Three Ways Web Content Management Improves Marketing
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
I’ve written before about how using a quality Web Content Management (WCM) system can be a big help to marketers. After last week’s Day Ignite Customer Summit in Chicago, I am more convinced of that than ever.
I got a lot of marketing ideas at the Summit last week, but I’d like to share the three I’m most excited about:
1. Putting Control Back in the Hands of Marketers
Rob Bogan, Director of eCommerce Development at Williams-Sonoma, gave a great presentation during the first day of the event on Web Content Management: The Key to Unlock Our Future. He noted that making site changes for marketing purposes can sometimes seem like a game of “telephone” that takes days to see even minor changes – like moving the location of a product promotion – go live.
With the best web content management systems, like Day’s CQ5, control is in the hands of the right marketing people.
2. Marketers Should be Responsible for ROI Too
Unlike our counterparts in Sales, it’s not always easy to draw a straight line from a marketing effort to its positive conclusion. Measuring marketing results can get fuzzy and usually relies on gut instincts more than facts.
During Toby Bell’s, vice president of Gartner Research, keynote presentation on day two, Perspectives on WCM, ECM and Day in 2010, he made the point that the latest web content management systems have measurement tools built in that allow better tracking of marketing results.
One tool I’m especially impressed with in Day’s CQ 5.3 is the multivariate testing tool (MVT). I’d like to think my gut instinct is always spot on, but after years working in this field, I know that’s not true. MVT makes it easier to gauge what works and what you’re wasting your time on.
3. Think Dynamic Content
Bell also noted the shift towards dynamic web content as a trend in the next few years. CQ already has tools to help marketers do this and it looks like even more targeting tools are on their way with the upcoming release, CQ 5.3. This makes for smarter, more targeted ways to get the message you want in front of the right eyes.
A good WCM can’t do it all, but it can provide smart tools to help marketers do the best job they can do.
Good Developers Don’t Need a Translator
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
I was inspired this week by a great article by Allison Mooney in Ad Age on why ad agencies need to think like software companies. She states, “Agencies need to recognize that this digital and mobile literacy is essential to their survival,” and I couldn’t agree with her more.
As a fellow marketer, I speak Mooney’s language, but as someone who works at a technology company, I perhaps have a fuller understanding of both sides of this coin. There are a few of her statements I’d like to comment on from this perspective.
Mooney explains the new role appearing in some companies of “creative developer.” According to the article, these are marketing people with a more technical mindset who can “act as translators” between developers and brand and marketing managers.
I am sure there are instances where such hybrid roles are useful, but this seems to underestimate the role of developers, at least good developers. Creative types and developers shouldn’t have to always work through a “translator.” Good developers, like the ones I work with every day at CITYTECH, get it. They can see the big picture. Technology is not their only language.
It’s for this reason I am skeptical that any in-house technical team can keep up with growing demands of marketing on technology. “These hybrid employees that can bring digital know-how to Madison Avenue should not be hard for companies to find,” Mooney states. It’s one thing to understand the technology concepts behind apps, but quite another to successfully execute an innovative end-product.
Mooney does not suggest that all agencies can handle the full technical scope of app development projects in-house. I would argue that very few agencies can or should take on sophisticated development projects. Effort and money can be saved by working with experienced developers. Having an understanding of tech is great, but ad agencies shouldn’t short-change the incredible skill that good developers bring to the table – and their ability to translate for themselves.
CITYTECH is Excited for JBoss World
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
CITYTECH is busy gearing up for next week’s JBoss World 2009 here in Chicago. There’s a lot for us to be excited about!
We’re looking forward to having JBoss World right in our backyard this year. It should be a great event and a chance to connect with old friends and meet some new ones. We’re ready to show the city off! If anyone coming from out of town wants advice on things to see, places to eat or what to do at night, let me know!
This is the first year JBoss World is being held in conjunction with Red Hat Summit. Should make for even more interesting conversations! Check out what’s in store at JBoss World and Red Hat Summit.
Of course, CITYTECH is also thrilled to be a sponsor of this year’s event. We’re happy to show our support for JBoss and get a chance to hear what JBoss customers have to say.
CITYTECH engineers will be presenting a demo of a Seam-based application, showing off technologies like JSF, JavaFX and Flex. I got a sneak peek of the demo last week and it’s looking really good!
Stop by our booth in the Partner Pavilion (#310) to see for yourself. And, if you like tech gadgets, enter CITYTECH’s JBoss World raffle and see if you’ve won an e-reader, noise-reducing headphones or a video camera while you’re there. We’ll be giving away prizes every day.
See you at JBoss World next week!
Content Management Systems (CMS) from a Marketer’s Point of View
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
I’ve been writing web content for a number of years now and I’ve tried out a fair share of content management systems. In terms of usability, most have ranged from being a pain in the butt to being decent at best. Without exception, however, I’ve always had to rely heavily on IT staff and designers to make the final page look like I envisioned it. This was before I started using Day CQ content management system, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
For a writer and a marketer who frequently has time-sensitive information to make live, depending on IT is a no-win all around – What IT team ever has extra time on their hands to be available to make web page tweaks at a marketer’s every whim? With Twitter, Facebook and other speedy social networks, what marketer can afford to wait to update site content?
I ran into a situation like that last week (as I do many weeks). Late one afternoon something came up and we wanted to react immediately with new web content. I wrote something in a flash and was ready to go live with it within a half an hour.
Now, in the past, I’d have to keep my fingers crossed that a) this new content didn’t require anything special, like inserting something crazy, like an image, for example, b) someone on the IT or design teams was able to drop whatever they were in the middle of to upload a graphic or fiddle with some code for me, and c) a business stakeholder happened to have time to review and approve before sending it back to IT to make live.
But when we had our web content fire drill last week, I spent half an hour getting the copy together and another 15 minutes making it live on the site, without ever once relying on someone else. That was it – it couldn’t have been much easier. As a marketer, I love this freedom.
CITYTECH uses Day’s CQ5 for our content management and it can be a marketer’s best friend. Day CQ is really easy for someone like me to get copy and images up on the site quickly and looking good. I have the ability to make my website edits live with a click of a button (CQ also lets you be selective about administrative powers, if that works better for you). CQ is powerful out of the box and flexible enough to make sense. Thanks for making my life a lot easier – and I’m sure the IT team thanks you too!
Why Music Explorer FX Won the JavaFX Coding Challenge
Friday, July 17th, 2009
I’m a pretty big music fan, as anyone who follows my tweets (@chibridge) may have noticed, so I was excited to start playing around with Sten Anderson’s Music Explorer FX.
As an admirer of both music and CityTech consultants, I was thrilled to hear that I wasn’t the only one who thought Music Explorer FX was great – so did Sun Microsystems, which named Music Explorer FX its first-place winner in the JavaFX Coding Challenge.
The thing I love about Music Explorer FX is that it’s extremely easy to use and plugs users into a lot of data with a pretty spiffy-looking user interface. The thing Sun probably liked best was the innovative use of its relatively new JavaFX platform.
And that’s exactly why CityTech consultants get it right – they are super stars with technology, but they realize that there’s more to a great application than the backend. MEFX is fun to use because it’s easy to use – Sten kept the average user in mind while he developed this application – and it shows.
Whether it’s Sten’s winning application in JavaFX or a web-based project for a government agency, CityTech consultants never lose sight of the user. Check out Music Explorer FX for yourself and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Congrats Sten, and if you need help spending that $25,000 prize money, just let me know.
Three Thoughts on My First Month at CITYTECH
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Well, today marks my one-month anniversary with CITYTECH. I came aboard as CITYTECH’s Marketing Communications Manager a few weeks ago and have already seen so many exciting things happening around here – a couple new, big clients, a few IT networking socials, and lots of things in the works. I thought now might be a good time to share some observations.
Working with smart people really makes my job easy.
CITYTECH consultants do a fabulous job of marketing themselves. Sten Anderson, for example, just had his (awesome) Music Explorer FX JavaFX app (more on that in a future post…) included in the keynote at JavaOne last week as one of the first apps in the brand new Java App Store. Bill Gloff’s blog post on Groovy got reposted on GroovyBlogs and on DZone. I could go on, but I won’t. CITYTECH consultants: thanks for being so smart. It really helps me out.
The stereotype of the anti-social tech geek needs to be put to bed.
Maybe that was true at one point, but I think those days are behind us. Some of the coolest, most innovative people I’ve met lately have been tech “geeks.” Being into tech gadgets got cool years ago and these are the people behind the scenes working on the next hip thing. Case in point: The line for Apple’s WWDC earlier this week wrapped around the block. Hello people, tech is cool.
Tech consultants don’t sleep
At least I see little evidence that CITYTECH consultants sleep. Oh, you know, after working all day building some amazing application that is going to make a client’s business run smoother, I just whipped up this iPhone app. After dinner. For fun.
