Content Management Matters ™

Sears Roebuck was one of the very first large corporations. It was in the mail-order business. It used content to make the sale.

Government websites are organization-centric, complicated and confusing, according to a survey of government web professionals in the United States, New Zealand and Canada.

Government websites must specialize and deliver better services to specific audiences, not try to be everything to everybody.

Content managers, I'm sure you think your job is hard enough as it is. Sourcing good content, presenting it well, integrating it seamlessly, cataloging it, securing it, backing it up... yikes, the plate is full already.

But content management as we know it is only in its embryonic stage, and as we hurtle towards the Next Big Thing online, the only thing we can say with any certainty is that we don't know where we are headed.

The best thing governments can do on the Web is get out of the way. Save the citizen time by making basic government tasks fast and easy.

Out of 18 choices, why does one piece of content get 49 percent of the vote while another gets 0 percent?

The Web is the perfect environment in which to make management decisions based on evidence and facts, rather than emotion and opinion.

You’ve got plenty of traffic, but you’re not able to persuade visitors to take action. It’s a common and aching issue for many online businesses.

Senior managers don't take content seriously because people who write content don't come across as being serious. If content professionals want more respect, they need to present content as a science, not an art.

We’ve all experienced meetings that go like this: “OK, time to choose which landing page to launch with our new search campaign. Which page version do you guys like best?”

In the meeting are the copywriters, designers, product managers, SEM managers, and more. Around the table are some pretty smart, experienced marketing professionals. Everyone weighs in.