eCommerce Content, Upgrade Barriers, Lionbridge & More

We covered a range of topics this week at CMS-Connected, from content strategy and whitepapers, to acquisitions and headless CMS. Read on for my recap on each story and commentary on a few of them from around the industry. 

How to Drive Sales with Your eCommerce Content Strategy

It’s no wonder content marketing has taken off in the age of social media, where it can be shared far and wide so easily, but we examine its usage with a little more depth, and relate it to the world of eCommerce as some feel, that online retailers do not realize the benefits of having an impactful content strategy in place.  After all, they spend so much in resources to understand what and how their customers want to buy, why not utilize that knowledge to offer the kind of content their customers want to consume?

Those who know its value, know there is no better way to illustrate your thought leadership and expertise in a market than offering custom content with insight into the brand, product and general thought process. I know every marketer wants to identify the persona of their client base, but I would go as far to say, every consumer wants to connect with the persona of a brand. A well strategized and authentic content strategy is the perfect vehicle to achieve that. 

This brings us to the difference between shoppers and buyers, and how understanding that could allow a brand to capitalize on that distinction, by leveraging the right content, during the right time in the customer journey. Venus explains it the best, but the most important thing is to know shoppers are looking for education, and will most likely look to a brand’s website, or social media platforms to get it. If they don’t find it, they will stray away but keep looking, and you’ve then lost a bit, if not all, of your opportunity. Why not take advantage of content, to own the conversation with your customer, and educate them on your product in your own words? 

A few days after publication of this article, Andy Crestodina, Co-founder of Orbit Media and prominent content marketer and speaker, was kind enough to share this article with his over 20k followers on Twitter:

 

Read the full article here

How To Create a White Paper that Will Generate Leads- Part II

After covering the basics of creating a white paper in Part I, Leah gave us Part II in her series, How to Create a White Paper that will Generate Leads, by acknowledging the thought process around how you can make your white paper stand out. She lets us know the shareability of the content, should take precedence over the simple selling of it, and she goes on to explain how this can be achieved. 

Whether you want to call them influencers, or thought leaders, having a trusted expert in your market evangelize your content can be huge. She acknowledges the common inhibiter though, how do you obtain this expert’s time or attention? She echoes the same sentiment I have with questions like these, go for the big fish, go for the medium fish, but whatever you do, go for many fish. The more you reach out to, the higher likelihood some will get back to you, and she continues on to point out something I have seen time and time again, often it’s the most famous thought leaders you will hear back from the fastest. 

Leah doesn’t leave out the effectiveness of creating your own white paper however, and gives us some great examples of how and why curation of your content in-house, can glean some great results as well. 

Read the full article here.

The Analysis of the Acquisition of Lionbridge by Private Equity

Midweek, we went in-depth on the acquisition of Lionbridge by private equity firm H.I.G. Capital, in a deal valued at $360 million. Based out of Waltham, Massachusetts, Lionbridge provides global content management, online marketing, translation, and application testing products to some big names including Microsoft, Google and The Gap to name a few. Their main objective is to deliver consistent messaging in different languages, across their specific market and in doing that, has grown into the top-grossing language service provider in their $40.27 billion global market. 

Look to the article, to see the more in-depth information on what industry analysts are saying regarding the fairness to shareholders but one thing remains clear; With global markets growing and their interconnectivity increasing this quickly, the need to communicate with customers in their native language is key to ensuring their decision making leans in your favor. Additionally, with moves like this often comes new innovation, and I, like many others, are quite interested to see what is up Lionbridge’s sleeve once the deal is finalized in early 2017. 

The day of the article’s release, it caught the attention of Ian Truscott, Digital Marketing Authority and Growth Director at MRM Meteorite in London, UK, and he went on to share it with his 3k+ Twitter audience: 

 

Read the full article here. 

Top Web CMS Integration Firm Discusses the Upgrade Barriers

You may remember last month, I had an interview with Mark Grannan, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, to discuss When & Why to Upgrade Your CMS. In the corresponding article, we had a poll for our audience and it obtained some interesting results. I was interested to go in-depth on these, so I sat down with Heather MacFayden, Vice President and Director of Production at Falcon-Software, to discuss the barriers identified. 

With over 20 years of experience in the integration space, her thoughts were incredibly insightful, yet unique in their unclouded practicality. With cost being such an identified barrier, she suggested that organizations budget in maintenance fees as well as save for an upgrade incrementally over time, so you make upgrades more monetarily accessible if there is already a specified ‘savings’ account set aside for them. The complexity of an upgrade is something else holding a lot of organizations back to which Heather says, won’t get any less the further behind you get. However, complexities are what should be front of mind when choosing an implementation partner, to find the one who will minimize and not add to the complex nature of an upgrade, as well as one who understands the importance of thorough knowledge transfer so an organization is equipped to be as self-sufficient as they can be post launch. 

These are just a couple of the great points she addresses in her interview, so I will let her speak to the rest as she additionally expands on internal governance troubles and sheds light on a few other lesser thought of, but just as impactful barriers to a CMS upgrade. 

Read the full article here. 

The Ultimate Guide for Headless Content Management Systems

To cap off the week, we covered a topic that is a rising trend in the industry, Headless CMS. Like any emerging idea, its definition can be a little foggy so we took the approach of breaking down what it is, how it is most effectively utilized, the situations it is not an ideal fit for, and who a few of the vendors are that are making a place for themselves in the market.

While its advantages are listed and range from things like a reduced time-to-market, scalability and flexibility, Venus also goes into a discussion of where and why this approach may cause additional cost and challenges. One of the most notable potential downsides, is the risk your headless CMS may not be able to present very personalized content. With personalization being such an overwhelming necessity it feels like nowadays, this is an important thing to consider. All is not lost though, with the addition of the right business intelligence implementation you could have the best of both worlds. It may just be a situation of weighing the pros and cons of each approach, headless or not, and factoring in how many spokes of the working wheel you want to have. 

Built.io, one of the vendors Forrester mentions in their report entitled The Rise of the Headless Content Management System was also one of the two vendors Venus expanded on in her article, which they took notice of, extended their appreciation, and shared the article with their community: 

Read the full article here. 

Knowing what is on deck for us next week, has me excited to share it all with our audience so make sure you check back as the week progresses for all of our top stories!