The Gilbane San Francisco conference hits this week, offering two days of innovation and inspiration for content management and marketing pros. Here at the CMS Myth we’re thrilled again to be a Gilbane media sponsor.

But we’re even more excited for our ISITE Design colleague Melissa Casburn, our director of user experience and a UX visionary, who’s been asked to co-lead an important session Thursday afternoon titled “How to Mold the Customer Experience.” Melissa has helped clients as diverse as Zipcar, HP and MTV with user experience transformations.

Her talk (Thursday, 2-3:20 p.m., Session E7) is a must-see for anyone who values delivering more personalized and relevant web experiences for online visitors – a goal more achievable than ever with the smart use of CMS and analytics.  Melissa’s co-presenter is Randy Woods, co-founder of agency non-linear creations.

Before Melissa jetted off to San Fran this morning, we caught her just long enough to conduct an insta-interview previewing her session:

What will people learn in the session – any actionable takeaways?  Definitely. We’re going to focus on six techniques for shaping and improving your UX by merging your knowledge of users with analytics and your CMS.

What are the six? We’ll talk about developing personas; mapping personas to business outcomes; defining visitor types; personas on the page; optimizing the user experience; and integrating with analytics. Optimizing the user experience and leveraging analytics data is a missed opportunity for a lot of companies. There’s a lot of room for wins in this area. We’ll explain why optimization is a process, not just a project.

What about the intersection of CMS and UX? I like to think of it this way: If users are the steering wheel, your CMS is the engine – it allows you to apply what you know about your users to the creation and delivery of a more personalized experience.

Check out Melissa Casburn’s profile on the Gilbane website.

Related posts:

1. Gilbane CMS Conference Invades Boston
2. CMS World Evolves at Gilbane San Francisco
3. Gilbane SF: Let the Games Begin

Content management technology, evolving and morphing continually over the past decade, shows no signs of slowing down. (It’s like they say about the weather here in New England: give it a few minutes and it’ll change.)

You need either a CMS Sherpa to guide you through the morass of products, pitches, platforms and promises – or you need an event like the twice-yearly Gilbane Conference, whose spring conference hits next month in San Francisco. (For East Coasters, the Boston event usually hits right after Thanksgiving.)

If you’re looking for CMS and related tools as well as strategies for managing content, collaboration, social and other hot web topics, make your way to Gilbane May 18-20.

The CMS Myth is an official media sponsor – you get a $200 discount registering with code CMSMYTH. If you go, bring along our ultimate CMS mix tape to keep you company and set the mood.

And, congratulations to our colleague, Melissa Casburn, director of user experience at ISITE Design, who was chosen to speak on “How to Mold the Customer Experience.” We’ll blog more about her presentation before the event.

The conference used to have a ponderous CMS tech slant; now it feels far more centered, with sessions targeted at marketers and social media types as much as the core CMS folks –  not a bad thing. The keynote panelists include social media leader Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group and workplace researcher and author Dan Rasmus.  

Tracks cover:

• Customers and Engagement
• Colleagues and Collaboration
• Content Technology
• Content Publishing

The conference has something for everyone involved in the web, and we can get behind anything that recognizes that  CMS touches many diverse parts of web experience, marketing, technology, content strategy, social – and your overall business and marketing initiatives. We’ve said it before and it’s worth repeating: CMS isn’t just about the technology.

Related posts:

1. Gilbane Boston 09: Focus on Content, Collaboration and Customers
2. Who will provide your business social apps?
3. Is CMS the Jan Brady of the C-Suite?

I think we can safely say that the last two week have been quite lively for Alterian Content Manager, as after an incubation with partners, customers and analysts we took our product strategy and roadmap to the social web. I’ve tweeted, interviewed, commented, posted and now (finally) blogged our message to the CMS community – [...]

Organizations working toward web content management success often struggle with a management disconnect. CxOs are too busy driving the business to care about the nuts and bolts of the web or how it’s all governed. Meanwhile, folks in the trenches – marketing, IT, brand people – are doing heroic work, but often without the upper level buy-in or support. 

Positive vibes from the C-suite can establish the agenda for web success – setting the business vision, guiding cross-team cooperation, ensuring proper funding for CMS projects and mandating web governance.

Easier said than done. And it’s not getting any easier.

Social media is taking the C-suite by storm.  Top level execs who can barely spell CMS can’t get enough of the strategies and tactics for leveraging Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, web video, and other parts of the social ecosystem.

It feels like a scene from the Brady Bunch, where Jan Brady always plays second fiddle to favorite daughter Marcia – she’s prettier, smarter, more popular and is always the center of attention.

Just like Jan’s frustrated whine “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” we wouldn’t be surprised to hear a similar echo from web teams shouting “Social, social, social!”

With social now the new darling of the C-suite, CxOs are throwing themselves into the middle of it all to enhance their brand, reach new customers and service existing ones.

At a recent BIMA  (Boston Interactive Media Association) event in Cambridge, a panel of social media marketers and consultants hit a consistent theme: corporate execs have ravenous appetites right now for planning and executing social media strategies.

To be fair, a CEO’s interest in social media is sort of easy to understand. Social media is tied closely to the identity of a company, to customer service and brand value. (But then again, so is a CMS-enabled website. But I digress.)  CEOs are often the public face of their companies social media efforts (Zappos’ CEO set the bar here.)

Marketing strategist Lois Kelly of Beeline Labs described the rush by C-level execs in companies like Dell and FedEx to invest time, money and brainpower into social. They’re not just checking in every few months – they’re sitting at the head of the table, defining strategy and setting execution in motion. They’re creating (and funding and empowering) new positions like directors of social media. They’re demanding weekly status updates on how their company is performing in social media circles and delivering new services  – and keeping tabs on the competition.

And it’s getting more serious. For example, Kelly is planning an April Conference Board event in New York to teach CEOs how to be leaders in social media. (So popular is the event, according to the website, they’re moving to a larger venue.) 

Other trendspotting in social media that web CMS warriors can (mostly) dream about:

• Companies are creating large-scale internal education programs to teach employees the value and importance of all-hands-on-deck approach to social media. It’s now in their corporate DNA.
• Smart companies are hiring social media “ninjas” – marketers in their mid-20s who know a little about business but a lot about leveraging social CRM
• Business process consultants are getting into the strategic social media consulting game in a big way at large corporations

The attention from CEOs is welcome news as social media becomes a more critical piece of the overall marketing mix. But we might ask: Where was all the attention when Web 1.0 and 2.0 initiatives and web CMS-driven initiatives were taking shape?

Regardless, we’d love to hear your comments on the interplay at your company among web strategy, CMS, social and where the C-suite is making its voice heard.

Related posts:

1. Who will provide your business social apps?
2. CMS World Evolves at Gilbane San Francisco
3. Content Marketing: Become the Media

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism is out with fresh survey data on how Americans consume their news.

The findings have big implications for any organization for which content management and content strategy play a role in supporting, interacting with and delivering information to customers. Read: this has tentacles that reach far beyond news organizations and news consumers, deep into the evolving behaviors of all consumers in the age of iPhone and Twitter.

First, the key findings: the Internet, according to Pew’s research, is now the third most popular news platform, behind only local and national TV news. It’s ahead of newspapers and radio – no surprise there.

But the more compelling info relates to the Three P’s of the research study’s findings. According to Pew:

‘The internet and mobile technologies are at the center of the story of how people’s relationship to news is changing. In today’s new multi-platform media environment, news is becoming portable, personalized, and participatory:

• Portable: 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
• Personalized: 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
• Participatory: 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.’

For news and non-news organizations, the Three P’s pose many questions around content (and content management) that beg answers and point to opportunities:

• Do you have an effective strategy for delivering mobile content to your diverse audiences? With the rise of the iPhone, iPad and other phone and reader devices, what is your plan, and will you get left behind as your readers/customers move their experience to these platforms? Content management platforms are part of the solution here, but require extensive planning and prioritization to prepare to roll out effective content experiences tailored to these platforms.

• Do you have an effective strategy for personalizing the online content experience? This question also goes far beyond the personalized news feeds or news content tailored to your preferences – if you’re a corporation, or a brand, or a college, or a non-profit: are you prepared for this inexorable shift to more personalized content experiences? The good news is CMS platforms are working overtime to deliver on the promise of if not personalized then (at least) lightly customized content experiences.

• Do you have an effective strategy for utilizing social networks for connecting your information to readers/customers? Implicit in Pew’s research is that social networks have fast become not just platforms for dissemination of information, but also effective filters on the river of news and information that flows toward us all. Your trusted friends (even the 1,000 people you follow on Twitter) serve as unofficial editors delivering their ‘best of’ links and news and content they think you should know about. It’s a stark wake up call to traditional publishers and communicators whose branded influence (hello, networks and newspapers) are waning perhaps even faster than they think. The opportunity if you’re a corporation or brand is to determine how best to harness social networks and turn these trusted sources of information into active distribution channels for your content.

Related posts:

1. Gilbane Must-See: Molding the Customer Experience with CMS
2. Shifting from Content Management to Content Delivery
3. Is CMS the Jan Brady of the C-Suite?

Recently I was fortunate enough to meet with David Pullinger from the UK governments Central Office of Information (COI), who are driving our government’s citizen engagement strategy  and mandating the policy around which government must adhere to.
It was an incredibly absorbing meeting as we took a fast ride around all elements of where a citizen [...]

The management within a company finds it needs to replace their existing, custom developed ERP system with a modern standard ERP system. A major ERP vendor brings their best sales people to a meeting with the management, equipped to the teeth with the most impressive product PowerPoint slide decks they could up-bring (that is, bullet-rich slides with a lot of interconnected 3D boxes that makes the ERP seem very advanced and capable).

The sales people manage to convince the company management to buy the most expensive license of their ERP system. All modules they could possible use, and a few more, are included in the price. As an extra bonus, the license agreement also contains a few “Easter eggs”, including a free license of the vendor’s state-of-the-art and very versatile portal software.

The company – some folks at the IT department – discovers the Easter-egg with the portal software. Like boys with toys, they can’t wait to open it and see what it does. So, they install the software on a server – “for evaluation purposes”.

Sometime later, a business unit identifies a need for aggregating all the information and tools they need in one place. They’ve heard that some competitor does that by using a portal solution, and that a portal solution is just what they need too. So they turn to their IT Department, telling them they need a portal solution.

The boys at the IT department (not many girls around) get all fired up. They tell the business people that they in fact already have a state-of-the-art and very versatile portal software in their enterprise software portfolio. Since the ERP system is a corporate standard and is mandatory to be used by all business units, so must the portal software that came along with it. Besides, it is free of charge. In fact, it is already installed on a server. With an IT strategy having consolidation as a key component, introducing new enterprise software is simply out of the question (even if you could argue that the portal software is not officially introduced and used).

The business people understand they don’t stand a chance against this strong setup. Besides, when looking at the slide decks that the vendor left them with, the portal software seems to be pretty much what they are looking for. So, they decide to skip the part of the process where they define their needs and requirements in more detail and start looking for different alternatives to evaluate and eventually purchase. Instead, they invest their money in an implementation project, seeing the promise of a short time to platform and quick and tangible business results.

The implementation project is executed and eventually a portal solution is launched. Soon enough it turns out that they did not really get what they expected, but to ensure return on their investment, they decide to force adoption with directives and policies. Maybe they will also work out some the kinks, possibly by purchasing a bunch of 3rd party software.

It does not take very long until the following has happened: The users are unhappy and frustrated and do whatever they can do to find reasons for not using the portal solution. The expected results are nowhere to be seen, and the portal solution quickly enters maintenance mode. It is just too expensive to develop it any further. But as some people have invested a lot of prestige and their entire careers in this thing, nothing can be done about the situation.

A couple of years later, the business people identify a need for aggregating all the information and tools they need in one place. This time, they don’t need a portal solution. Obviously, portal solutions are not the recipe for success. Now success is spelled differently. Instead, they need a versatile platform with a lot of capabilities, from search to business intelligence.

So, they turn to their IT department…

It would be very interesting if you could list 5 faults you find in this story, and come up with 5 things to make it right.

(thanks @letterpress_se for inspiration)

The CMS-focused website Fierce Content Management asked me this month to write up my 2010 advice for finding a web content management system. (Hat-tip to FierceCM editor Ron Miller for inviting me to contribute; his site and newsletter are must-reads for anyone tuned into content management.)

My advice rolled up several of the key ideas we espouse here at the CMS Myth, including our central belief that you shouldn’t just throw software at your website. As we tell people every day, CMS isn’t a silver bullet.

The article (“Finding the right web CMS in 2010”) was a quick hitter, packing a lot of ideas into a short column. But the CliffsNotes version of our 2010 CMS buyers’ tips goes like this:

• Think about strategy first, technology second
• Bury the CMS feature matrix
• Don’t expect to find “the best” CMS
• Measure CMS against your key fit factors
• Tap the community for validation
• When in doubt, ask the experts

Anyone who’s needed to identify a web CMS solution knows it can be daunting work. If you’re in the CMS buying market in 2010, things aren’t getting much easier. You’re sitting at the nexus of hundreds (thousands?) of potential solutions. Marketing thinks it wants this set of features, IT needs that. Execs just want a new site running with CMS. You’re managing a budget and a timetable. Vendors sound more and more alike the more you read about their products and see their demos.

Stay tuned to The CMS Myth. Over the next few weeks we’ll dive more deeply into some of the advice in the Fierce Content Management article.

And, offer your feedback and ideas in the comments section. If something’s worked for you, let others hear about it. If you’re stuck, we’ll do what we can to offer our ideas.

Related posts:

1. In CMS agency search, are you commodity shopper or strategic investor?
2. Life After the redesign with CMS
3. CMS Marketing Suites: Sweeter in 2010?

If you’ve been through an enterprise CMS rollout, you’re probably familiar with these four simple words.

“Our department is different!”

This is a common and legitimate response from groups used to managing their own websites. They argue that their needs are so specific there is little chance a common template can work.

After all, while the CMS adds new capabilities for many groups, it ultimately takes away control. This can cause, shall we say, tension (to put it nicely). Yes, we’ve seen tears shed, fists pounded and even jobs lost in these situations.

It’s understandable, really. Because it’s about much more than adopting new technology.

It’s about ushering in a new publishing model and realigning your website’s user experience to external stakeholder goals. It’s about investing in a common platform and standardizing experiences across disparate sections of your site.

This is especially relevant in higher education, government and healthcare where the internal structure of the organization doesn’t map to the website visitor’s goals.

So, are all departments different? Of course. And how you handle those differences can make or break the success of your CMS rollout and end user adoption.

Here are some lessons learned from working with a variety of large decentralized organizations.

• Listen first. Hold kick-off meetings with every individual group to talk about the process and better understand their current publishing model.
• Make the right promises up front. Address changes to the editorial process and web governance head on.
• Don’t over promise on technology. Inevitably people will find a reason to hate a CMS and the more the technology is hyped as the silver bullet the harder the fall.
• Don’t sugarcoat it. If your web strategy diminishes the role of a department, be up front in explaining why and tie it to the larger goals of the organization.
• Take a holistic look at the user experience. Tie the role of each department to your user personas and don’t lose sight of that perspective. Understand that some departments won’t align to primary personas and dig deeper to understand their audience goals and secondary personas.
• Remain open minded. A one size fits all approach will not likely work. Determine which groups and systems need to remain stand alone and allow for customizations.
• Go easy on the workflow. Resist the temptation to enforce a standard workflow across departments. If the editorial process didn’t exist before the CMS, the new workflow will be an epic fail.
• Let them make some choices. Provide a tool kit of options they can customize rather than a final template. Focus on best practices, standards and guidelines.

And if all that fails, you may want to run for the hills! Battling internal politics is not for weak or timid.

Related posts:

1. Does your web governance have teeth?
2. The value of drop-in labs
3. Stop letting people use your CMS

No, it’s not all about the tools…But it’s important to point out, as a bookend, that tools can be strategic, or at least part of developing sound strategy.

Blogging can be a strategy that helps you reach a larger goal of awareness or reach or idea testing or personal exploration or whatever. Twitter can be a viable part of a distribution network strategy or engaging the community you have in other places. You can vet its adoption or value for your audience, test ideas, track its usefulness as a traffic driver for your website.

What’s important is that the company take the approach of testing and seeking tangible experiences that might relate to larger goals. That help provide some experience, some evidence, some immersion. A starting point.

Having a strategy isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about mapping a process to try and find them, and constantly checking progress and adjusting along the way. Sometimes, tinkering with a tool or two can be just the way to do that.

Many organisations are waking up to the fact that collaboration is a key piece of the intranet puzzle. I have spoken to many such people in charge of collaboration in their organisations and what puzzles me in turn is their lack of understanding of the culture of collaboration.

This basically means that the organisation has a preferred way of working, and this acts like a magnet, and this pulls all other parts towards it. For example, a bureaucratic organisation will attract bureaucratic technology and an open-thinking organisation will attract open-thinking technology.

Here comes the problem. Collaboration requires a different way of working. It requires attitudes, values, goals, and practices that are based on interdependent work. Not silo-based work, not workflow-based work but all-together-in-one-melting-pot-based work.

If the culture of the organisation is hospitable to the culture of collaboration then you’re going to have a fun time and you’ll be wondering what the fuss is all about. If the culture is pointing the other way around, well, you better start praying.

OK. Stop praying. All is not lost; there is still hope. There could be subcultures in the organisation that are more collaboration-oriented than others. Seek these out and embrace them. Ask them to show the light.

If no such subcultures exist (you poor thing) then you’ll have to start at the very beginning: by acknowledging that a collaboration-problem exists and being aware of the type of situation you’re in.