Create a unified vision for content management

We’re excited about our first series of webinars, Planning for a CMS, this week. For final preparations, we called a few of the over 40 institutions who signed up. We chose those schools with multiple people registered, assuming CMS was likely a hot topic on their campus. Learning more about their needs, we could make our sessions more relevant for everyone.

We discovered that for half of the schools we chatted with, a unified vision for CMS seemed to be lacking. Divisions existed between IT and marketing or worse, across academic and administrative units.

A common story was a past CMS effort plagued by a few starts and a lot of stops; and now the “silo” mentality—every group for themselves—was either quickly nearing or had already taken hold. More than once we heard, “That’s just the culture here and it’s not going to change anytime soon.”

Justifying an investment in a CMS in higher education is largely a cost-savings, more than a revenue-generating, proposition. The hard returns provided by a CMS solution is managing an enterprise-wide website with minimal effort and fewer people while maximizing technical infrastructure and development.

Without a university-wide vision for content management, to be boldly honest, the future for these institutions will be worse than having an HTML-only website.

Aside from increased and redundant costs for technology, training, support and staff to maintain multiple CMS solutions, having every group go it’s own way proliferates the silos.

Creating a vision for content management across a university is not easy, but no matter what level you’re at, you can get it started. Just start small and be informal. The goal here is to shape opinions, not set policy. Here’s a few suggestions...

1. Talk to colleagues across campus with the same challenges you’re facing. Team up and work together to invite still more into the discussion. Think of this group as the “agents of change.”
   


2. Don’t spend time commiserating about problems and obstacles. Focus on opportunities to build relationships and promote dialogue on the issue.
   


3. Invest time with those who are barriers to progress, starting with lower-level employees and working up. Chat over lunch or an afternoon coffee. Learn about their challenges and listen to their take on the issue. Be honest, but not threatening. They may likely feel the same way about the issue as you. Ask for their help. (Note: This may take more than one chat.)
   


4. Reach out to IT and/or marketing, especially the web staff, and get them on your side. (If they are the obstacle, see #3.)
   


5. Identify leaders who could champion the CMS issue. Even if they don’t know they will be your champion yet, it’s good to consider early-on who has the political clout at the executive levels to help.
   


6. Create a value statement for a university-wide approach to content management. Define it with your group of change agents. Refine it with input from mid-level managers.
   


7. Connect with those who influence your champions. Leverage your network of colleagues to communicate the needs and value statement with these people from multiple angles.
   


8. Wait. Give the message time to spread and sink-in.
   


9. Actively recruit your champion. Let him/her run with it, and be there for support.
   


10. Hit a dead end along the way? Don’t lose hope, start again. Change takes time.

Some may wonder if only investing time to get a top-down decision would be faster. Yea, it might. But the risk is fickle support among leadership and departments, because some will feel forced to change. Building a unified vision from the ground-up keeps your support at the top strong and the base solid.

Will the free ride end?

If you haven’t seen it yet, do a quick read of this article from CNN Money on Web 3.0.

While I don’t subscribe to the notion of “Web 3.0” yet, and disagree with Jessi Hempel’s (the author) assertion of what Web 3.0 is, this article does make a good point about the current state of the business of Web 2.0.

Even though services like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are free to use, the parent companies supporting these sites ultimately need to profit from their investments. Right now, these sites seem more like a black hole.

The primary means of generating revenue from these sites is advertising, but honestly when was the last time you clicked on an ad in Facebook or YouTube? Or even noticed them...that is, if they weren’t already embedded in the content you were viewing. And when they were, didn’t it seem obtrusive and turn you off?

That’s exactly the point. Businesses, including colleges and universities, have discovered that leveraging the free features of Web 2.0 sites are more effective than simply buying banner ads.

Take the most recent example of the Class of 2013 Facebook scandal exposed by Brad Ward of SquaredPeg. If targeted banner advertising on Facebook would have been more effective in selling their product, College Prowler likely wouldn’t have used the free features of Facebook to develop “Class of 2013” groups across various college and universities.

I personally don’t fault College Prowler for seizing the opportunities made freely available to them. It’s business. And the reality is they aren’t the only company using social media in this way. Even we in higher education use these free features to enhance our marketing programs.

The ultimate question in my mind is how long will this opportunity last? When will the free ride end? If Google, News Corp and other parent companies behind the sites driving Web 2.0 continue relying on a 1.0 revenue-generating model, I predict the end will come very soon. And when it does will we see the true emergence of Web 3.0.