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Business owners, more or less, have accepted blogs as a necessary part of the marketing mix and some have even come to the realization that this blogging is a good thing.
So, what’s next you ask? I think it’s time to move beyond the notion that a blog is part of a web site, an appendage of sorts, where blog posting is done. The idea that makes blogs so powerful is that they enable anyone in the organization to easily create education based, search-engine friendly content at the drop of a hat.
Now it’s time to amp this power up and start utilizing what we’ve learned about blogs to create fully functioning content management systems (CMS) that give businesses the power to dominate search results through massive content creation, cross purposing, and keyword-rich aggregation and filtering.
Now, before you flip out and curse me for suggesting that blogs are so last year - understand that a blog, WordPress for example, is a simple form of a CMS. Content is easily created, stored in a database, delivered to a designated page, tagged, and searchable. All the primary elements of CMS are there, but it’s set-up mostly for the individual author instead of the group or organization.
A host of applications, some old, some new, are gaining favor in the newer “group content creation for the greater good” mindset. By the way CMS has been around for a long time, but mostly as an internal tool for large organizations.
I would like to suggest that a robust, group centric, CMS platform is the next wave for business blogging - but not blogging and “we have a blog” - blogging as a fully integrated web strategy.
Here’s a list of some of the major players, with descriptions from their sites, to get you started. Many are open source, free and require Linux, PHP and mySql (much like a WordPress install)
Some simple CMS tools
- Textpattern - A flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system. Textpattern is both free and open source.
- Alfresco - Alfresco is the Open Source Alternative for Enterprise Content Management (ECM), providing Document Management, Collaboration, Records Management, Knowledge Management, Web Content Management and Imaging
- Pligg - Pligg is an open source content management system available for download at no cost.
An LMS for CMS
- Moodle - a favorite among educators and considered a Learning Management System (I’m using it to build Duct Tape University, but more on that later.)
The Biggies with lots of add-ons, templates, and examples
- Joomla - Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet.
- Drupal - Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.
One built for small business marketers
- Compendium Blogware - a relatively new player with an interesting twist. This is essentially a tool for group blogging that automatically structures blog content across the group for maximum search engine optimization. I’ll do a full review of this tool after some testing.
This CMS Matrix - allows you compare features of dozens of CMS offerings side by side.
Any small business folks out there want to share their implementations of a CMS?
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at Mar 19, 08 | 1:41 pm and is filed under Blogging, Search Engines, Web Marketing, social software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
CMS is coming of age for all of the reasons you’ve stated. My reviews and conversations with others left me undecided. I’d love to hear some personal experiences.
I’m using Wordpress as a CMS for quite a few informational web sites.
I used to build HTML sites and edit them with Dreamweaver, but it’s a pain to keep them updated that way when you have almost 100 sites.
So now I am making all new ones as Wordpress sites, and converting the ones that I update a lot.
If you use Wordpress, it just involves a little bit more tweaking with the theme so that you are managing Pages instead of Posts, and so that your Pages are the main part of the navigation instead of the blog posts and categories.
In fact, I am sure there are a bunch of plugins and ready made themes that make using Wordpress as a CMS even easier than the way I am doing it.
I am familiar with Wordpress, and it is easy for me to manage and teach employees to use, and keep updated. Plus it’s easy to give access to freelance writers with the Wordpress login system.
So I wouldn’t really want to mess with any other system, because of the learning curve.
Plus, I know for a fact that my Wordpress sites do well in the search engines, and that is important to me. (Yes, they do well even if you have a mostly static site with Pages instead of Posts.)
I’m very curious see your feedback on Compendium.
I had a few conversations with them last year and the message didn’t really didn’t jive.
In summary, what I got was that their system takes content from multiple contributors in your corporation and creates multiple blog sites… each geared to dominate different keywords. This seems to go against Google’s stance on duplicate content.
But maybe I’m missing something… so I’m open to your thoughts on them.
I use Website Baker as my CMS. Very simple to use and install. All of the templates (that I’ve come across) are free and easily modified (if you know a little css).
Its open source and I found it simpler than both Drupal and Joomla to pick up as a beginner, but slightly less powerful in features.
I wouldn’t go back to static page management. The ability to have draft, private and public pages lets me use this a collaborative development tool. We also use it to store notes and ideas on a private page for our next meeting.
Their site is start.websitebaker.org (no www)
My site is http://www.trainingtools.com.au if you want to see one of the templates in action.
I have really enjoyed using Wordpress as the backbone for my entire site (http://www.brownlures.com). If you have a decent understanding of how web programming works and a limited budget then it is pretty tough to beat. We still have some design quirks to work out but so far it has been a HUGE improvement in both customer feedback and search rankings. There is just an insane amount of plugins, templates, widgets etc. that you can use to customize it to your tastes. It seems like I find some new gadget that I like on a daily basis to plug into our site. Here’s a few examples of things we added in that I thought were nice (especially considering the price/time involved):
1) Podcasting plugins galore- It takes me about a minute to upload a podcast, have it submitted to iTunes and tailor how I want it to be displayed. We use Podpress and CoolPlayer for this.
2) Del.icio.us tags - John has talked about it on here before I think, but this is one of my favorite tools. If people are talking about you on the internet then instead of updating your site and linking to that particular page (which doesn’t work well with message boards) then just “tag” it by clicking one button on your browser. I just set up an account and told WordPress to automatically syndicate the feed from delicious into a special “Brown Lures on the Web” category on my site. Then you get links, more tags, descriptions and easy content. Total it was about 30 minutes to set up and $0
3) Be creative with categories/feeds/posts - Instead of having every post be an “article” we use a lot of product-specific posts which fall into a special product category. Then at a random spot on the site we tell it to just pull the most recent post for that category and it ends up featuring a product. The basic idea is that you don’t have to have everything be an article or story.
There are so many more plugins I love too that you just have to try out, like subscriber management tools, plugins for everything Google, random photo generator from your picasa account, “share this”, contact forms etc. It’s really amazing what all you can get for free.
Now I’m trying to experiment with integrating a shopping cart–probably osCommerce–into our WP-powered site instead of having it be external through godaddy.
I have been building websites for the better part of 10 years now, and blogging for about three. I build very few straight web pages any more. Most are Wordpress blogs or Pligg newssites. It’s just easier to hand off to someone else when it’s done, and doesn’t take a programmer to make basic changes. Can’t wait for these tools to evolve to the next level.
CMS tools are easy to use and create top blogs. The blogging word is improving fast.
This is a great post John. I have been advising companies for the past few years that Blogging should be perceived as content management, rather than as many businesses do, see it as a diary or journal. When companies see Blogging as content management it transforms what they can do with their web site. For instance, my own web site appears as though it is a straight site, but is actually four Blogger blogs stitched together. I explain how to do that in another web site ChangingBlogger.com</A. which has videos showing how to take Blogger and turn it into a content management system.
[…] What’s the next wave in business blogging? John Jantsch over on his Duct Tape Marketing blog has a few thoughts. […]
John you are absolutely correct in your logic. The web is becoming an arena where everyone can compete and participate. Exclusive Concepts has developed an enterprise blog. Essentially it is a blog on steroids but the most facinating feature is that it uses the wordpress CMS.
http://blog.exclusiveconcepts.com/
Also, Check out the bullhorn blogger at wwww.bullhorn.com
We recently refreshed and moved our corporate web site to WordPress. Main reason: content management, we don’t need a web guy every time we want to make a change. Secondary reason: keywords - too soon to see any results here.
[…] and "we have a blog"—blogging as a fully integrated web strategy. — from The next wave in business blogging, by John Jantsch I think John’s hit the nail on the head. In fact, what he’s describing is the […]
I use Wordpress for After The Launch as a CMS system. This supports a huge virtual group of employees around the world.
So far, I see no need to switch.
[…] (CMS Matrix link via DuctTapeMarketing.com) […]
John,
I agree 100% with your idea of using CMS as an integrated web strategy for corporate blogging.
How would you advocate or pitch this idea to executives who are just now realizing that corporate blogging is something they want/need?
John:
Check out http://www.blogtronix.com
I have been selling the need for a package like this inside my business for nearly a year. Not sure about the backend on Blogtronix, but I have been in love with the idea of what this tool represents since seeing a video demo over a year ago via some blog like techcrunch, if memory serves.
Check out the video demo, and let me know if this is what you have in mind.
BTW, I have no affiliation with Blogtronix other than an interest in my business pursuing something akin to the tool!
Sean McGinnis
I’m using Wordpress for my web site (http://www.starbamboo.com), and it works great.
If you want it to be set up as a CMS, just create new content using static “pages” instead of blog “posts”. And then set a page to appear on the front page.
I’ve experimented with Joomla, but it falls far short of Wordpress in terms of user-friendliness.
But I’m really curious about this compending feature - is it just hype?
As some of the other comments here suggest - WordPress should be on your list. Here is a good example of an advanced set of themes that use WordPress as the engine for more advanced CMS systems http://www.revolutiontheme.com/
MovableType, the CMS platform I use for palmit.com, should also be on your list.
John, I think I disagree with you when you say that most business owners have accepted the benefits of business blogging. I think many people are aware of blogging, and especially its growing use by traditional media companies on their websites. I just don’t see the adoption numbers. Only about 11% of the fortune 500 are currently blogging, and 20% of the Inc 500. We don’t have wider numbers for business in general, but I would suspect it is somewhere between the two, as the Inc 500 consists of a lot of tech companies. And even in the fortune 500 most of the companies blogging are tech or telco related.
Interesting but I disagree. Content Management Systems have been around for a long time. In 2002 Microsoft released a free Content Management Framework that gave birth to the DOTNET Nuke OpenSource CMS.
I’d also like to throw MODx CMS in the mix. MODx is an incredibly powerful and flexible opensource content management system (that allows you to build seo-friendly and standards- compliant websites/blogs/portals).
I created a page on MODx to provide people with an overview of the system. You can also find links to free MODx templates and reviews comparing MODx to Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, and Expression Engine. Visit the MODx CMS overview page here: http://www.squidoo.com/modxcms
Working in the arts/not for profit sector, budget is massive concer. We’ve used joomla in the past for content management, and I’m looking into a new CMS for our current site. I’ve been thinking about wordpress, its got great plugins and is so easy to use. jbrown -> your comments have been really helpful.
John,
I wonder when firms both large and small with push this envelope to the next step; providing these tools to their people to help them do their jobs.
Having worked in, and now consulting to large sales organizations, I know how neutral (at best) management is towards these tools. I’d love to have a client ask, “hey, how can my people use this stuff?”
[…] thing. He’s teaching small businesses how to effectively market in today’s world. Here , he points out a suite of CRM tools that can publish a company blog. I applaud his efforts to get […]
We’ll be implementing a Drupal website shortly. Our current one is sadly out of date and, alas, we also have no blog. But, with Drupal, we hope to change all that!