{"id":3402,"date":"2012-07-26T06:37:38","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T10:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meetcontent.com\/?p=3402"},"modified":"2017-04-20T00:18:57","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T04:18:57","slug":"designing-content-workflow-for-your-cms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meetcontent.com\/blog\/designing-content-workflow-for-your-cms\/","title":{"rendered":"Designing Content Workflow for Your CMS"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Flow
Design a CMS workflow that supports your content governance plan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We can talk all day about creating great content, but if we don’t have a process for sustaining it, our content strategy will fail.<\/p>\n

A big content governance challenge is ensuring that multiple content contributors maintain messaging, communication, editorial and content standards. This is particularly true for staff who have other responsibilities and for whom content is not always the highest priority.<\/p>\n

For many higher education institutions, one or more small groups often manage content. Maybe even one or two people. Content professionals are always the minority. And for these few, it’s hard work to maintain standards and review work before it’s published \u2014 and higher ed does a lot<\/em> of publishing.<\/p>\n

One valuable method of helping to maintain these standards is CMS (Content Management System) workflow. This functionality manages the publishing tasks in your CMS \u2014 from adding or editing content to publishing content.<\/p>\n

If web publishing was just one person or a two-step process, content workflow for your CMS might not be necessary. But to effectively manage the roles and accommodate the publishing steps involved with a higher ed website \u2014 drafting, reviewing, revising, approving, publishing, archiving \u2014 technology is often essential for success.<\/p>\n

Let’s look at some of the things to consider when planning for your CMS workflow.<\/p>\n

1. Start with content strategy.<\/h2>\n

As we often say around here, content needs to inform technology needs, not vice versa. Before you can design an effective CMS workflow, you need to first have a content strategy.<\/strong> What are your content goals? What type of content do you need? Who is responsible for planning, creating and governing content? As Jonathan Kahn says on A List Apart<\/em><\/a>, we need to rethink our approach to content management systems:<\/p>\n

\n

When it comes to the CMS, we stop thinking strategically. Despite all the talk about user-centered design, we rarely consider the user experience of the editorial team\u2014the people who implement the content strategy. We don\u2019t design a CMS, we install it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Indeed, your editorial team members are users too. We need to support their publishing tasks. Speaking of which …<\/p>\n

2. Interview content stakeholders.<\/h2>\n

Just like content strategy, CMS workflow success depends on meeting both your business needs and your users’ needs \u2014 in this case, your editorial team. Meet with each of your content stakeholders, including content creators, editors, reviewers, approvers and anyone who interacts with content.<\/p>\n

Ask them to describe their current process for creating and publishing content. Don’t limit the conversation to their use of the CMS \u2014 discuss their entire content publishing process. If the conversation is too limited, you may miss opportunities for your CMS to help stakeholders in new ways. (Content Strategy for the Web<\/em> by Kristina Halvorson offers a great list of questions to ask stakeholders in various publishing roles.)<\/p>\n

Also ask stakeholders to describe the elements of publishing that work well for them and ones that are problematic. Take good notes. You want to make sure your CMS workflow maintains the processes that do work and improves upon the ones that don’t. (This will also be important for gaining buy-in \u2014 more on this later.)<\/p>\n

3. Define CMS roles.<\/h2>\n

In order to setup CMS workflow, you need to define the roles involved. Different roles require different tasks.<\/p>\n

Create a list of all the different roles involved in your content publishing process, including requesters, creators, editors, approvers (owners), publishers and other roles you may want to add later on. List all of your CMS stakeholders under these CMS user-roles. There will likely be dozens or hundreds of requesters and authors and a smaller set of editors, approvers and publishers.<\/p>\n

\"Simple<\/a>
A simple framework for content management (CMS) roles provides a platform for CMS workflow planning (click to enlarge).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n

You can start with a simple framework for Content Management System (CMS) roles<\/a> to inform the planning process. For the purpose of this discussion, I’m going to consider the roles shown above: content author, content editor, and content manager. After going through this planning process, you may decide new or different roles are needed.<\/p>\n

4. Conduct a CMS task audit.<\/h2>\n

Based on your working content strategy and identified CMS stakeholder needs, identify all the tasks (steps) involved in your web publishing process. You may hit on steps that exist outside of your CMS, but these are important to document as well.<\/p>\n

Where does content start and end? What is your content ecosystem? After each step in the publishing process, what do you need for the next step to begin? What are the dependencies for each task? (e.g., What needs to happen before step 3 of 5 can begin?)<\/p>\n

Some tasks might include:<\/p>\n