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Showing posts with label content. Show all posts
Showing posts with label content. Show all posts

Nov 14, 2012

What's New in Enterprise Content Management for SharePoint 2013 #spc12

The topic of enterprise content management (ECM) on SharePoint is always a hot one, and the hype is ever-growing with the 2013 release. 

After all Microsoft is a Gartner MQ ECM Leader, so it must continue to innovate in this space to keep up with the other ECM leaders. At #spc12, I attended a session covering Microsoft’s efforts to increase their clout in ECM with SharePoint 2013. The presenters were Tejas Mehta, Microsoft Senior Product Marketing Manager, and Jim Masson, Group Product Manager — Enterprise Content Management.

ECM in SharePoint 2010 vs SharePoint 2013

The session began with a quick recap of what Microsoft’s message was with the 2010 release and how that contrasts to the current message with 2013. In 2010, Microsoft really drove home the concept of combining traditional ECM capabilities with newer social capabilities on one platform. The impact of enterprise social was a major shift for Microsoft, and they drove that notion with much of the features in the 2010 Office/SharePoint products.

But we’re 3 years removed from that change, and most organizations are at the very least aware of enterprise social and looking at ways to invest in it. In 2013, the message with ECM is one of convergence and usability. This is in line with the greater Microsoft message about cleaner interfaces and better usability across all of their flagship products, which recently had brand new releases this year.

ECM in SharePoint: Create, Control, Protect

More specifically, the marketing team is selling the theme by highlighting 3 specific pillars, Create, Control and Protect.

Create: Content Creation & Access

The Create pillar is all about content creation and access. Microsoft is making it easier to find documents and e-mail together in SharePoint with unified views on team sites. For social, the newsfeeds are much more impactful for understanding how your colleagues are working with content that you’re interested in. The enterprise social features are much easier to use and they resemble the big social networks, as you can follow just about anything in SharePoint and even use mentions and hashtags, a la Twitter.

Control: Governance & Search Driven Experiences

The second pillar, Control, has a focus on a mixture of governance along with search driven user experiences. And although the oft-overused term of governance has been fairly played out, there were five specific things in the demo that showed how the product team is increasing value in this pillar.

First we saw a demo of dragging and dropping a document from Windows Explorer right into SharePoint without having to load any windows or apply metadata. This was also shown during the keynote, and for obvious reasons garnered several applauses. Right after that we were shown how you can edit more than one document at the same time from within SharePoint and apply different types of metadata than you could with 2010.

Specifically you can apply managed metadata terms en masse to all the documents in the library without much trouble. Again, applause from the attendees. The next is the ease of dragging and dropping e-mails from your inbox to Exchange site mailboxes, which can be unified with SharePoint documents on a team site. The great thing here is that any relevant retention policies will apply to both the documents in SharePoint and the Exchange site mailbox. The next was a really nice showing of the new metadata-based navigation with the content query web part in SharePoint. The idea is that you use a managed metadata term set to create a visually appealing navigation based on content already stored in SharePoint matching those terms. And last but not least, we were shown the support that SharePoint 2013 has for HTML 5 video content as well as its ability to automatically recognize video-based content when posting a link on the feed.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Nov 9, 2012

New Report Assesses Content Consumption on Mobile Web

Content on 10-inch tablets is mostly shared by email, while content on mini-tablets and the iPhone is more often shared through Facebook. That’s one of the findings of a new report about Content Consumption on the Touch Web.

The report, by tablet publishing and ad provider Onswipe, is based on more than 150 million touches per month that the New York City-based company registers on its platform.

More Sharing on iOS

On minis and the iPhone, the study found that email remains the second choice for sharing, at 29 percent for minis and 32 percent for the iPhone compared to 42 percent for Facebook sharing on minis and 50 percent on the iPhone. On 10-inch tablets, the numbers are nearly reversed, with 48 percent of users sharing via email, compared to 32 percent through Facebook.

Twitter sharing is less consistently related to decreasing device size than Facebook sharing. Thirteen percent of sharing is conducted through Twitter on the larger tablets as well as on smartphones, compared to 24 percent on minis. For all three platforms, sharing through Pinterest is five percent or less.

Onswipe_IStats.jpg
Mobile Device stats Sharing

The report also found that, despite the huge popularity of Android-based smartphones and the growing popularity of some Android-based 10-inch and mini tablets, iOS-based tablets still account for an overwhelming portion of content sharing — 75 percent of shared content, versus 22 percent for Android.

e-Readers Linger

Interestingly, while iOS device users overwhelmingly employ Apple’s Safari browser (75 percent) for touch-based content, and Android device users nearly universally use the default Android browser (97 percent), Google’s Chrome browser is about equally popular on both platforms (2.33 percent on iOS versus 2.13 percent on Android).

Onswipe_mobilebrowsers.jpg
Mobile Browsers used
 

Onswipe found that, although there are many more iPhone users than iPad ones, more than half (54 percent) of all mobile web traffic comes from iPad users. It also said that users of a tablet such as Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which is marketed with a slant toward e-reading, spend substantially more time on sites than those who own the Nexus 7 or the iPad tablets. The report said the reason could be that Fire owners tend to favor long-form content, such as e-books.

However, size does not necessarily matter in this regard. Owners of seven-inch, fully-featured web tablets, such as the Nexus 7, spend the same time on web sites as do those who have a 10-inch tablet like the iPad.
 

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Nov 7, 2012

Agility Launches Cloud-Based Web CMS Suite for Magazine Publishers

Having provided web content management solutions for major brands over ten years, Agility is now launching a new, cloud-based Magazine Publishing Suite that is optimized for online magazines and blogs. 

In February, Agility announced a template-based solution for online magazines that's strikingly familiar. It appears the suite was first announced at this time, but is now officially launching.

CEO Michael Assad said in a statement that the Suite “follows the success we’ve had with our CMS platform in the media and publishing space,” and that it “saves months of setup time and tens of thousands of dollars over traditional web publishing systems.” He added that the Magazine Publishing Suite is intended to help publishers who are “struggling to find their footing online” make the transition to digital versions of their properties.

Media-Heavy Sites

The Toronto-based company said its Suite was developed over five years, and has been built on its experience of working with large media companies and serving millions of page views.  

The system is oriented toward media-heavy sites that offer frequent updates of images and video, as well as text, and the company said it was the only online publishing suite specifically intended for media sites (we'd argue with that, pointing out Atex as another example). The company’s customers currently include Glow Magazine, Canadian Bride, Clean Eating, Oxygen, Oprah Winfrey Network and W Network.

The Suite is designed around nine areas that target website performance — layout and navigation, advertising and ad placement, search engine optimization, content merchandizing, social media integration, content syndication, mobile, community and performance.

Subscription Integration

The magazine-specific features include the ability to integrate the system with major magazine subscription systems, and a built-in module for showcasing magazine issues. The CMS is also oriented toward continuous content updates, has support for articles, blog posts, galleries and videos, and can import content from the publisher’s current Web CMS.

There are also such functions as Latest Articles, including an automatic update to the most recently published items, Popular Articles, Polls and Contributor Workflow to channel writers’ submission into the editing/publishing process.

Agility.png

Using the CMS, Agility said that a new site can be ready for business in as little as five weeks.

The delivery process, which is covered by a $1000 setup fee, involves consultation with Agility’s experts, design of a site skin, content deployment from a current site and training. The system is priced at $300/month, with additional charges for tech support by phone, support for external contributors and other add-ons.

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Six Ways to Improve the Content Contributor Experience in SharePoint

Content drives websites, so making content contributors comfortable in the editing environment is essential to the successful adoption of a SharePoint WCM experience.

Here are just a few ideas for simple improvements that can make a world of difference in adoptability. 

1. Design for Both Contributors and Visitors from the Start

For any Web CMS project, there are two end user audiences to consider: regular site visitors and content contributors. Approach the project with those two audiences in mind — not as an afterthought. While designers typically focus on the visitor experience, designers and developers need to work together closely to construct usable experiences for content contributors.

2. Customize Contribution Experiences

SharePoint allows a lot of flexibility in customizing the editing experience. Not every experience requires extensive customization, but many key experiences do.

Sometimes this means normalizing the experience so that the content contributor doesn’t have to worry about what piece of content goes where or how to format it consistently. Sometimes it means using form-based editing instead of in-context editing. Sometimes it means automating some sequence of native SharePoint capabilities. And sometimes it means creating custom editing controls, custom site actions or specialized web parts. Successful customizations will save time and simplify decisions for content contributors.

3. Remove Extraneous Options Where Possible

When creating a page in SharePoint within a site’s “News” section, it’s unlikely that you’ll need to choose a “Product Description” layout. So why is it even an option?

Removing contextually irrelevant page layouts, ribbon options, site actions and other such options will help contributors to create the right content using the right tools in the right place, not to mention that it’ll help keep the branding police off your back. These simple configuration changes in SharePoint can dramatically simplify and improve the page creation experience.

4. Plan a Clear Content Reuse Strategy

Content can be reused in SharePoint in a variety of ways (CQWP, metadata, custom lists, etc.) and can make small contributions go a long way. Automatically surface teaser content on landing pages, blog entries on your home page and “related” content on any page. 

Content contributors will be grateful if portions of the site effectively maintain themselves. Just remember to be clear about where the content originates (don’t make them hunt for the place to make a change!). With a thoughtful content reuse strategy, content contributors can feel like they’re making a real impact on the overall site.

5. Provide On-Page Guidance

Adding content to a SharePoint page experience should never be a guessing game for content editors. Clearly labeled fields with brief descriptive and/or instructive text can help the editor know what content is expected, how to use metadata tagging or why certain fields are required.

6. Use Homegrown Training Materials

training_shutterstock_95630704.jpg

All content editors should receive some basic level of SharePoint training, but generic training materials have real limitations. If you have customized the look and feel of your SharePoint site or have followed any of the above contribution customizations, the editing experience will differ from that reflected in the generic training materials.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Nov 1, 2012

Perceptive Software Releases Perceptive Mobile for Windows 8 and Windows RT

Lexmark Company, Perceptive Software today released Perceptive Mobile for Windows, making its enterprise content management software accessible through the Windows 8 and Windows RT operating system.

Busy Year for Perceptive

Perceptive Software integrates ECM and BPM solutions primarily to the education, government and financial sectors.The company was bought by Lexmark in 2010. Following the merger, Perceptive introduced two new products: Interact, an Embedded Solutions Framework and ImageNow, a document management, document imaging and workflow solution, while in April, the company introduced mobile apps for the iPhone and Android devices.

What Does this Release Bring to the Table?

In addition to being able to access information and business processes from Perceptive Software, there are a variety of features that go along with this release. Perceptive Software wants to ensure that their products are not only compatible with the most recent operating systems, but also keep in line with the needs of today's information worker:

Perceptive Mobile for Windows is the latest example of Perceptive Software’s commitment to developing the most user-focused products in the industry,” said Brian Anderson, Chief Technology Officer at Perceptive Software. “It is another step in our vision to deliver the most relevant information in whatever context users work, regardless of location or platform.”

The  Perceptive Mobile Windows version is a compliment to the previous iPad and Android mobile offerings, and gives users the full range of Perceptive software capabilities to allow workers information and document access from wherever they are.

The announcement follows the Windows 8 release earlier this week. Other companies have also started releasing new products for Windows 8 that include NewsGator's Social Sites App and Box's Mobile App for the Windows 8 Phone.

Perceptive Mobile for Windows is available for Perceptive Software customers through the Windows Store.

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Oct 25, 2012

Content Strategy: Distracted Behavior is Good for Content Producers

If you’re involved in the business of digital content, then you know you contend with distracted consumers, multi-screened attention and multi-threaded conversations. You probably have thousands of post-its on your desk reminding you to use odd numbers in your headlines, refer to pop culture, tell stories, use video, don’t use video, etc. to make your content stand out.

All of this advice can be perplexing as much of it is contradictory. Truth be told, no one really knows why some content reverberates and other content that you thought was so amazingly awesome sits with no clicks. You can test, test and still not be sure why certain content resonates with consumers and other does not.

Know Why People Search

So what can you control? Well, you can control your positive attitude that eventually your content will reach your intended audience. Rather than multi-threaded conversations posing a problem, I actually think that changing patterns in consumer content consumption can be helpful to marketers.

The trick is to understand the mindset of your consumer while they are interacting with your content — or better yet, brushing up against it.

When people are online they are in pursuit of information. They may be bored out of their minds, but in some way they are looking for a distraction — a new nugget — that they can use or tuck in their back pocket for later. That’s why Facebook feeds are so popular — they change often enough to make it fun and worthwhile to check your feed daily.

Look at this chart that shows the five most popular information-seeking activities and their associated mindsets:

contentimage.jpg

Create Content for the Action

Let’s look at the five most popular information-seeking activities online and see if we can make some sense of how to create content for those five mindsets. We’ll use Ginny Redish’s example of content as a bite, snack and meal; meaning, a small piece, a larger piece and then the complement of information a consumer might want. (You can learn more about Redish’s formulation in her book, "Letting Go of the Words, Second Edition: Writing Web Content That Works.")

Activity Mindset Type of Content
Browsing Interested

Snack — if they find something about your content interesting, they will engage fully.

Browsing Example: I might be looking at a hashtag or within a group I belong to on LinkedIn for new and valuable information related to a specific topic. I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for, but I have a sense I’m in the right place.

Following Fan

Bite, snack and meal — typically fans are engaged with almost all of your content, although they may be most interested in meals, as they are looking for robust information on a topic.

Following Example: There are certain bloggers whose content I check out — at least four out of five times a week.

 

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Content Strategy: Distracted Behavior is Good for Content Producers

If you’re involved in the business of digital content, then you know you contend with distracted consumers, multi-screened attention and multi-threaded conversations. You probably have thousands of post-its on your desk reminding you to use odd numbers in your headlines, refer to pop culture, tell stories, use video, don’t use video, etc. to make your content stand out.

 
 
 

 
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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Oct 23, 2012

Gartner MQ for Enterprise CMS: EMC, Hyland, IBM, Microsoft, OpenText, Oracle Lead

In our first look at Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management 2012 we saw that mobile, cloud and composite apps are increasingly important in the Enterprise CMS space. Now we will take a look at those vendors that made it into the Leader’s Quadrant.

Gartner’s MQ for ECM: Making the List

We'll begin with just a few words on the Quadrant itself. Every year, as Gartner draws up the research for this quadrant, the criteria change. Vendors get included or dropped according to those criteria.

When vendors are dropped, it doesn't necessarily mean that their offerings are less significant. Other factors can come into play: the market itself may have changed, the company may have been bought out by a larger vendor, or that the vendor’s focus may have changed over the course of the year. The same applies for those that have been added:

  • Added: This year, Unisys extended its functionality to cover the entire range of criteria for inclusion in the Enterprise CMS market, while M-Files, as we have seen over the past few months, has emerged as a mid-market ECM vendor with a strong focus on vertical content-centric applications.
  • Dropped: Adobe has been dropped, as its focus has shifted to WCM, customer engagement and digital marketing and it has not been actively developing or selling enough ECM components to deserve inclusion.

This year, Gartner's criteria for inclusion have shifted slightly, with scoring of functional capabilities as well as a focus on new combinations of technologies. This year’s inclusion criteria include:

  • Revenues from content management licenses or maintenance of a least US$ 10 million, or customer subscriptions of at least US$ 10 million for open-source vendors.
  • Active marketing of its product in two major geographical regions.
  • Have ECM software commercially available, with references to back it up.
  • Have an integrated content management suite with at least four of the components that we listed in our Magic Quadrant ECM overview.

Vendors are rated on how well they sell and support their ECM products and services on a global basis, along with installed base, pricing, customer support and satisfaction, and product migrations from one major release to another.

Gartner also assess the vendor’s vision of the market place. In practical terms, this means an assessment of how well vendors understand changing market needs, as well as their ability to adopt emerging functionality, and integrate with other content repositories.

Gartner’s MQ  ECM Leaders

Leaders in this MQ are those that are doing well, are prepared for the future with a clear vision of how they will progress into the future, have a strong set of channel partners, are present in multiple geographical regions, and are financially strong.

This year there are six Leaders (in alphabetical order): EMC, Hyland, IBM, Microsoft, OpenText and Oracle.

EMC

EMC has developed strategies that are aimed at improving the user experience and its industry solutions and cloud content management. Its acquisition of Syncplicity in May 2012 gave it the ability to share content across mobile devices.

  • Strengths: EMC has refocused on its strengths in the life sciences and utilities space with new industry solutions like Documentum Quality & Manufacturing Solution for Life Sciences and Documentum EPFM. It has put a lot of work into developing cloud content management with EMC OnDemand, which provides cost-effective content management in the cloud, as well as a number of other cloud applications. It has a strong content management stack with a range of products that are highly complementary to each other and which can manage the whole content life cycle better than most of its competitors. It is particularly strong in capture, core repository, process management, archive and records management as well as document composition abilities.
  • Cautions: It is still struggling to realize its full strengths in the storage hardware space to drive content management sales. It continues to see the erosion of its Documentum business because of its high cost and complexities in a market that is increasingly competitive. It also needs to develop its sales channels better. Its changing strategy on social content management has been confusing for customers.

Hyland Software

Hyland has a strong focus on vertical and horizontal solutions and strong history of execution across the midmarket, especially in the US and South America.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Oct 18, 2012

Symantec Survey Reveals Risky State of Information in the Enterprise

Symantec Survey Reveals Risky State of Information in the EnterpriseOne of the advantages that cloud technologies have afforded us is the ability to share and access content without having to create more than one copy. So you’d think there would be a lot less document duplication in the enterprise. But according to a new report from Symantec, you’d be wrong.

The Cost, Value and Risk of Information

According to the 2012 Symantec State of Information Survey, which examined how business and IT executives at 4,506 organizations in 38 countries store and access information, 42 percent of business information is duplicate. And that’s just the information that they can find. Additionally, they don’t really know how much of what is duplicate is important.

What does this mean? It means that the enterprise needs to re-examine its information governance policies. It isn't just that duplicate information can put information at risk — it can also cost money. According to the survey, SMBs on average spend US$ 332,000 on information, while enterprises spend an average of US$ 38 million. But it’s not just how much money you spend, it’s the value of the information being created and stored.

Based on the responses from 4,506 IT professionals, an estimated 49 percent of the worth of an organization is derived from the information it owns. As a result, if any of the information were lost, it could be devastating to a business.

Symantec Survey Reveals Risky State of Information in the Enterprise

And yet, information governance strategies aren't sufficient to safeguard how information is created, shared, stored or destroyed. It isn't that companies are unaware, but rather that they aren't focusing on the right things. The survey shows that organizations have fairly low storage utilization rates, with 31 percent inside the firewall and an even lower percentage (18 percent) outside. In addition, two thirds of businesses said they had lost important information in the previous 12 months due to causes such as human error, hardware failure, software failure and lost or stolen mobile devices.

Symantec Survey Reveals Risky State of Information in the Enterprise

Get a Governance Plan That Works

What can you do to decrease the amount of duplicate information within your organization and subsequently reduce your risk? The report outlines three integral simple steps to help ensure sure your information governance program is on the right track:

  1. Ensure C-level buy-in for the information governance program. It’s essential that the corporate culture be focused on effectively protecting the information created, shared and archived by employees within the organization. Projects and information should align with common business goals of risk mitigation and cost control, which can reduce the potentially expensive tendency to silo different aspects of the organization.
  2. Concentrate on focused projects. Give attention to specific initiatives such as compliance, e-discovery and data privacy. With specific goals, procuring an adequate budget will be easier. Implement technologies with a high ROI such as e-discovery, archiving, deduplication and data loss prevention solutions.
  3. Establish the importance of your information. In order to effectively manage information, it’s essential to know what it is and how vital it is to business functions. Classify your current information to more easily make decisions concerning information storage, security and accessibility.

Businesses are facing huge challenges when trying to manage their information and it’s not like the rate at which information is created will start decreasing anytime in the near future. The sooner companies start developing and implementing information governance strategies that tackle the key issues, the sooner they can begin to take control of their information.

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Snapplify Offers One-Stop Digital Publishing for Mobile Content Providers

With mobile devices blossoming, how can content publishers best distribute their wares? A South Africa-based company, Snapplify, is providing one solution. 

The company enables publishers, authors and other mobile content providers to package their offerings into digital publications that become available within a branded mobile app. Content providers can create, manage and distribute multiple publications — and handle subscription and other revenue streams — through a single app.

Custimization for iOS, Android

The app, which is customized to the owner’s requirements, is then distributed by Snapplify globally through app stores. Currently, Snapplify is working through Apple’s App Store and the Google Play app store.

App development, submission and approval are handled by Snapplify, and its platform can handle a variety of file formats, including PDF, ePDF, ePUB, maps, embedded websites, HTML 5 and common audio and video formats. The client receives analytical data about downloads and sales, and payment collection and disbursement is handled by Snapplify.

Apps can be made available for iOS or Android smartphones or tablets, depending on the client’s needs, although Snapplify points out that many kinds of digital publications are best viewed on tablets.

Snapplify Offers One-Stop Digital Publishing for Mobile Content Providers

No Upfront Cost for Publishers

Snapplify gives several use case examples, such as Africa’s first tablet-only interactive daily newspaper, called iMaverick. The publication needed a solution that would offer mass distribution to both Apple and Android devices, integration with a large database of existing subscribers, a reliable and engaging interface, and options such as in-app subscriptions.

Snapplify Offers One-Stop Digital Publishing for Mobile Content Providers

With Snapplify, publishers can upload mobile-optinimzed pdf files and produce a digital newspaper with multimedia content.

Snapplify’s solution utilized the existing PDF files that had been optimized for mobile, and resulted in a Digital News app for iMaverick that offers the digital newspaper with embedded video, interactive ads and other multimedia content. iMaverick staff employ the Snapplify platform to manage content in the app.

The platform was launched a year ago at the Frankfurt Book Fair. While a variety of publishing solutions for mobile devices have emerged, including WoodWing’s collaboration with Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite and small vendors such as 955 Dreams, a potential strength to Snapplify’s approach is a soup-to-nuts solution that takes care of distribution. Additionally, pricing is based on a commission of sales, so the lack of upfront costs could appeal to small publishers.

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Oct 11, 2012

Content Strategy: Herding Content with Editorial Calendars

flock_of_sheep_shutterstock_73353415.jpgIs your content running wild like a flock of sheep? Has some of it been out in the pasture allowed to graze for too long? Is it consistently being attacked by wolves? Choose your breed of wolf here, business partners, lawyers, writer wannabes? 

Let an Editorial Calendar help you protect and bring your content strategy under control.

What is an Editorial Calendar?

In traditional publishing, an editorial calendar is an old standby. Magazines, newspapers and television news stations have been using editorial calendars to organize their content for decades. It allows them to manage the numerous contributors who help produce the content (ad agencies, in-house advertising and PR teams, and freelance contributors). And it helps contributors pitch ideas around the theme of the month or program. And keeps contributors on schedule with due dates for submission.

But How Does it Relate to Content Strategy?

There are many tools in the content strategy toolbox, but none as taken for granted as the editorial calendar. An editorial calendar can help your company or your content team organize, manage and, more importantly, plan your content for months ahead of time.

Why Use an Editorial Calendar?

There are many reasons to use one. If you have a team of writers, you can organize them more effectively. If you want an integrated approach to content, you can manage the content, and keep it more consistent across different channels like social, marketing, web, tablet and mobile.

And for the marketer, when you cover a topic or a product, you integrate the message and increase the retention of that message for the target audience. You can cover a subject matter so much deeper when you can attack it from many angles and many writers. And then there’s that consistency word. When you know and plan for your content, you’re going to have more consistency.

You can also use an editorial calendar to brainstorm. Publish your editorial calendar with suggested themes, bring your different content authors from inside and outside the organization together to discuss ideas and brainstorm.

While Twitter posts may seem spontaneous and reserved for timely information, tweets can be and often are planned. In fact, timely information has been planned for a long time. Television news has been using feature pieces for decades to fill slow news days. An editorial calendar can do the same for your social posts.

Who Shouldn’t Use an Editorial Calendar?

If you’re in a reactionary content ecosystem or your organization doesn’t value content, you may not want to attempt an editorial calendar. Not yet. It might be better to build your reputation first and then create the right atmosphere for the company or business partners to accept an editorial calendar.

How do you Build an Editorial Calendar?

Everything from an Excel spreadsheet to Sharepoint to the cloud has been used to produce an editorial calendar. What is best is up to you. I like the cloud like Google Docs, Google Calendar or Sharepoint. Each allows teams to work and communicate virtually. And you won’t clog up emails with attachments. Plus with Sharepoint, you can view your calendar monthly and then download it into an excel spreadsheet and see all the nitty gritty details.

But both Google and Sharepoint have their limitations. Some companies are uncomfortable with their sensitive information like product launches out on a cloud or in Google docs. So proceed with caution.

First you need to ask what the purpose of the editorial calendar. Is it to manage delivery dates? Is it to manage and create consistency across messages? Is it to organize cross-functional authors? Is it to define the purposed of the content?

 

Continue reading this article:

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Oct 3, 2012

Most Marketers Are Curating Content, Whether They Know It Or Not

Most Marketers Are Curating Content, Whether They Know It Or NotMany companies are actively sharing content with their customers in an effort to better assert themselves as thought leaders in their industry. Sharing others' content is often referred to as content curation — but Pawan Deshpande, CEO and founder of Curata, says that you won't hear companies describe it that way.

You Say Content Curation …

Recently we spoke with Deshpande, whose company specializes in content curation software, to discuss the benefits and challenges of deploying a content curation strategy and to provide insight on the future of the expanding curation market.

Earlier this year, Matthew Ingram wrote, “It’s called curation if you like it, aggregation if you don’t.” But according to Curata's recent Curation Adoption Survey — which included responses from more than 400 marketing professionals — most people don't know what content curation is.

But many — if not all — of these marketers are engaging in content curation activities. According to the survey, of those marketers who identified themselves as non-content curators, all of them had, in fact, curated content in some way — by finding and sharing "an article, blog post or other content with a prospect in the past six months."

curata_survey.png

Additionally, these self-identified non-content curators are sharing content for the right reasons: to position themselves as authoritative resources within their industry.

Most Marketers Are Curating Content, Whether They Know It Or NotBenefits & Challenges of Content Curation

If the intent is to establish credible thought leadership, is it working? According to the survey, these unknowing content curators are not only recognizing the importance of sharing fresh, relevant content with their audience on a daily basis, they are seeing tangible outcomes as a result. According to Curata’s Curation Habits Report, people who curate content to a website on a daily basis enjoyed 18 percent higher click-thru activity than those who curated content on a weekly basis.

Still, the benefits of sharing content are directly related to the quality of the content you’re sharing. Where are these marketing professionals finding their content? Social media is the preferred channel for finding online content, but email newsletters are also gaining popularity.

  • More than three quarters of marketers (79 percent) cited social media as a preferred service for finding third-party content to share.
  • Almost two thirds (63 percent) indicated that they also used email newsletters to find third-party content, which represents a 29 percent increase over 2011.

Marketing professionals noted that while they enjoy the benefits of content curation, finding the time to discover the right content is among their biggest challenges. Many are still employing manual strategies to scan online sources to find content — and it’s only getting harder.

Most Marketers Are Curating Content, Whether They Know It Or NotThe Future of Content Curation

As the number of marketing channels increase, the amount of content to be gleaned also increases. This makes it even harder to find better, more reliable content that's worth sharing.

Deshpande says he is confident that, by making it easier to discover, organize and share content around specific topics, content curation will continue to benefit companies — and also help them work smarter. Curata is continually adding channels through which users can find and share content — as well as supplementing content with rich resources like pictures and quotes — in an effort to provide a more robust experience.

Overall, if companies are sharing content with the intent of promoting their thought leadership, who are we to complain about what they're calling it? But it stands to reason that, with a little more awareness about what content curation is, those who do it could have access to better tools and best practices — which would help them become more efficient.

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Sep 27, 2012

Movable Type Unveils Version 5.2: An Improved Rich Text Editor, Cloud Support Top the Updates

Movable Type, the popular blog software, has released version 5.2, with added support for cloud computing environments.

Movable Type is a popular open source content management and online publishing platform for creating blogs and websites, and it is free for redistribution, use or modification.

Revised Rich Text Editor

First released in 2001, Movable Type was designated as free software under the GNU General Public License in 2007. There are now more than a thousand plugins available for the platform, and it is used by such sites as BarackObama.com, Oracle’s blogs, NBC Universal and BritneySpears.com.

New features in version 5.2 include a revised rich text editor for web pages and blogs, which is designed to be more customizable, browser-friendly and AJAX-friendly.

Version 5.2 can be used under the nginx+PSGI environment, providing support across a range of server environments, including cloud computing virtual servers, CMS servers or content servers. The update also enables collections of blogs to be managed in a multi-blog environment, such as combining data from multiple blogs via the enhanced template language.

A user dashboard now helps to centralize functions commonly used by admins, authors and moderators. There is a new revision history of such CMS objects as blog templates or entries, improved AJAX-based sorting and searching features, and an enhanced list management framework for dealing with large amounts of data.

Authenticated SMTP, Browser Support

With new sitepath restriction, a System Admin can limit the publishing of content to the part of a given file system that is used by the Movable Type server. Email notifications can be sent with authenticated SMTP, and custom fields’ performance has been improved in order to provide faster rebuilds of custom field data.

The update officially supports the Google Chrome browser, starting with the latest version, Internet Explorer 8 and 9, and the latest versions of Safari and Firefox.

Other changes include a mandatory requirement that a system email setting be defined and, if it hasn’t been, the system will prompt for a system email address. A starting day of the week can be set for the calendar by the user, so that each week starts with that day. If none is set, Sunday is used as the default.

Six Apart's acquisition in 2010 left many wondering what would happen to Movable Type where it didn't really seem to fit into the plan, but it has remained an active open source solution with an active community. Japanese subsidiary Six Apart KK has taken over complete responsibility for the web content management system and we are finally seeing more updates as a result.

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Sep 21, 2012

Osmek Shifts From Framework Web CMS to Content API Solution

Hosted cloud-based Web CMS provider Osmek claims to have “rethought” the Web CMS model by shifting focus from the framework to the actual content being published.

Becoming a ‘Content API’

On its site, Osmek says it has transformed itself into a “content API,” rather than a traditional Web CMS provider. What this means is the Osmek CMS is platform-agnostic. Developers have their choice of programming language, framework, etc. and can also distribute content to an unlimited number of sites and in formats such as content templates and XML.

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Through the use of “content bins” that replace frameworks, Osmek also says its CMS (or content API, if you prefer) developers can pick from a variety of back-end models including photo gallery and podcasting. The Osmek API allows remote access from any location and managers can set different levels of permission controls for different users.

Osmek – The Old Days

Osmek has always presented itself as a lightweight publishing system that gives the users multiple options for formatting content, but has not always used the content API model. In May 2010, CMSWire covered the introduction of Osmek into the hosted Web CMS marketplace. Osmek, the brainchild of Matthew McCloskey, founder and Principal at Kemso, LLC, was presented as a Web-based content management system that leverages the cloud for content storage.

Osmek did offer a language-neutral development API, a series of section modules and templates and system wide core functionality that enabled site features such as comments and tags. The system targeted the same customer base as Squarespace and LightCMS. Specifically, Web developers and designers who are looking for a content management solution for their clients.

However, although Osmek always offered a high degree of individual choice and language-neutrality, it still followed the typical framework CMS model. By completely eliminating frameworks and turning the whole CMS into an API, Osmek is maximizing the flexibility and scalability of the developer environment. Will it be stable enough for widespread use? If this proves to be the case, look for other CMS vendors to start ditching frameworks in favor of flexibility.

A Friend of the Developer

A friend of the developer is a friend of mine, but is the revamped Osmek CMS a true “friend” to developers? AppStorm recently asked this question, noting that the traditional “PHP-based application installed on your server that lets you log in and add/edit pages” works well, but “the way these websites work can make it difficult to customize your website, leaving the back end dictating how the front end works.”

In comparison, AppStorm deems Osmek’s user interface to be “a little clunky and convoluted.” However, overall Osmek gets a “very good” rating, with specific praise for the ease of using content bins, customizable data fields and quality of the developer API. On a scale of one to 10, Osmek receives an 8. Sounds pretty friendly.

Osmek pricing ranges across five basic levels from US$ 9 to US$ 149 per month, depending on number of content bins, users and servers.

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Sep 13, 2012

PublishThis Gives Content New Life, Previews Future of Content Marketing Strategy

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When the founder of paid content, Rafat Ali, started his new venture Skift, he wanted not only to provide news, but data, tools and services, as well. To make this happen, he turned to the folks at PublishThis.

Four Critical Content Elements

Skift, a travel intelligence media company, brings together four elements that have become the hallmark of PublishThis — aggregation, content curation, licensed and original content — all of which aim to add value and a customizable experience for the user.

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We met up with PublishThis last week at Content Marketing World and got a glimpse of the what the content curation platform can do.

Create, Curate and Customize Content

During the conference we learned that a majority of content marketing professionals think their biggest challenge is producing enough content. PublishThis helps to diffuse this challenge by offering a plethora of content tools that help publishers keep their users engaged even if they don’t have enough original content to fill their feeds.

The idea is that publishers can supplement their sites with information that’s not only relevant to their audience, but easy to update and customize. The web-based app allows users to customize the content that feeds into their site based on unique keywords, conditions and outlets.

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When we think of social media marketing, we emphasize the need to assert your authority by not just talking about what you do, but by incorporating information from other sources, as well. When it comes to content marketing, the same strategy applies. The goal for many sites isn’t just to provide the best original content, but also to serve as a hub for best content from across the web. This way, customers don’t get bored — and they find a reason to come back.

The Future of Content Marketing, Publishing

Currently PublishThis is available through an API or via their app. Soon, however, it will serve as a home base for clients who wish to host their sites with it, giving them the ability to build microsites. Additionally, PublishThis is working to improve the quality of content with a social trending algorithm that measures what is trending or popular in social based on the number of retweets, shares and likes based on your specific topic filters. This helps with content discovery for the curator, and the algorithm can be leveraged on a website topic page to publish automated content that defaults to what is "trending" rather than the more traditional "most recent" category.

Whether or not you agree that curation and aggregation is the future of content marketing, there’s no denying that the way users interact and engage with content is changing the face of web publishing. PublishThis gives content publishers a means for discovering and optimizing content, while giving content creators an opportunity to extend their reach of their words.

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Sep 12, 2012

Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Web CMS: Diving into Vendor Strengths & Cautions

What's the best part of Gartner's Magic Quadrant for web content management? It's that you can see quickly the strengths are each vendor and what you need to know before you move forward (also known as cautions).

It's all the talk now, Gartner's newest Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management is out the wild and everyone wants to know who's one it and why. For a quick summary you can check out what I covered already — the basics.

Today it's time to dive into a bit more detail. Why are the leaders (Adobe, SDL, OpenText, Oracle, HP, Sitecore) still the leaders? What tipped Ektron into the leaders quadrant? How did Acquia get on the list? All good questions, all in time.

Before we dive in, I'm not going to spend time going through Gartner's evaluation process. It's a fairly standard process for them and most of you know it by now. Maybe the only things you need to keep in mind are that vendors must apply to be considered and there is a revenue threshold they must meet. So it's possible there are other great WCM platforms out there, but these are the heavy hitters.

WCM Leaders

For the record, there isn't one vendor in the leader quadrant of the MQ that I haven't talked to at some time or another. The platforms are nothing short of impressive and each one does bring a unique point of view to the table.

Adobe

When we talk Adobe for WCM we are, of course, talking Day Software — although at some point we have to stop saying that and get on with things. The WCM platform is now called Adobe CQ and is Adobe's web experience platform tying into its Digital Marketing Suite.

Strengths include ease of use for non-techies and strong analytics. And let's not forget the Digital Marketing Suite. Gartner states that operations are not as cohesive as they could be and that Adobe's focus on digital marketing lends itself to a smaller market (both size-wise and horizontally). This is interesting to hear considering Adobe is clearly enterprise focused and large enterprises at that.

Ektron

If you pay attention to the WCM market at all, you likely been watching what is happening at Ektron. It's a vendor that has grown significantly in terms of both functionality and customer base the last few years — inclusion in the leaders quadrant should be proof of that. Ektron recently released version 8 of its Web CMS and also has its Digital Experience Hub.

A strong partner ecosystem, a management team that is experienced and the DEH are listed as strengths. There is a caution that Ektron may be not paying as much attention to its mid-sized customer base now that it's taken hold at the enterprise level. But the most important caution to consider is its multilingual capabilities as it tries to take its business global.

HP

HP makes the list because it acquired Autonomy, and we've all heard of Autonomy. In a way, it's strange to see it in the leaders quadrant when the news about its performance hasn't been exactly great. However, I think that more likely means it's all relevant and what's poor performance to one company isn't really that bad at all in the greater scheme of things. Autonomy has taken its WCM platform and integrated analytics and search, enabling it to be a strong contender in the CXM space.

Gartner see Autonomy IDOL as a real strength and says it has a strong brand across a number of industries as well as very loyal customers. A lack of clarity around its vision and strategy for CXM are listed as cautions. A perception of being expensive and complex is also noted.

OpenText

OpenText continues to sell two separate solutions based on acquisitions: Web Site Management (WSM) and Web Experience Management (WEM).

For organizations looking for a broad enterprise strategy, Gartner says OpenText integrates its WCM platforms very well into the broader platform. It also has a great partner ecosystem and has been working hard on its CXM Strategy.

Apparently, however, the dual product strategy is confusing to some. Gartner also says the WEM solution is not as intuitive as other offerings,although it is easy to use.

Oracle

Oracle has been in the news much recently talking about its CXM vision and strategy. Part of the CXM family is WebCenter Sites, joined by products such as Siebel, Endeca, ATG Web Commerce (check the news on the Commerce platform) and Real Time Decisions (RTD). It also recently picked up a social media management platform, Vitrue.

Along with this broad set of capabilities, Gartner says Oracle's inclusion of other non-CXM capabilities such as document management, records and retention and archiving are nice complements. In addition, Oracle RTD enables Oracle customers to personalize and contextualize content.

Overlapping products, compelling integrations and a stronger presence in the internal collaboration environment are all listed as cautions for Oracle.

SDL

SDL Tridion leads SDL's presence in the CXM market, and its abilities in terms of managing content on a global and local basis is a key selling point. The addition of Alterian for social media capabilities and campaign management has been a plus. SDL is moving quickly into the North American market (it's a UK-based WCM vendor).

Complex implementations is noted as a caution as is the need for a clearer strategic direction. And although as a .NET platform it will play nicely with SharePoint, SDL is not selling this point very strongly.

Sitecore

Sitecore wraps up the leader quadrant. Along with its Web CMS, Sitecore offers a Digital Marketing System (another .NET vendor). There is a wide range of products in the CXM line up including an Email Campaign Manager, engagement analytics and a commerce engine thanks to an OEM partnership with Insite Software.

Sitecore strengths include its SharePoint story, and its multilingual and multichannel capabilities. Adaptive Print Studio is also mentioned as it supports both the online and offline experience.

 

Continue reading this article:

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Sep 10, 2012

Umbraco Web CMS 4.9 Focuses on the Editor Experience, Rich Media

The open source content management system Umbraco may have dropped version 5, but the refocus on version 4 has brought some nice improvements and a number of bug fixes.

The free, ASP.Net-based Umbraco is designed for building websites — from small campaign or brochure sites to large media-based sites — and complex Web applications.

Umbraco, which bills itself as a  “priceless CMS at the cost of virtually nothing,” was first released in version 2.0 in 2005, which was also when the first developers conference, called CodeGarden, was held. Unfortunately a turn in the wrong direction resulted in dropping the next major version of the Web CMS to go "back to the basics".

“The early days of Umbraco was the result of a wonderful collaboration between three guys in Copenhagen,” wrote one of those guys, Niels Hartvig, on the Umbraco blog. He added that, “almost eight years later — I’m smiling again” because of the new release.

Focus on the Editor Not the Developer

Umbraco 4.9 features a revised editor, easier integration of third-party videos and images, and a new media library. In addition, the new version includes more than 50 “big” bug fixes, incorporated from submissions by over 20 contributors.

The application now supports HTML5 uploads to the media section, and there’s a new folder content overview that can be filtered and from which common actions can be applied to media items.

The Media button in the Rich Text Editor now supports the oEmbed standard in its embedder, and the code editor for templates, scripting and XSLT templates has been upgraded. Creating and inspecting relation types can now be conducted from the backoffice.

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Umbraco 4.9

Umbraco Gets Its Focus Back With a Little Help

Hartvig said, “September 2012 feels like October 2004 on steroids.”

He also noted that, in the past quarter, the number of improvements submitted by external contributors for the Umbraco core is higher “than any other quarters combined.”

Umbraco said that, for this Microsoft platform, it is in the top five most popular server applications and among the ten most popular open source tools. Umbraco HQ is the privately-owned commercial entity that provides support, a bug-fixing warranty and productivity-enhancing add-ons for the open-source product.

Umbraco HQ said the application is used by over 110,000 active websites, including the Davis Cup, Heinz, Peugeot, Hersheys and Microsoft’s Official ASP.NET website. HQ is based in Odense, Denmark, and maintains offices in Bellingham, Washington and Southport, Australia.

 
 

Source : cmswire[dot]com