content management 101

Content Management 101

J. Todd BennettManaging Partner

decimal152

Remember this?

The evolution of the college website

The evolution of the college website

How do we try to fix it?

GET A CMS!

Reasons you get a CMS

• Ease the burden- more people lending a hand!

• WYSIWYG• Easier updates, design changes• More consistency and control • Do cool stuff without knowing what

you’re doing

Beware of features

Be careful with change

No CMS will fix problems with

your people or process

Dining Services

StudentAffairs

Math

Registrar

English

MaintenanceMaintenance

How do we harness their expertise for everyone’s

benefit?

It’s time to rethink how we create and publish content.

www.flickr.com/photos/austin2179/

The long neck and tail

Zipf Distributionwww.useit.com/alertbox/zipf.html

Page views

Content

Freeing content

BiosBios

VideosVideosImagesImages

StoriesStories

StatsStats

NewsNews

EventsEvents

Projects

Projects

Platform for interacting with content

Content Reuse: the possibilities

There are over 2000 different Lego parts in 55 colors and

over 20 materials

Content Reuse: the possibilities

Just 6 (2x4) bricks of the same color

combine in 915,000,000 unique

ways

Content Reuse

A single piece of content is created once and used in

multiple formats and contexts

The 3 Rs of Content Reuse

Re-use

1 piece of content, multiple contexts

Re-purposeuse parts of a piece of content for different purposes

Re-package

multiple documents created in multiple media types

Benefits of Reuse

•Quick and Easy Updates•Consistency•Knowledge Repository•Extended Reach•Do more with less

(personalization)

Content Reuse: Cautions

• Context reduces re-usability• Lack of context requires branding

of the content itself• Decentralization requires

consistency in structure, taxonomy, and tagging

What is Structured Content?

• A way of separating content from presentation

• A way of creating & storing information based on a predefined set of rules

• Content that can be parsed and formatted into just about any other structured (or unstructured) format

What is the alternative?

Unstructured Content

• Traditional HTML• Static, freeform• WYSIWYG

Unstructured content is usually the result of an unstructured

production process

Problems with unstructured content

• Difficult to make site-wide changes to content or layout

• Redundancies, inconsistencies, erroneous info

• Presentation often coupled with content

• Difficult to re-use content

Content is the sum of its parts

What parts does your content have?

When structuring your content

• Remember the 3 Rs• Think beyond your singular

purpose • How granular should your content

be?• How will others find this content?

Use of Metadata

Information used to describe & categorize content

Album namesArtistsSong TitlesAlbum ArtworkRatingsLast Played DateGenrePlaylists

Metadata

• Structured/controlled metadata– Categories & Relationships– Content Fields in the Structure

• Unstructured/ free form metadata– Tags– Ratings– Usage Data

Making it happen

• Start small• Eliminate the fear of the technology• Introduce new tools only after you

have developed a culture of content contribution

Questions?

Contact me:

todd@decimal152.comwww.twitter.com/jtoddb404-551-3915