Content Management Survival Guide

Content management is all about having full control of what you offer, both externally and internally in the basic forms of text, images, videos, and sound clips.

There are about as many perspectives on content management as there are content managers, but here are what we think are the essentials for you to know in order to thrive and drive your organization forward towards 2023.

Build the best business case:

Have a plan

Many industry professionals just plunge into new technologies and features in the world of digital experiences without any overall plan or direction. Simply because some tech or feature exist doesn’t mean you have to use them—even though “everybody else does.”

Think it through and devise a carefully orchestrated master plan. The plan might consist of a strategy and an alignment with the goals of your organization.

Know what you want

You have a purpose and plan. Now you need to dig even deeper, you have to move from strategy to tactics, and from purpose to the fulfilment of KPIs specific to your department or digital team.

Furthermore, ask yourself: What do you hope to accomplish with your content? What type of content fits your ideal consumers? What channels are most befit your ideal consumers?

In other words: Know your customers! If you haven’t crafted buyer personas yet, do it now. Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers, cooked down to one imaginative person of flesh and bone you are directing your content and marketing efforts towards.

Acquire the right CMS

A content management system (CMS), or content platform, is at the heart of your digital experiences. Is your present CMS like a rusty, old car? Then you should switch it out with a new, better, and safer alternative.

Know exactly what you want of your CMS, and remember that “more is less, less is more” when it comes to functionality. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by an enormous amount of features, so you should choose a platform with a framework that can be expanded or reduced according to your needs.

Such a CMS lets you integrate with marketing tools like AI, predictive content, user review processes, marketing automation, A/B testing, chatbot, personalization, multisite support, and social media integration.

Also, bear in mind that the platform should allow your developers to work with their favorite front-end framework and deliver prototypes fast, and that it should be user-friendly for the content editors.

Use the best tools: Supercharge your site with Next.js and headless CMS »

Establish routines for review and maintenance

You’ve probably noticed already, but the internet is flowing over with information and content. There is no shortage of blogs, landing pages, PDFs, news articles, commentaries, photos, pages, and sites on the web.

Content, even well-written and well-researched content, might fade over time. New trends may have emerged, or new evidence or scientific findings may have surfaced in the months and years since the initial publication of your glorious content. Sometimes, old articles might not even reflect your organization or tone of voice anymore.

Introduce routines to review and maintain your existing content. This will not go away by itself and will contribute to the ever-growing expanse of content flooding the web. Establish a publication plan with an overview of all your content, and initiate a semi-annual or annual review where you and eventual stakeholders go through the list of published works.

Another alternative might be to do a review consecutively, with e.g. calendar reminders for each content to maintain on a given time in the future.

Or this: Schedule your articles, either all or some that fills certain requirements, to be unpublished automatically after a certain time.

Keep an omnichannel presence

The key idea behind “omnichannel” is that every organization with a customer focus should be present on every channel their prospective and actual customers are on—and deliver a smooth, uniform and quality-minded experience no matter the channel. The idea is to meet your customers at their own terms.

While most industries have websites, not everyone needs e.g. a service phone channel for callers. It all depends on the circumstances. In either case you should think about what omnichannel presence entails for you and your organization, and which channels you need a presence in, and why. How are you going to solve your customers’ demand for presence in all relevant channels?

A next-generation headless CMS, for instance, enables you to run your website as the main offering, while at the same time let selected content be fetched by an API and be displayed on smart devices, digital signage, and apps.

See also: Changing headless CMS forever: Enonic + Next.js »

Get the right tools

Using the right tools to enhance your team and reaching your goals is closely aligned to, but not identical to having the right CMS. Some tools are not an integrated part of your CMS, but they are nonetheless important.

Here are some of the most important tools for you as a digital team:

• Content platform (like Drupal or Enonic)
• Analytics (like Google or Matomo)
• Optimization (like Visual Web Optimizer or Hotjar)
• Marketing automation (like Marketo or HubSpot)
• Design (like Canva)
• Process (like Trello or Slack)
• Office suite (like Microsoft Office or Google Docs)

Summary

• Have an overall plan and purpose
• Know what you and the customers want of content and digital experiences
• Know the steps to achieve your content management goals
• Consider whether your current platform/CMS fulfils your goals
• Assess what a new platform should look like
• Establish routines for managing existing content
• Investigate opportunities in an omnichannel presence
• Acquire the right tools for the job

When you have all of these elements under control, you have a digital strategy and are well equipped to meet 2023 head on. You have gained yourself an advantage in the arms race that is knowledge and skills in the world of digital experiences. Never stand still and keep on moving forward!

First published 10 December 2018, updated 12 August 2022.