Content Management Systems (CMS) from a Marketer’s Point of View

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!