By Adam Fischer
There may be many things that you are looking for in a Content Management System (CMS). But before you get too far in your search process, ask yourself: "What am I trying to accomplish with my Website content?" In other words, the content strategy portion of your online is still the paramount consideration. After you have defined what buyer personas you are speaking to, what target customer segments you wish to serve, what kinds of valuable content you can provide them, then you may be ready to determine which CMS is the best suited to putting that content online and distributing it.
Another critical consideration is how you plan to use the CMS. Before you commit to spending money on a CMS, documenting your needs could be a valuable step in preparing yourself for that decision. Who will use the system? What content formats will you make use of? How often will you create and post new content? What other tools do you use that the CMS will need to integrate with? If you have not sufficiently defined these matters, you may struggle to extract value from whichever CMS you choose.
Perhaps one of the most valuable attributes a CMS can possess these days is Social Media integration. The ability to create content, often in the form of blog posts, and to autopublish it to a variety of social media sites offers a big productivity boost as well as a practical benefit to your organization in terms of SEO.
AIM thinks another valuable feature of CMS would be the ability to work with content in many different formats. For example, ease of embedding YouTube video, or other custom elements such as Twitter feeds, or flash modules. And the ability of the CMS to render on mobile devices cannot be undervalued. The ability of employees to access and manage content effectively from wherever they are and from the device of their choice will improve productivity and customer service. And customers appreciate the ability to be able to use a laptop, iPhone, Blackberry or iPad depending on the situation.
CRM Integration is another consideration. If your Website is used primarily for inbound marketing, with the goal of increasing Website traffic and generating high value b2b leads, then at some point you may need to integrate your CMS with a CRM application in order to effectively manage those leads.
Step back and think about your needs today, and where you are going tomorrow. Develop a content strategy. Reflect on your organization and the separation of roles and responsibilities. As you move forward, what do you need from a CMS? The last thing you want is an overlapping patchwork of applications that can only handle part of the job, which ends up resulting in a duplication of content across multiple applications and platforms which is simply bad content strategy.
Pick the right CMS up front, rather than expecting one to unwind the tangle that can be created by failing to develop a content strategy. If you would like some information on choosing a CMS or SEO optimization for getting web leads - come visit us here http://bit.ly/aR1AFR
Please leave comments!
[mailto:Adam@AIMintegratedmarketing.com]Adam@AIMintegratedmarketing.com
Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com
No comments:
Post a Comment