Last week I was proud to be voted onto the board at CM Pros, to join a pretty new board under the presidency of Scott Liewehr to take this respected community of practice organisation forward. It’s something we’ve been talking about for six months or so and  one look at the industry heavy weights that have been there before gives me an idea of the responsibility ahead for all of us and these are exciting and challenging times for both membership organisations and the discipline of content management.

You may know CM Pros as the LinkedIn group that has almost 13,000 members and a vibrant discussion board – that really gives you an idea of the breadth of this industry and the folks that describe themselves as Content Management Professionals – although how many wearing the LinkedIn badge are actually members?

I make that last point, not to be churlish but it gives you an idea of the challenges ahead for CMPros – how do you make a membership organisation relevant, post this social media revolution?

I am a member of various loosely structured and sometimes transient tribes and communities, powered by social media and a common interest or need to get something done. How do we engage this crowd, beyond a badge on our LinkedIn profiles – to  marshal this incredible resource and improve our industry?

Yes, improve our industry.

Pull up a bar stool between two CMS practitioners and you are moments away from a possibly heated discussion on the definition of CMS, what software tool is and what isn’t a CMS, the business value of a CMS and possibly the relevance of the latest standards.

Depending on who’s history you are reading – the web focused CMS industry has only it’s 15th birthday this year, if we gauge it by product shipped (Vignette Story Server / Interwoven)  then it’s probably only 12 or 13. I say web focused, as of course comparative granddaddy Documentum had been managing documents since 1990 (but I don’t think we called it CMS back then – did we?).

Anyway, I’ll have to come back to this in future posts – who owns the term CMS? Could get myself into trouble here, leave that for another day…

Back to CMPros – you see we have a young vibrant industry working through puberty – but it’s also an enterprise staple, a necessity – intrinsically linked to the success of just about any decent sized business, charity or government organisation.

Fewer of us make stuff anymore, we are knowledge workers or brokers – content is our currency.  Yet, despite that “enterpriseness” and some vendor consolidation – we haven’t reached the definition and commoditization of say ERP systems.

All of this and loads and loads of other discussion points I could throw up means that now is an exciting and important time for a community of practice organisation. It’s a rallying call, the voice of the practitioner must be heard alongside the well funded, loud voices of the vendors and analysts – and CMPros is a a platform to facilitate this.

Not just on how we shape this industry, the vision for tomorrow, or what we call the damn thing – but to help educate and guide the folks that look to CMS Professionals for help.

A former CMPros director Lisa Welchman wrote a great call to action on this: And Still We Rise: The Professionalization of the Web Vocation and I recommend you give it a read.

Whilst, unlike Lisa,  I can’t earnestly call upon such stirring analogies as US civil rights, I hope this post gives you an idea of what I think CM Pros is for, the challenges we see ahead of us and I hope motivate you to join and participate.

No related posts.

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 – I say “we took” but @janusboye certainly had a hand in igniting it.

Alright, I admit we didn’t quite plan it this way – but that’s the lesson of the new social media powered PR – you can’t always control it and it’s often a test of reactions – of ensuring you have the right tools, people and message to do that.

In this post (as I tend to on this blog) I’ll be focusing on my experience – you can read our official news release on Alterian Content Manager 7, it’ll give you some background as what I am going to ramble on about here.

Anyway, Tuesday a rumour is going around, I get a couple of DM’s – and Janus mischievously tweets:

sources tell that Alterian will soon discontinue Immediacy / Alterian CM Corp. Edition – wondering if customers will enjoy the sunset

Ah… not entirely true, but now it’s out there – so strap yourselves in folks – you’re launching a product strategy on social media!

The vigilant Irina Guseva of CMSWire clearly had her ear to the ground and grabbed me for an exclusive interview and in no time at all (how does she do that so fast?)  published – Alterian Drops Immediacy, Morello Web CMS Brands.

In the meantime – and this demonstrates the diversity of this CMS community – there’s a CMS Haiku competition going on – Jon Marks (@mcboof) is offering free beer to the winners (yes folks, the stakes are raised, this isn’t about product marketing any more, it’s about beer) – he dares me to pitch in:

@iantruscott Now that @irina_guseva has broken the news (http://bit.ly/b8RQlO), can’t you re-break it in #cmshaikuform?

I quickly scan through the social media bibles; “Groundswell”, “Here Comes Everybody”, Jeremiah Owyang’s entire blog archive – no mention of haiku as a required skill of today’s social media marketer.

In truth, I admit, I did have to Google how exactly to write haiku – more on my first poetic foray later.

The next day starts with what we eventually agree was a Twitter interview (no doubt someone calls these “twinterviews”) by James Hoskins (@JamesHoskins) – long time social media agent provocateur – especially when it comes to all things CMS and Alterian.

Unfortunately it’s difficult to find this conversation, James and I didn’t hashtag it and twitter doesn’t lend itself to a Q & A structure, unless you want to read it backwards through replies – and I haven’t really got room for it all here. We have however ensured that the excellent points James has made are in our official communications.

This goes on all day and some of the next, with other folks now pitching in with questions – at the end, James pays me a huge compliment:

#followfriday @iantruscott - raising the bar for other WCM vendor VPs in openness and engagement #alterian

Meanwhile – Adriaan Bloem (@AdriaanBloem) of CMSWatch got in touch, for a quick briefing, we have a positive chat and he quickly knocks up this blog post – provocatively titled “Alterian Drops Immediacy” and written in the house style, of a father warning his daughters to watch out for those vendor types, with their high-falutin’ words and fancy charming ways – nothing wrong with that – but please read my (admittedly lengthy) comment response.

Crikey.. now I’ve got Philippe Parker (@proops) encouraging me to haiku.

@IanTruscottimpressed you can explain your strategy in #140 – now please do it as a #cmshaiku

So.. double dared… here goes.

C M C or E / Here me Alterian say / Autumn is Future

Which surprisingly made it to the short list and the community got to vote – it got a respectable 3rd, but no beer. (I could protest – the haiku rules I play by said it needed to include a season!).

So folks, that’s it. A few days in the life of product marketing via social media. It was fun – demonstrates that today marketing and PR is as much about listening and reacting as it is about planned strategies. It also sparked off a whole bunch of interesting conversations I’ve had with clients and partners since.

..and to whoever whispered that rumour in Janus Boye’s ear – I would genuinely like to thank you.

We have been executing a communication plan that started last year with our customer and partner events and we intend that the program will reach all of our customers and partners in the next few weeks. If you have questions about our strategy, then please contact me directly (ian.truscott@alterian.com), or your Alterian representative.

Related posts:

1. I Predict A (CMS) Riot: 1 hour, 6 People, 1 Wave, 1 Post
2. Blog Comments and Engagement
3. Back to blogging…