Microcontent Management: Nimble Approaches to Publishing

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Microcontent Management Nimble Approaches to
Publishing
Meg Hourihan Independent Consultant and
Author Prerequisites for presentation I assume
you know 1) web publishing 2) content
management Level Beginner
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What is Microcontent?
What is Microcontent?

• Headlines, page titles, and subject lines -
  Jakob Nielson
• Content that can be produced with relatively
  little effort at regular intervals - Paul Meagher

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What role does it play?
What role does it play?

• Filler
• Tidbits
• News items
• Weblog posts

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Why use it for business?

• Keep content fresh
• Ease of use frequent updates
• Encourage repeat visitors
• Frequent updates repeat visitors
• Ease of publishing -- anyone can author
• More efficient publishing cycle

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Why use it for business? (contd)

• Informal knowledge management
• Simple system simplifies process
• Capture content where its created
• Integrate with how people work

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Examination of various uses

• Internet
• Who's doing this
• Xplane
• Macromedia
• Salon.com
• Why?
• Increase traffic, knowledge sharing, etc.

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Examination of various uses (contd)

• Intranet
• Cisco Systems and Enterprise Blogger
• My Stuff experience

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Other intranet sites
Team Web page
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Thie
quick brown fox jumps over the lzy dog! The
quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. fox
jumps over the lzy dog! The quick brown fox
jumps over the lazy dog.
Content producer
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Thie
quick brown fox jumps over the lzy dog!
Webmaster
Content producer
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Thie
quick brown fox jumps over the lzy dog!
Content producer
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Thie
quick brown fox jumps over the lzy dog!
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Cisco Blogger-powered sites
Team Web page
Content producer
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Thie
quick brown fox jumps over the lzy dog! The
quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. fox
jumps over the lzy dog! The quick brown fox
jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Thie
quick brown fox jumps over the lzy dog!
Team Web page
Content producer
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Thie
quick brown fox jumps over the lzy dog! The
quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. fox
jumps over the lzythe lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Thie
quick brown fox jumps over the lzy dog!
10
Workgroup sites

• Different voices can appear
• Breaks down barriers between groups
• Strengthens sense of team
• Searchable
• Eases bandwidth
• Document repository

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Project-based sites

• Alignment around common goal
• Sense of ownership
• Establishment of common language
• Document repository

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Other sites

• Individual
• Open flow of communication
• Knowledge transfer
• Extranet
• Conversation between consumer and producer

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Success factors

• Start small
• Pick one type of site to begin with
• Cross-departmental effort
• Get others involved at the outset
• Focus content
• It will be easier for people to participate

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Success factors (contd)

• Establish guidelines
• Define administrators and users
• Set tone, Set example
• Early contributions establish pattern for site
• Chose location carefully
• Distinct URL
• Easy to find

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Microcontent Management Systems

• Movable Type
• Free
• Installed on central web server
• Apache, Perl, MySQL
• Multiple templates
• Output various flavors of XML, HTML

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Microcontent Management Systems (contd)

• Radio Userland
• Fee
• Client install
• Local web server
• FTP
• RSS reader built-in

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Microcontent Management Systems (contd)

• Other tools

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Pros of existing tools

• Inexpensive/free
• Depending on license, customizable
• Easy to use
• Focused on simple task of publishing
• Flexible
• Templating engines allow various outputs

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Cons of existing tools

• Less professional
• Customer support not designed for enterprises
• Micro publishing
• Not designed to handle 500 documents
• Missing some features of larger CMS

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How to integrate in your environment

• Initial set-up
• Install it on a single server
• Have users download client
• Training
• Get people up and running
• Set it and forget it

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Next, enhance your sites

• Make it easier for people to publish
• Integrate email with your tool
• Make it easier for people to find
• Enable searching of content

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Enhance your sites (contd)

• Spread the wealth
• Syndicate the output via RSS
• Centralize related documents
• Integrate file uploading

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Conclusion

• mCMS provides means to make sites dynamic
• Ease of use enables broader scope of authorship
• Price is reasonable for all sizes of organizations