand roles they forget about human preferences. We the people are the ones being chased by entities and brands pretending to be human.

The key word in the previous statement is “pretending to be human”. Pretending is something we did when we were children. We pretended to be whatever our imagination wanted us to be. Brands, corporations and marketers are playing a pretend game aimed at attracting humans.  They use tricks and gimmicks distributed through social media channels trying to attract and trap humans into spending.  The practice is an extension of the sophomoric mentality of the industrial era marketing machines, media.  The cost of this practice is justified by chasing the many to capture a few.  It no longer works.

Social Media Fuels The Chase

EMarketer reports:  Research from social marketing software firm Awareness Inc. indicates US marketers plan to go where users go. The December 2011 survey found that the leading area for new social media marketing investments in 2012 would be increasing marketer presence across platforms, cited by 70% of respondents.

For some marketers, that will mean a new presence on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. While the vast majority of US marketers already use these sites for marketing, some laggards plan to join them there this year.

Chasing Humans Is Expensive

U.S. advertisers spend nearly $40 billion a year for online advertisements, but 31% of their ads are never seen. That means $12.4 billion will be wasted on U.S. online ads this year. That’s the average across all sites; on some sites, only 7% of the ads were “in-view,” meaning 93% of them went unseen.  And they wonder why.

Corporations, brands and marketers spend billions of dollars trying to obtain: trust, relevance, vision, values and leadership in the eyes of buyers, humans. Trying to become human they’ve adopted several human practices to gain attention. The top five practices include:

1. Story creation in context to human needs
2. They create creeds to identify with human beliefs
3.  They create icons-quick flashes of meaning that sum up who you are and what you’re about.
4. They create rituals. These are the repeated positive or negative interactions with the public.
5. They create specialized words that have special meaning aimed at relating to the targeted audience.

The problem with these practices is that they do not create a connection with the human soul becasue they do not touch the heart of the human network. Trust, relevance, vision, values and leadership are attributes that connect the heart of the human network one to one to millions.

Chasing us where we are with irrelevant expensive ads is not the way to reach the hearts and minds of the human network.  Engaging us through our hearts and minds is done through human interaction not an advertising campaign created by clones.

In the old days, static publishing (or baking, where the CMS generates static HTML files at publish time), was pretty much the standard. Most of the WCM products on the market did static publishing: Interwoven, Tridion, RedDot, Percussion …. Even the frying systems like Vignette and FatWire (FutureTense/OpenMarket back then) relied so heavily on caching that they were practically baking style systems. Computing power was so expensive back then that you didn’t dare to do much processing at request time.

Then frying-style systems became the norm. WCM vendors needed to have an answer to market demand for personalization and other dynamic behavior and the only way to do that was through dynamic (request-time) publishing. But static publishing isn’t dead. There are many baking style systems on the market and lots of customers swear by static publishing. Good strategies have emerged to overcome its limitations. The primary benefits of static publishing are still very real: cost-savings, security, and stability. You can cheaply stand-up web servers that have the easy job of just serving up static HTML files.

And this brings me to my little obsession with static publishing. I am hosting a few sites on Amazon S3. The cost is ridiculously low and the speed is crazy-fast. Publishing them is fun too. For example, I publish my little personal site (www.sethgottlieb.com) using a site generator called Hyde, which is a Python port of a Ruby-based system called Jekyll. The way these generators work is that you enter your content in HTML, Markdown, or some other syntax and then run a script that renders static HTML pages with your presentation templates. Presentation templates can also do useful things like create listing pages. The Hyde sample site has a blog and there is a script to migrate from WordPress. Versioning? Git, of course. In fact, using a source code control system will also allow multiple authors to collaborate too. Site generators also do useful things like minifying your CSS and JS files for maximum performance. Want interactive features like search or commenting? For search you could use Google Custom Search. Commenting can be supported through a service like Disqus. You can configure secure areas with your web servers. For little bits of interactivity, you could embed some client side Javascript or server side PHP in your static HTML files.

I also used static publishing to create an archive of a site that I no longer update. I created a Drupal website for my wife’s birthday a few years ago. I didn’t want to pay for LAMP hosting indefinitely but I didn’t want to lose the site either. My solution was to pull the whole site down using wget and then upload it to S3. The site has lots of pages and I wouldn’t want to manage them as static HTML but since I have no plans to change the site, I don’t have to worry about it.

1. No OS lock-in. We have technical writers working on Windows 7, Vista and Mac OSX. It is difficult to find a screenshot tool that works on all those platforms. Skitch is awesome on the Mac but a Windows version is still only hearsay.
2. Consistent annotations. Annotations are the circles and arrows we add to screenshots to draw the reader's attention to whatever it is we write about. While any screenshot tool can take a plain screenshot, applying consistent annotation symbols to it is difficult unless everybody uses the same tool. Documentation ends up looking amateurish and poor if the shapes are not consistent.
3. Casual, hand-drawn look. We wanted a casual, edgy look for our annotations. Straight lines and rectangles are difficult to see on a UI that already has lots of straight lines. They also look incredibly boring. If you annotated something on a piece of paper, you would grab a pen and circle it. That's the look we wanted.
4. Shared storage. Web-based tools promise cloud storage. Why should everybody take the same screenshot when a perfectly good example exists in a shared library? Why draw your own arrows with a shaky mouse if there's a nice-looking reusable arrow in a toolbox?

Picnik features we love and hate

Uploading an image is a snap. The image is opened in the editor immediately so no unnecessary browsing is needed. Besides upload, you can open an image from Flickr, Facebook and several other popular services. 

Resizing to new dimensions works as expected. Reduction quality is not as good as in Photoshop. It yields fuzzier results. This can be a problem. Text in a screenshot must stay sharp and readable in smaller size too. To get around the issue we either crop to the relevant area or keep the shot full-size. Modern browsers do a very good job at resizing in the viewport, certainly no worse than Picnik.

Canvas as a concept does not exist as in Picnik. When you need more room around the image, you need to add a border. The border can be any color and width. Make it white and you effectively have a bigger canvas.

Shapes. I drew a collection of annotation shapes by hand in Skitch and saved them as PNG files. Then I uploaded them into a Picasa Web Album that is visible in the Photo Basket in Picnik. Now anybody in the team can drag-and-drop symbols onto an image. This solves the requirement that all writers use the same symbols to produce a consistent look and feel.

Text. Picnik has a huge variety of fonts to choose from. They are very hip and cool, which means they are perfect for a scary Halloween photo but not so great when you need readable text. Documentation must be readable. We chose a font called Just Me Again Down Here by Kimberly Geswein. It's a good compromise between hand-drawn look and readability. We matched the font size to the annotation shape stroke width.

Sharing and layers are my biggest grievance with Picnik. I asked on the help forum why sharing is so weird. Bottom line: edits are stored on the image owner's Picnik account and are not accessible to other users. This means that while you can save the image to a Picasa Web Album, other team members won't be able to edit it. The image is flat to them. This is a shame because picking up from where another person left would be fantastic. As for the shapes, we put them in a common Picasa account that all our technical writers register in their Picnik. So at least they are available to everyone.

So there you have it. Picnik works for us now. Drop a comment if you solved similar requirements in your team with something else.

Everything is in a state of flux. An old French proverb says “the more things change the more they remain the same”. Even when things seem to be in a chaotic state of change what remains the same, at least for some, is the ability to adapt.

A Fast Company article titled This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New And Chaotic Frontier Of Business  states:  Despite recession, currency crises, and tremors of financial instability, the pace of disruption is roaring ahead. The frictionless spread of information and the expansion of personal, corporate, and global networks have plenty of room to run.

And heres the conundrum: When businesspeople search for the right forecast–the road map and model that will define the next era–no credible long-term picture emerges. There is one certainty, however. The next decade or two will be defined more by fluidity than by any new, settled paradigm; if there is a pattern to all this, it is that there is no pattern. The most valuable insight is that we are, in a critical sense, in a time of chaos.To thrive in this climate requires a whole new approach, which well outline in the pages that follow. Because some people will thrive. They are the members of Generation Flux. This is less a demographic designation than a psychographic one: What defines GenFlux is a mind-set that embraces instability, that tolerates–and even enjoys–recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions.

Not everyone will join Generation Flux, but to be successful, businesses and individuals will have to work at it. This is no simple task. The vast bulk of our institutions–educational, corporate, political–are not built for flux. Few traditional career tactics train us for an era where the most important skill is the ability to acquire new skills.

Adapting To Chaos

Prior to the web things were predictable. In the web 1.0 economy things were fairly predictable. The dynamics of web 2.0 and beyond are chaotic and the only thing  predictable is rapid change.  With this increased speed of change has come a decrease in planning for the future. We are so uncertain about what will happen five years from now that both individuals and corporations seldom plan more than a few months in advance.

Chaos creates opportunity. Those who embrace the latest technologies will make fortunes.  In the midst of accelerating change, we sometimes forget that new technologies are not new things that we must do. They are simply new ways of doing what we have always done.  The difference is technology accelerates the rate of change which changes the way we do things. Start learning how to do things differently and you will embrace chaos.

As the old French proverb says “the more things change the more they remain the same”. What remains the same is those that resist change. This time there are more people fueling change than those resisting it.

Display the character limit

1. Copy the formEdit.ftl script which renders input controls.
2. Create folder Templating Kit > Templates > /form/paragraphs.
3. Create a new template script formEdit and paste the copied script into it.
4. Render the maxLength property in the textarea element on line 21 and visibly after the description: ${content.maxLength!'50'}
5. Enable the script and refresh the Contact form page.

Twitter-style character counter

• jQuery.js is the core jQuery script. Magnolia CMS already has it.
• charCount.js is a function that counts characters and draws the counter. 
• CSS styles for setting the alarm color.
• 01.html example page.

1. Go to Templating Kit > Resources > /templating-kit/js/all.
2. Under all, add a new JavaScript resource charCount.
3. In the Advanced tab, set Extension to js.
4. Paste the downloaded charCount.js script into the charCount item.
5. Change line 35 to read the textarea ID from the element:
   var available = $(obj).attr('maxlength') - count;

1. Copy the document.ready function from the example 01.html file.
2. Paste it in the charCount script before the closing })(jQuery); line.
3. Change #message2 to textarea. We are getting the IDs dynamically.
4. Set the warning to 10.

1. In /templating-kit/themes/pop/css, create a new sheet charCount.
2. On the Advanced tab, set Extension to css.
3. Set Model Class to info.magnolia.module.templatingkit.resources.STKResourceModel.
4. Paste the following style in the Content box:

Our brains get programmed from experience. When we repeat the same experience over and over we convince our memory to expect the same experience.  When we walk into a room, a mall and even when we go online we expect a certain experience because our brains tell us what to expect based on the past experience. Change the experience and you change the memory.

HBR had an article by Art Markman titled Dont Think Different, Think About Different Things  which states Memory provides you with the information it thinks you need when it thinks you need it. When you are walking through the supermarket or asked to think about it, information about food and shopping is easy to recall. When you are at a football game, your knowledge of the rules and types of plays is easy to think about, but the texture of fresh romaine lettuce is not.

When you need to solve a problem in a new way, you have two options. One is pure research and development. The other requires finding knowledge which we already know that offers a novel solution. When you gather a group for an ideation session, you are betting that the group already knows how to solve the problem, they just have to find the answer.  Pulling information from memory to solve problems happens effortlessly. To find innovative ways to solve a problem, you need to ask your memory the right question.

Tapping Into More Memories

Individually we solve problems based on our memories experience. Collectively we can solve more problems because we’re tapping into a larger pool of memories.  The social web is a platform of memories made and being created, one to one to millions second by second.  The collaborative nature of the human network enabled with connectivity to larger human networks ignites problem solving through discovery of innovation like never before. New memories are being created.

When you consider that in the last two years more information has been created than ever before in history you can see the building of a “human memory network” that is vast and accessable in real-time.  When you enable groups, millions, of people to examine a problem and contribute to finding a solution a new dynamic is created…..thinking about different things instead of just thinking differently.

Thinking about different things requires input from those with different memories. Institutional thinking has created institutional memories.  Since everything has shifted to the unusual the usual solutions to old problems no longer work. In other words organizations can no longer rely on old memories they must create new ones.  Memories come from experiences and all things social are changing the memories of everything and everyone at the click of a mouse.

Innovate and you create the next memory.  Old memories can be good but new ones are better.

A few months ago when PRSA announced that it was engaging the PR community in an ‘open and collaborative effort’ to modernize the definition of PR, there was a spate of posts from PR people.  Many applauded the crowd sourcing approach, but there were also detractors.

As with any such effort, there’s always the risk that individuals or groups with zero, limited or even slanted knowledge of public relations will chime in. There will also likely be a number of agenda-driven folks aimed at unfairly smearing PR.  Phil Gomes

Not sure PRSA’s “fill in the blanks” crowd-sourcing approach will yield the type of definition that truly reflects the enhanced role of PR in the era of social media. Inside PR.com

Edward Bernays, father of PR, defined PR as:

A management function which tabulates public attitudes, defines the policies, procedures and interests of an organization. . . followed by executing a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance.

Here are three possible definitions PRSA published  this week:

1. Public relations is the management function of researching, engaging, communicating, and collaborating with stakeholders in an ethical manner to build mutually beneficial relationships and achieve results.
2. Public relations is a strategic communication process that develops and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their key publics.
   
3. Public relations is the engagement between organizations and individuals to achieve mutual understanding and realize strategic goals.

What do you think of these definitions?  Are they better than the original?  Do we need a new, more modern definition, or did Bernays get it right and all we need is an update on how we do it?

There is no doubt that we have new media and new tools.  The media has been dramatically impacted by the online world.  The way people get news and information has changed too.  But do the Internet and social media change the basics of what we do in PR, or do they just enhance the way we do it  – and give us more options so we can do it better?

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