This post was written by Marianne Amoss, Fastspot’s content strategist and resident writer.

What is the next generation of admissions marketing? And how can we integrate Web marketing and print marketing? These are questions that plague universities and colleges across the country, as they struggle with the cost and manpower required to keep materials updated and accurate—and see classes of increasingly Web-savvy students coming through their doors. When Tufts University considered these questions, they naturally turned to Neustadt Creative Marketing, which had worked with the school on undergraduate admissions for the schools of arts and sciences and engineering and on a university-wide brand strategy.

Tufts is a highly selective private university in the suburbs of Boston. NCM, a seasoned expert in providing marketing services to educational institutions, knew that Tufts would be ripe for a smart, creative approach. They launched an extensive, five-month-long market research project among prospective students and their parents to start to answer that question. Out of that research, NCM defined a series of marketing goals that altered the messaging strategy that Tufts was using, says Mark Neustadt, principal of NCM. What did they settle on? A relatively unconventional plan, says Neustadt: an “integrated program that abandoned the traditional package of print materials entirely and replaced it with a three-times-a-year magazine which coordinated with an admissions ‘microsite.’”

Once Tufts adopted the report’s recommendations, NCM brought Fastspot in on the project; the two companies collaborate frequently under the name Door No. 2. Together, the two teams worked together to design and develop the magazine, concept the stories, write the first issue, develop the Web design, architect the Website, build it, load in the content, and finally launch the joint project on 11/11/11. Fastspot also created a new virtual campus tour for Tufts, which launched at the same time.

The magazine, named Jumbo after the school mascot, is now published online and in print three times a year and mailed to students in the admissions funnel. The site and magazine are run on Fastspot’s BigTree CMS, a user-friendly content management system that allows the Tufts admissions staff to easily update admissions information and keep up with trends without assistance from their internal IT team. “Viewbooks can take over a year to develop and are very costly and difficult to update,” Neustadt says. “A three-times-a-year magazine is relatively economical to update and can be much more responsive to changes going on in admissions.”

It’s important to note that this program does not completely do away with print—or migrate everything to the Web, Neustadt says. “A lot of people think that’s what this is all about. This is not about eliminating print. But what is has done, which is incredibly exciting, is create a print program that is consistent with the pace and the energy of the Web.” Tufts now has an admissions microsite that is essentially separate from the main site; Door No. 2, which loads in the content for each issue of Jumbo (with minimal tech support), serves as “managing editor,” helping ensure that the content is consistent, professional, and on-strategy.

Since launch, the site has been enormously successful. Analytics show that the site is getting lots of traffic; the dean of admissions, Lee Coffin, often gets several dozen comments on his blog posts. “One of the successes of the design has been the integration of social media and the content,” says Neustadt. And Tufts has gotten students involved, creating a student group whose charge it is to create new content; you can see student-generated photos and content throughout the site. “Tufts has a superbly run admissions operation, and they are at a point in their evolution as an office where their staff feels energized and capable to take this on.”

There are lots of moving parts, and they all mesh together, seemingly effortlessly, from the print magazine to the Web to the social media. As Neustadt puts it, “It’s a smart approach to print.”

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When the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore Maryland approached Fastspot to help solve one of its core challenges, allowing online visitors to browse its collection of works, we jumped at the opportunity. Here is a recap of some of the hurdles, surprises, successes, and failures that we encountered during the course of the project, with insights from Curt Kotula, Art & Technology Director and the lead designer on this project, and Ben Plum, Interactive Designer & Producer and the lead developer on this project.

UX Challenges
The Walters Art Museum has a huge online collection containing thousands of images. Just like the artwork featured in the images, you can’t count on a consistent image aspect ratio. Images range from the absurdly wide to the ridiculously tall, creating a huge layout challenge for us. You also can’t just crop a work of art—it’s impossible to set a standard size, and one solution will not work for all situations.

We attacked this problem on two fronts. First, when browsing, the artwork thumbnails are organized into columns instead of rows, allowing the variety of image sizes to cascade down the page without wasting space. Second, the artwork detail page is organized in such a way that the supporting content flexes and shifts to fit the aspect ratio of the image; wide images span the width of the page with content below, while tall images fill the left side with content to the right. Our goal was to let these beautiful images be the focus no matter what shape the artwork happens to be.

Browse Simple, Make it Stick
The best part about visiting a museum is stumbling upon a piece of art that sticks with you long after you leave. We felt that browsing the Walters’ online collection should also provide that experience. When the project started, there were over 7,000 items in the collection (currently there are over 11,000!). Increasing users’ access to this impressive body of work and overall “browsability” are two of the main objectives for the project.

We engineered several distinct browsing experiences to promote discovery and surprise. Users can browse by category, material, date range, location in the museum, creator, place of origin, tags, and popularity in the community. We engineered browsing options for a variety of audiences, and these options are presented in a simple and direct tabbed interface.

How Many Clicks Does it Take?
Have we mentioned how big the Walters online collection is? Paged results are a necessity when dealing with thumbnail images. Too many images would cripple older computers or take too long to load over a slow Internet connection. Too many pages make larger result sets a bear to navigate.

We asked ourselves: How do you navigate seventy pages of image based results with the same ease and control that you navigate three? How do you conveniently navigate a thousand individual works of art? We decided to throw out the traditional design pattern of numbered pagination (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 … 450), instead opting for a custom solution based on the ease of drag-and-drop. We engineered the pagination system to give the user fine-grain control; the user can step through smaller result sets with the “next” and “previous” buttons, while large result sets can be quickly navigated by simply dragging the handle to an exact page or piece of art. Every result in a particular set is now easily accessible—no more skipping 10 pages at a time just to get to the center of the set.

Community Organizers
Another challenge was that the previous version of the Website offered user curation tools—they are popular with teachers and museum staff but were not well-utilized outside of those audiences. The ability to organize and curate art isn’t just an important tool for educators; it also helps art novices and children alike begin to analyze and appreciate art by making their own connections.

We needed the barrier of entry to be low and the result to be useful and fun. We decided to use Facebook connect rather than managing our own user system, allowing anyone with an active Facebook account to get started quickly and easily. Finally, we branded the curator feature “Community Collections” and brought recent collections to the homepage to promote the feature and encourage sharing.

Programming Challenges
Modern museums have internal database systems for cataloging and archiving collections. The most popular choice for large institutions seems to be the Museum System by Gallery Systems. We don’t doubt that TMS is a fantastic offline collection management system, but simply put, the Web extensions offered are lacking and don’t seem to be a primary focus of the company. Customization options are limited and the default layout is a generic, confusing mess. The result is a hard-to-navigate online collection that isn’t particularly attractive and tends to look a lot like competitors.

Fresh From The Oven
We decided early on to throw out the generic box mix provided by Gallery Systems and work with the Walters database team to create our solution from scratch. We knew right away that we didn’t want to expose the entire TMS database to the Internet nor did we need the massive amount of information it stored. What we did need was a second database that only contained the information necessary for the new online experience. We used our own content management platform, BigTree CMS, as the core technology that drives the site and engineered a scheduled synching process that eliminates double work.

The Fruits of our Labor
Many at Fastspot would argue that this project was one of our most challenging—and most inspiring. We were lucky to have a fantastic team at the Walters to work with, and they gave us a lot of room to flex our UX muscles and explore possibilities. We insisted on keeping things as simple as possible, even as we tried to integrate more complex functionality, so as to always let the artworks remain front and center. More importantly, we re-envisioned what was possible for a museum to offer its online visitors. Through a diligent process of refinement, a willingness to throw away things that weren’t working, and a constant focus on the visitor’s browsing experience, a wonderful new interface and interactive experience emerged.

So far the new Works of Art site has received glowing feedback, and users have jumped right in and started doing what the Walters Art Museum and all of us at Fastspot hoped they would do: delighting in the experience of exploring art.

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The following post was written by Fastspot’s User Experience Director, April Osmanof, who has single-handedly wrangled in some of our nastiest cases of content hoarding. Here are her thoughts on the content audit / strategy process.

How to Rein in an Expanse of Web Content
A lot of our clients are longstanding, large institutions and associations. By the time their sites make it into our hands for a facelift, there are usually anywhere between 2,000 to 100,000 pages of content. They have already had their sites for years, and most of them have had CMS access to the content from the get go. We all know that not having to rely on a Web team for every update to a site puts a client at a great advantage, but what happens when the content added by the client gets out of control?

A well-functioning CMS can be an empowering tool, but in many cases, abuse of this power comes as no surprise. There are often some sets of instructions on how to add content, but hardly ever any plan for review or removal of unnecessary or outdated content. Building a beautiful site with a user-friendly CMS is a great start for a Web team to deliver, but Websites are living things. They differ from print pieces in that they are never packaged up and never complete; because of this inherent difference, the way the content is dealt with needs to be different. If a Web team just hands off a stylish site with a CMS to a client, especially a large client, the result can be an unruly mess. Plans for the content, along with a well-thought-out governance structure, must be in place from the kickoff in order for good content to be created and maintained. Older sites that have already had a life of their own typically need a lot of cleaning house.

Content, Content Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink
When one of our larger clients comes to us seeking help with their content strategy, we do a complete content audit of their site. Once a Website goes live and the client gets their hands on the CMS, a collection of excessive and un-focused content can be posted. Pages and information are often added to the site haphazardly, with no one making sure that the content is placed in a logical location within the site’s navigation, that it adheres to the creative goals of the site, and that it is even necessary. When we are assessing sites that have been around for years, we are usually fighting an uphill battle against years of neglected or poorly organized content.

Pages of redundant, inward-facing, uninteresting, overly “markety,” or unnecessary content must be sifted through in order for us to get to the meat of the site. We assess the content, chanting the mantra “the content is for the user” and considering our target audience each step of the way. Whether the purpose of the site is to sell, educate, or entertain users, it cannot be forgotten that they are the reason the site exists and that its content must be pertinent or interesting to them.

Everyone Wants to Feel Important!
Our clients’ team members usually fall into one of two categories: people that are inspired by an-easy-to-use CMS and excited about participating in the content creation for the site, and people that are scared that participating will take up too much of their time or are unsure about what kind of content they should be adding. Empowering staff members to add content and giving them a clear set of guidelines for doing so can lead to a vibrant site that can bring the real social aspect of a community to life on the Web.

People who are desirable candidates for participating in content creation, typically those that are already generating content on their own via blogs or social networking, should know that they are expected or encouraged to generate content. Likewise, they should know where to turn with questions and what the expectations and guidelines are for the types of content they should be adding. One often-fruitful way to get rich content on your site without putting too much pressure on team members is to set up easy-to-update places for media such as photos and videos.

What are the Ingredients for Good Content?
The purpose of a Website is to be clear, easy to read, and interesting to the user; it should always be useful and never overly verbose or filled with useless information. A client cannot allow internal terminology or internal hierarchies to inhibit the users’ ability to understand the content. The Website is not a place to represent any one individual’s agenda. The Website is to be seen with a holistic approach, and one entity, be that an individual or a team, has to be in charge of reining in the content and its creators.

When we are auditing large sites we have to stop and examine each bit of content, asking ourselves at each step:

Is it useful?

Is it public-facing information?

Is the content easily understood?

Is it easy to scan quickly?

Is the content laid out with well-structured HTML?

Does it make use of sub-headlines and lists, allowing the reader to grasp the topics covered at a glance?

Can it be found in a logical place by a user that is searching for it?

Can it be brought to the attention of the user that needs to see it and doesn’t know to search for it?

Is there enough content to warrant a full page?

Is there too much content?

Is it outdated?

Is it redundant?

Is it interesting or necessary? (It must be one or the either, or it should be deleted!)

Are there any gaps in the content?

Content that doesn’t meet our criteria is left on the cutting room floor.

Starting from the Ground Up
Once we have combed through a client’s content, or in the case of clients who are starting fresh, we set up a strategy for who will be in charge and what their goals will be. Obviously these goals are different for each of our clients, but the overall goal is always the same: to keep the user clicking around and reading and to eventually move them to take some sort of action, whether that be applying for admission, getting in touch, donating money, etc.

The team left in charge of the new content from that point forward must keep these content strategies in mind. They can never lose sight of the goals or lose sight of the level of quality the content needs to achieve. Processes for editorial review and consistency review must be instituted, and the governance structure must be planned in such a way that the content workflow does not create bottlenecks. The team must be held accountable for the content and oversee those allowed to add content, ensuring that everyone involved in content creation is informed about the goals of the site and their role as a participant. Keeping an online, easy-to-access reference can greatly aid in ensuring that potential content generators are in the loop.

It is our goal as a Web team to be sure that the site and strategy we provide for our client’s content can grow with them and never limit them. But we also have to be cognizant of the reality of the level and frequency at which our clients are going to be able to generate content.

In the end, creating good Web content is a never-ending balancing act, but with the appropriate tools and systems in place, content creation and maintenance by a team can pay off tremendously, allowing clients to use their content to reinforce their brand and breathe life into their Web presence, instead of the old-school way of relying on a horde of stodgy brochureware.

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Just as Americans have finally started caring more about what they put inside their bodies than what they cover them up with, Website teams are finally caring more about what they are saying than what things look like. Let’s face it: Healthy eating, and healthy content, takes work. It’s much easier to roll into a fast food joint and order up a few Flash effects, snazzy animations, and some hot sauce than it is to sit down and make a delicious and satisfying batch of content. You know the old saying about how you’re always hungry 15 minutes after eating Chinese food? (Personally I’m usually too full to move because I overindulge in the MSG carb wonderland, but I digress.) The similarity is obvious – crap might taste good for a few minutes, but it won’t be good for you in the long run.

Creating good content is not easy. Like most good things, it takes planning, hard work, some possible failures, and even paving some new ground. It’s not typically popular to work hard and sweat out the seemingly small things – not in today’s “super size for less” society. Unless you are selling shit in a taco shell, your audience actually does care about the quality of your content. They want to know that you are working hard to “know” yourself. They don’t want happy meals, movie posters, huge fancy animations, or more blogs than you can shake an extra large milkshake at (sorry, couldn’t resist). They want an experience, authenticity, caring, quality. They want you. And if you serve them up a double dose of grease and “we can turn you into tomorrow’s leaders” (inspired by the higher ed universe), then you will lose. They will smell the fry tray a mile away and never even nibble on the sweet edge of your bun (geez, OK, sorry, this metaphor has LEGS I tell ya!).

I think it’s almost funny how many people pass up great opportunities because they don’t want to do the hard work to get to know themselves and then do the extra hard work to tell their story to the people who are sitting in the booth asking to hear it. It’s so much easier to throw some manufactured meat onto a piece of bread, and it’s so much harder to plan out a truly nutritious meal. But nutrition is what good content is – it’s fuel for the mind, energy for the imagination, inspiration for the spirit.

Let’s work even one more food metaphor in here while we’re at it – how about the local/seasonal/organic movement? Why has this become so popular? Well, lo and behold, stuff that is in season, fresh, and not covered in chemicals actually tastes better and your body actually feels better when you eat it! Holy Whoppers! Yep, it’s true. There is no denying it. And now back to content: Yes, dear reader, the same applies. We care more about what is happening right now, right here, and not bathing it in a bunch of preservatives or unnecessary adjectives.

So, the secret to great content?

Do the work to “know thyself,” and then tell your story to the world.

Be unabashed, bold, full of personality, proud, willing to make some mistakes along the way, and always full of nutrition.

Resist the urge to use the high fructose corn syrup of the marketing world (cheap effects, generic statements, overused jargon).

Stick to the basics and let them sing. You have no idea how amazing broccoli with a little lemon juice is until you’ve cleansed your palate of the junk and feasted on real food.

Just do the same with your content, and you’ll be surprised at how wonderful the results will be – for you, and for your audience.

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Jumping at Fastspot

Here are the golden rules to live by when creating content for your website.

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We created Denote, a tool to allow for the communication on live sites between client and vendor. It’s up to you to use it for good, not evil.

Denote For Good, Not Evil from TraceyHalvorsen on Vimeo.

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In the spirit of showing appreciation, I am going to list the things we can’t live without here at Fastspot. These are applications or services that save us time and money, and make us look better at what we do. Author Disclaimer Alert! Two of the apps I mention are Fastspot creations, if that bugs you then skip this post. Now, without further ado:

1. Rackspace. Rackspace provides hosting services. We have been with them for 8 years. They rock. We found them after dealing with months of increasingly stressful and frustrating calls and emails to our old hosting provider who clearly couldn’t deliver on what they were promising. We had constant downtime for our sites. Sure, we were paying less, and yes, I do think I was talking to people who might have been in a basement somewhere in Canada, but hey – live and learn. After months of really horrific situations where clients were calling, our own site wasn’t up when we would be doing presentations, etc – we opened a magazine, saw an ad for a company promising Fanatical Support, and we called. The rest is sweet blissful history, filled with nights of restful sleep and happy clients! We’ve even made a few friends along the way, and are proud to consider Rackspace a partner. They make us look good, and are worth every dollar when you consider the alternatives.

2. Google Calendar. My mother always said I needed a good calendar. In fact, I don’t know how I got through life before Google Calendar. Now we use it at Fastspot, and it was our choice after looking at many calendar alternatives. The features I love most about Google Calendar are the alerts and reminders. Every day I get an email in the morning with my daily agenda, and I can set a variety of email, SMS and popup alerts as I need them. I never miss a call or meeting any more, and I can invite others easily so they don’t miss things either. The ability to create multiple calendar “types” viewable by groups or kept as private is also a nice addition.

3. Google Analytics. I look at analytics several times a day. I can see who is visiting our site and our clients’ sites, what content they are finding interesting, who is linking to it, and many other valuable bits of information. While the total traffic, unique visitors, etc. is interesting, there is one section I look at all the time. I set the calendar to “today’s date”, and then click Visitors / Network Properties / Service Providers. This is where the hidden gold is for me. Mixed in amongst the Comcasts and other ISPs are the names of potential future clients. For example, I know of one potential client who we have sent a proposal to. They just spent 40 minutes on our site this morning. That tells me they are taking a very close look at Fastspot, which usually means we will get the gig. I can make educated assumptions on these visits and what they mean, and I can also be prepared for hearing from them in the future. I could do an entire lengthy post on all the great things about Google Analytics, but figured it most practical to share my one favorite list to look at. To learn more, I recommend investing in a book like this one. The other great thing about Google Analytics? It’s free.

4. Basecamp. I was a fan of 37signals back when they did Websites. Then they created an application to make their lives easier, offered it to others, and it took off like wild fire so now 37signals creates and supports apps for those working in the web industry. Basecamp was their flagship application, and it’s the only one we use. One of the best things about Basecamp is that it keeps things organized between us and the client. As our team expanded, it became increasingly troublesome when one member of a client team would email important files to a designer on our team who would forget about the email, or lose it or accidentally delete it. Then you would play the, “I sent that to you weeks ago”, “No you didn’t” game. I think that is the biggest seller for Basecamp, it keeps everyone from playing the blame game over unorganized project management. Plus, our clients love it once they start using it.

5. Harvest. Time tracking, no one likes it, but if your business runs on hours, it’s critical to track them against projects and tasks. Harvest makes things easier with a nice user interface, providing you with only the things you need, and ensuring it plays nice with other applications (like Basecamp). The built in timer is used heavily within Fastspot, as it’s easier to hit the start / stop buttons when working on tasks then trying to remember how long something took at the end of the day, or *gasp* a few days later. I love Harvest because I can quickly and easily go into the app, unarchive an old project, and see exactly how many hours my team billed to the project, and for what tasks (design, programming, project management, etc.). It allows me to make more accurate estimates for new clients, and to have a clear view of what problems might have arisen on a past project that went over budget.

6. Denote. Disclaimer – Fastspot made Denote, and Fastspot now offers Denote as an app (a free version is available). We made Denote for ourselves, actually one of our lead programmers made the beginnings of Denote one day when he wasn’t busy, to make some repetitive tasks easier to manage. For anyone who has managed a Website project, either a large site that is getting ready to launch or a providing maintenance and updates on a site over time, you know how tedious it can be to share notes on issues with teams. You have to find the issue, copy the URL, paste it into an email or Basecamp, describe the issue in words, make sure you include what browser, then send that off to some poor recipient who has to jump through the same hoops just to understand what you are trying to show them. Denote allows you to skip all those steps and simply leave the note right on the web page. The recipient gets an email, files can be attached to the note, the browser is automatically detected and included in the note info, and an admin area keeps all the notes organized for any reporting needs. It’s simple, easy to use (even for non-techy clients), efficient, and only does what it needs to. We love it, our clients love it, and we know you will love it too.

7. BigTree CMS. Second Disclaimer – Fastspot made BigTree CMS and Fastspot sells BigTree CMS. BigTree is a content management system. We created it because so many other content management systems sucked. Really sucked. And not only did they suck, they were incredibly expensive, and worst of all – only programmers could work with them. I often ask myself, what is the point of a content management system if you still need programmers to make all the content changes? BigTree CMS is built around some basic premises. First premise, the CMS should be enjoyable to “use”. Why should we expect someone to be happy clicking around a horrendous looking interface in order to update a nice looking website? We shouldn’t. I look forward to working in apps that look nice and are easy to use. Isn’t this the reason behind Apple’s success? So, BigTree is pleasurable on the eyes and simple to use. Second premise, the CMS should do only what you need it to, no more, no less. So we customize it to suit each project, and give our client the tools to mold it to suit their needs down the road. Last premise? Don’t lock the client out. We give full access to the code and system so clients aren’t bound to us for future CMS work.

8. WordPress. WordPress is even better when you purchase the Thesis theme for it, as we did. I love WordPress because not only is it an intuitive and powerful CMS for our blog, but it also seems to have a special relationship with Google. Posts to a WordPress blog seem to immediately flag my Google alerts, meaning the posts are indexed at blazingly fast speeds, which is good news for anyone who cares about SEO (search engine optimization). I also like WordPress because it has a great community built around it, with developers constantly creating new plugins, tools, and ways to further the power of the blog. It still requires some programming knowledge to get it up and running effectively, but not a ton. Once you are setup, tweaking it, adjusting the themes, adding plugins – it’s a breeze. However, Wordpress (especially Thesis) really helps you keep your eye on the ball, which is the content.

9. TweetDeck. TweetDeck is my favorite Twitter client because I generally keep multiple columns open for multiple accounts, and I use Twitter as much for listening as I do for broadcasting or conversing. TweetDeck lets me do all of this with ease, and it lets me sync these setups between computers and on my iPhone. My only complaint? The iPad app is sluggish and crashes frequently, but hopefully that is being fixed as I write this!

OK – so there are my top 9, the things I use every single day and would be very upset without. Anyone else using these apps or services? Got some other good ones to add to our list? Is MailChimp your favorite email blaster or do you prefer Emma? Is your day incomplete if you don’t open your favorite code editor? Leave your faves in the comments and share the love and appreciation for the things that others have made that make your life better.

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A quick look at your Google Analytics will tell you if you are already late to the game. It is actually shocking how often mobile devices are being used to access Websites these days – just look at the stats on one of our client’s websites.

An example of how we have dealt with mobile issues for one client is explained below. Woodberry Kitchen wanted a very immersive and creative Website experience, which works great on browsers with fast connections.

However, many of their customers would inevitably be pulling the site up on their iPhones to get basic info like directions, that night’s menu, etc. Woodbery didn’t want a dry and sterile mobile experience to be served up, but we knew we had to limit the scope of the experience to work on a mobile 3G device. A simple mobile detection script did the trick, allowing us to serve up a stripped down version of the full site, leaving the design elements in place and providing quick access to relevant information.

On another hand, some mobile sites do more damage than good – try viewing Cleveland Institute of Art’s mobile site on your iPhone and you see this:

Trippy, it’s my iPhone inside my iPhone! Probably not exactly what you want prospective students or parents dealing with.

It’s not enough to simply “have” a mobile site, it needs to be branded, well organized and allow users to get to the regular site if they choose to. And now we have the iPad to worry about. When you are up late at night wondering what kind of experience your Website visitors are having when viewing your site on their mobile devices, the first thing you need to do is look at your analytics. Once you know who your mobile audience is, and what devices they are using, then you are ready to make the next step in determining what kind of experience they will have.

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I get asked this question often by clients, colleagues and friends. My answer is always based on what your exact needs are, and most importantly how equipped you are to support a system requiring in-depth technical experience. Then of course there is the budget issue – CMS systems can range from free to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So why not just go for the free open-source option – they ask? Don’t let the hype fool you, those much loved free “open-source” solutions are indeed great, but only great if you know how to program for the web. Match that with a solid understanding of good user interface design if you really want a successful outcome.

Content management should be fun. It should be easy. It should empower your organization to own its content and feel no qualms about logging in and updating that information whenever they need to, from anywhere they might be. It should be stress free, there should be no chance that the CMS will break the site or allow for inconsistencies. That makes a good content management system.

If you need a full IT team to support it, if you have to jump through hoops to get updates posted, if you have to pay thousands of dollars every time you want to add a feature or upgrade, then you don’t have a good solution.

While I am biased since Fastspot has developed BigTree CMS and installs it on many of our projects, it’s important to know the only reason we designed and built BigTree was because the market was so sorely lacking. There are the big enterprise level CMS solutions that you might shop for if you are a Boeing, or an IBM or The Smithsonian. And then there are little buggy CMS solutions that never work quite right, tie you to the IT developers constantly needed to make them work properly and which in my opinion lack any robustness or thought towards the user experience within the CMS itself.

There are hundreds of CMS solutions being promoted and sold, but rarely do I hear good things about them from clients actually using them. Rare occasions are from clients who already have a really impressive internal team with the technical know-how and time devoted to their daily workflow to ensure those CMSs function well. I would dare to ask the question, “What happens when your internal team gets another job?”.

Conclusion? Think long and hard about what you need, who’s in place to support it if it needs support and how will your organization’s team be empowered to use the system once it’s in place.

Have a love or hate story to share about a CMS? Feel free, it’s still relatively new territory out there, with little transparency in order to compare notes.

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In this post I am questioning the rationale behind online marketing or communications initiatives being directed or controlled by technology oriented guidelines.

Face it, today technology can do whatever we want or need it to do. And one of it’s primary roles is to act as a facilitator for a message. So why would we first worry about the “how we want to say something” before we think about the “what we want to say”?

Typically technology and marketing departments are separate entities, with the tech people focused on internal software, security, protocols, databases, all very technical stuff. Then you have the marketing folks worried about the message of the institution, the look and feel of the new brochure, the copywriting and tone in the radio spot, all very non-technical stuff.

And then the issue of the Website comes up (or talk of a microsite, or an email campaign, or an employee portal area) – and suddenly – both groups must work together, because these things involve technology. This is where the first mistake is made. A company’s interactive marketing has very little to do with the internal technology or protocols. Sure, there will be some areas that “cross over”, where security or the transferring of sensitive data should be monitored, where databases will need to be able to speak the same language, or technical nuances will require some sort of expert IT guidance to move forward. However, if the initiative is oriented towards “marketing”, then it should live in the hands of the marketing folks. Yet I can’t recount how many times I have found a marketing team struggling with an overly complicated content management system (CMS), or worse, a marketing team dependent on a few skilled coders over on the IT side, who are the gatekeepers of the marketing projects.

Lets face it, when someone encounters your interactive marketing initiative, be it a Website, a HTML email, a microsite, perhaps even an iPhone app – the last thing they will be thinking about is the technology… unless of course, it doesn’t work well. I am not simply talking about something being “broken”, I am talking about overall “usability”, the ease with which an interested viewer can access the content they seek while experiencing the brand of the company. This is one of the most important experiences your audience will have with your brand, and if technology has lead the way, chances are, usability has been delegated to what “works” with the technology – not the other way around. This shift in importance is a critical mistake, and will leave your viewers feeling they experienced something that was more about tech than communicating with them.

So, before you start shopping for software, adding firewalls and overhauling your servers, stop and ask yourself, “Is this an IT project or a marketing project?”

Just because things live on “servers” vs. on paper, doesn’t mean they necessarily need to be controlled by IT folks. After all, these days your marketing team probably does much of it’s work online in places like Twitter, the company blog, Facebook, press release sites like Pitch Engine, etc. Why would the Website be any different?

One common cause for the confusion is due to the “types” of information being shared or distributed through the Website. I often see people confuse Websites with “Intranets”, and this is something that is very important to differentiate. How do you find the answer? It’s all about the audience! If your Website is primarily geared towards outside audiences, who don’t have a need for or interest in your internal stuff, then don’t build in an Intranet. If the site is to market to your internal audiences, like a company wide bulletin board, an area to log in and review tax information or payroll, etc., then focus on security – and don’t build a public facing Website!

Bottom line – give your audiences what they are looking for, and empower the people who need to constantly craft those messages and content the tools they need to manage it themselves. Empower your teams with tools that work for their needs, and be very clear about the goals, audiences, and most importantly, who needs to be able to take the wheel and work with the tools you give them.

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