If I were tweeting today I would have wrote: WordPress is not so much a content management system as much as a content display system.
A content management system (CMS) designed by Erich Stauffer would allow content to be platform-agnostic. In DRY (don’t repeat yourself) terms, the content would be an object who’s repurposing could be tracked. Essentially, the content management system would not store the content, but report on the status and whereabouts of the content. Let me explain with an example.
Example: A blog post is written in WordPress. The dashboard in the CMS sees this new post via RSS and prompts the viewer to describe (via checkboxes) whether or not the material has been repurposed as a video, soundcloud, podcast, slideshare presentation, or as part of an email has been backlinked from Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
In essence, the CMS would work more as a marketing automation workflow tool – guiding you through the process of wringing out as much value from each initial post as possible. This same process could be accomplished via any sort of trusted system: pencil and paper, Word worksheets, Excel spreadsheets, Trello, or even WordPress itself via custom code.
I have yet to do it manually even once, yet I have recommended it to others many times. I’m not sure a tool would make me want to do it more, but ‘doing’ is not what I do. ‘Changing’ is what I do. That’s how I’m wired and I’m fine with that, but it doesn’t mean the ideas aren’t good or helpful for production workers who are more comfortable creating content in a structured environment.
It’s not that I don’t do stuff. I do practically whatever anyone tells me to do. I guess it would make more sense to put that line in context. I once worked in a corporate department where my boss used an analogy about us being the rudder and ‘ops’ being the engine. I had very little ‘corporate’ experience prior to working there and had never worked as a business analyst before. (I am very thankful for the opportunity as I feel it was one of the best jobs I ever had.)
As a result of my intial ignorance of how to be a business analyst, I wasn’t aware that other people had a similar or different opinion on the subject of how organizations should be organized. I only knew of it as ‘how my boss thought’. It wasn’t until after I visited the “Indianapolis Leadership Circle” (formerly known as the Leadership Mastery Group) put on by Tony Piazza that I heard something similar from the speaker, Scotty Bevill. He said (paraphrased for convenience):
[Project managers] don’t like to run things – we like to build, change, and refine things. That’s just who we are as people.
I use that word “people” specifically as Scotty was very adamant about business being “people dealing with people” and that we shouldn’t try to take the “human” out of who we are. The people in the room at the leadership meeting were mostly project managers who were mostly former IT workers. The other people in the room were current IT workers (such as myself, who is currently an IT Specialist in my day job). This is more of a belief about who we are as workers, not as much about the willingness to do or not do work. People like us (project managers and business analysts) prefer to be change agents, not production workers.
Content Management Systems vs. Managing Content
Permission to speak freely? Okay, for a second here I’m going to throw out all preconceived notions of what I should or should not do, what I am or am not capable of, and what does or does not make business sense. I’m just going to say what I think I want to do and then step back to see what sticks. As Scotty Bevill says, “Start with what is known.” Here’s what I know: I have found a way to add a sales funnel dimension to keyword research. Let’s call these “buyer keywords”.
- Once you have identified ‘buyer keywords” you can start to write content that attracts those searchers.
- Once content is created it can be both backlinked from social media and repurposed into other content.
- Once visitors start coming to the content, the content can be optimized to increase conversions.
Compendium, a business blogging platform which recently got purchased by Oracle, has 3 steps to create content which are 1) Research 2) Organize and 3) Create. I’d like to create a service that does 1) SEO Keyword and Competition Research 2) Creates and Manages Content and 3) does A/B Optimization.
Content Repositories
Update: Since writing this I’ve since discovered something called a “Content Repository“. There are several types, but what they all have in common is a clear separation between the content and the presentation of the content. What I’m still looking out for (and willing to provide as a service until software can be built around it) is a way to track all content like a database and know when and/or how often it’s been linked out via social media or to certain social bookmarking sites and whether or not it’s been repurposed to a pre-defined selection such as Youtube, Soundcloud, or Podcast.
So when you take what I consider to be my ‘flux capacitor moment’ where I realized I had this ‘super power’ to attract customers to me by writing what matters to the customer and add in what I’ve since learned about content marketing, customer acquisition systems, and customer development I’ve got a knowledge base that is poised to be leveraged with the right content management system. By system I mean the methods (processes + tools) that can multiply the efforts of a content marketer by first finding out who is already seeking their product and writing directly to that person.
I’m not sure how to do this, but those are my collection of ideas.
