Do It Yourself Content Management

Bill Gates wrote in January 1996 that “Content is King.”[1] This was innovative thinking then, but today it’s taken for granted. We can now create content and direct it toward end-users or audiences with precision and ease. I learned during the recent 2020 MBA Roundtable Symposium that graduate programs are having trouble getting their content crafted and shared with their selected audiences. This was surprising to me.

One solution is for graduate program directors to use the principles of content management to address this issue. In this article, and a series of future articles, I will explain content management principles as I know them and show how graduate program leaders can use them to create content they can then direct toward end-users or audiences with precision and ease.

The Basics

The issue revealed during the Symposium was that of “getting the message out” by using campus resources. Right or wrong, we house most campus media resources in a central office labeled media relations with a primary focus of getting press coverage for the campus and secondarily for the academic units and programs. Press coverage often starts with the creation of a press or news release.

So, let me start with the basics, what is a press release and what is a news release? Definitionally, “A press release is a short, compelling news story written by a public relations professional and sent to targeted members of the media”[2] while “A news release is a short attention-grabber piece of writing that gives information about events, products and other exciting details of a company.”[3] Both are similar-short, interesting, attention grabbing and more than likely written by a public relations professional. The goal of either is to pique the interest of a journalist or publication, that is an intermediary that will want to write a story for their readers.

The issue is not with the purpose for which a press or news release is being written, but the processes most campuses require users to follow. Public relations professionals that do the work are institutional focused and housed behind a wall of rules, procedures, and processes that make it difficult to get a press release created and distributed on brief notice. It is the centralization and bureaucracy associated with the campus media relations office that makes working with public relations professionals seem so overwhelming.

The Alternative

An alternative is for graduate program leaders to adopt content management (CM) practices and tools and scale them to meet the needs of a single graduate program or portfolio of graduate programs. Getting started can challenge but is manageable with a little help.

Start by getting rid of the myopic view of the press release, that is focusing on a single topic with a single aim. Then think about processes or outcomes since CM is a set of processes that collect, deliver, retrieve, and guide the overall management of information in any format-images, video, audio, multimedia, text, etc. We can then structure these processes around a framework called the content life-cycle. Depending on the organization and its purpose, the life-cycle, practices, and processes will vary.[4]

The Life-Cycle

The following six-part life-cycle or outline provides a good starting point, one that I will use to help you create a framework for your graduate program’s content management system (CMS).

  • Plan – Design the CMS to meet the needs of your graduate programs.
  • Create – Produce content for specific audiences.
  • Manage – Coordinate all aspects of the CMS.
  • Warehouse – Store content for all needs.
  • Share – Provide content to desired audience.
  • Assess–Identify what content is working and what is not working.

My goal with this series of articles is to help graduate program leaders develop their own content management program, something I’m calling “do it yourself content management.” My approach is low cost, easy to manage, and leverages the existing resources that most graduate programs have available to them.

My next article will focus on the first part of the life-cycle planning for and designing a CMS to meet the needs of your graduate program or portfolio of graduate programs.

Content written by Rodney G. Alsup and published by the MBA News Digest Academy on November 13, 2020.

You can share your comments in the Community Forum or email them to me at RGAlsup@MBANewsDigest.com.

[1] Evans H. “Content is King” — Essay by Bill Gates 1996. [Reprinted] Medium. Published October 28, 2017. Accessed November 12, 2020. https://medium.com/@HeathEvans/content-is-king-essay-by-bill-gates-1996-df74552f80d9

[2] Roos D. How Press Releases Work. HowStuffWorks. Published August 28, 2007. Accessed November 12, 2020. https://money.howstuffworks.com/business-communications/how-press-releases-work.htm

[3] Press release. In: Wikipedia. November 12, 2020. Accessed November 12, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Press_release&oldid=987911041

[4] Web content lifecycle. In: Wikipedia. November 12, 2020. Accessed November 12, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Web_content_lifecycle&oldid=967858647