collegewebeditor.com

Your university website needs more than a Content Management System

In “Content management systems only part of solution,” Georgina Hibberd from the University of Sydney reminds us that a CMS will only help manage content:

A fully automated system that makes the entering of content easier does not make it easier to produce interesting, well-written and timely content. Someone has to take responsibility for the content, to research and write it. Only then can the CMS come into play.

In other words, your CMS may allow everybody to update your college website, but it won’t transform anybody into a “Web Editor” overnight.

The decentralized approach is definitely very good when it comes to very simple changes such as office hours, contact information, course or program short descriptions. However, I don’t think it works very well with other types of content for the following reasons:

As pointed by Georgina Hibberd in Templatedata, some “offline” strategies are necessary to make sure the CMS will have something to manage:

In his essay titled “Why Content Management Fails,” the expert Jeffrey Veen describes the editorial process necessary to get great content on any website:

Set up a process something like this: An editor manages all content on the site. Give that editor a staff of writers to send out into your business units. These writers act like reporters in the field, working on stories that they submit to a copy desk.

The stories are then compared against editorial and corporate style guides, producing consistent, professional content. That content goes to your legal and marketing departments for approval if necessary. Only then does it go online.

Your marketing/communication office wouldn’t publish your college newsletter or university brochure without editing it, so why should it be different for the most widely-used publication of your higher education institution — your website?