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By Stephanie Bach
Over the years, we’ve worked with numerous CMS tools–from enterprise-level to open source and homegrown tools. The bells and whistles may differ from product to product, but the challenge of training and managing content contributors remains universal: How to make the process of managing content easier and more compliant, even if users are not ‘technically inclined’?
Here are our best tips:
-Customize training materials to your organization, and make materials readily available to all contributors via the CMS, a shared drive or your intranet. A step-by-step format works best for new users. Be sure to update these materials regularly.
-Create and update a style guide that provides proper usage for company terminology, voice and tone. Encourage ‘approvers’ to follow these guidelines for every post. Your marketing, communications or IT department may already have a style guide that you can utilize.
-Create a ‘cheat sheet’ or checklist for content contributors to follow each time they create or edit a content posting. The checklist should contain tips for maximizing content contributions, rather than a step-by-step instruction guide. Examples include: ‘Add meta data which contains keywords based on the content topic,’ ‘Add hyperlinks to other pages within the site as relevant to the content and to the user,’ etc.
-Stay connected. Solicit contributor feedback and provide FAQs, tips or other information to aid users in troubleshooting and problem-solving.
We’ve worked with the team at CrownPeak, who have this to say:
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/9433.imc
Providing internal support and training for your content authors may mean the difference between good content and great content, and will make contributors feel like they’re part of your CMS team.
Let us know what challenges you’re having as you train and manage content contributors for your CMS.
Stephanie Bach
UX Lead
Flair Interactive Services Inc.
