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Some basic tips I gave to a meeting of small business owners on how to develop and manage their content on the web.
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Developing a Content Management Strategy for your Small Business
Andrew J. Roback
2014
An anecdote “The Small-town ISP”
What you don’t want to say
“My daughter is great with technology.
She runs my whole website!”
“My intern is a social media ‘guru’
and he handles all that.”
“I pay these folks $49.99/mo. to run my site. They’re not the best at getting back to me…”
What you want to be able to say
“I selected software and designed
my site so that it practically runs itself.”
“I developed a strategy for social media and I
periodically monitor content and metrics.”
“Yeah, I built that.”
What I’ll talk about today
Computing profiles Browsers
Photo sharing
Social media
Website design Project/workforce management
Collaborative writing
Cloud file sharing
Content Management
Strategy
Collaboration
Core systems
Content dissemination
Computing profiles
• Mac or PC?
• Mobile phones, tablets?
• Operating system?
– Cost
– Software packages
– Training
Browsers
PC/Windows Mac Linux Mobile*
Chrome X X X X
Firefox X X X X
IE X (X)
Safari X (X) X
Opera X X X
*Most mobile versions are scaled down and don’t service every type of content (e.g. Flash, Quicktime, etc.) (X) – Possible, but not likely
Source: StatCounter and Wikipedia
• Webmail
– Gmail, Yahoo
– Lightweight, portable, easily configured
– Legitimate? ([email protected])
– Easy to manage multiple accounts
• Desktop client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.)
– Robust
– Somewhat harder to configure
Email services
• Constant Contact, MailChimp, etc.
– $$$, but (in theory) delivers professional looking email newsletters
– Calculate ROI! Small email base doesn’t warrant this.
• Contact management software
– $$$, but has useful tools to manage large contact databases
Collaborative writing
• Google Drive and productivity suite
– Seamless with Gmail
– Great at keeping track of who is doing what
– Not so great with really huge files
• Microsoft Office
– Track changes are best composition version control for text documents
– Excel (for power users) has no real equal out there
Collaborative writing
• Presentations
– Keynote, PowerPoint, Google Presentation
– HTML5
– Is it all going to a .pdf anyway?
Cloud computing/file sharing
• For average use
– Google Drive
– Dropbox
Free or flat rate
• Advanced
– IBM and HP
– Amazon EC2
Pay by usage
Project/workforce managment
• Project management
– Basecamp (local business), TickTick, ClockingIT, Redmine, etc.
– Look for mobile scheduling integration
• Workforce management
– Kronos, PeopleSoft
– Look for elasticity and portability of date (how do you leverage it to make life easier)
Source: Pew Research Internet Project Factsheet
Source: Pew Research Internet Project 2013 SM Update
Social media/photo sharing
• Increasingly related
• Uniform content dissemination?
– Cross posting and tune out
• Asking for media (e.g. photo contest)
Social media/photo sharing
• How is your audience viewing this?
– Twitter clients
– Facebook mobile app
• Video content?
– Vine = Short, ironic
– Facebook = Intermediate, direct
– Youtube = Long-form, production quality
Website design
1. So called “drag and drop”
– Squarespace, Weebly, and others
– You get what you pay for (accessibility, cookie cutter designs, etc.)
– $$$, but you can get your site up relatively quickly
– Commerce support (and security???)
Website design
2. WYSIWYG editors
– Adobe Dreamweaver, MS WebMatrix 3, etc.
– Steeper learning curve, greater customization
– Still not great with accessibility
– Often creates a site that is wholly dependent upon the proprietary software
Website design
3. Write it yourself
– Not as difficult as it sounds
– Loads of free/open-source software out there
– You manage accessibility and designs
– Human-readable code; not dependent on proprietary software
Domains and hosting
• Register domain
– Network solutions, GoDaddy, etc.
• Secure hosting
– MediaTemple, SiteGround, etc.
A sample CMS
1. Secure domain and usernames 2. Build common ground
a. Establish a computing profile b. Think about clients and how they’ll access your content
3. Establishment of content platforms A. Staff management and collaboration B. Develop/update website C. Establish/review social media
4. Leverage contacts to grow marketing base 5. Disseminate content 6. Periodically refine practices and evaluate strategy (return to steps
three through five) 7. Every two years, update or audit software and evaluate hardware.
Occasional Audit
A sample CMS
Planning
Implementation
Collaboration
Revision
What I talked about today
Computing profiles Browsers
Photo sharing
Social media
Website design Project/workforce management
Collaborative writing
Cloud file sharing
Content Management
Strategy
Collaboration
Core systems
Content dissemination
