Podcast: What is Modern WCM Without Content Intelligence?

By Gabriella Pirrone

October 26, 2018

BloomReach, content, Content Intelligence, Content Management System, Content Strategy, Hotjar, Magnificent Marketing, Podcast, WCM, Web Content Management

In this month's podcast, Laura and I hopefully help shed some light on what it means when we combine artificial intelligence with a web content management system (WCM) and how it relates to the importance and relevance of content intelligence not just as a platform but as a concept.

Using “content intelligence” is applying the “science of identifying and predicting how to put the right content in front of the right person at the right time.”  When you think of content intelligence, think of it being applicable across the entire customer journey. So at the end of the day, your customer relationship should be organically developed around trust and expertise along with “intelligent content”. It is the vehicle that represents an organization’s expertise in its industry as well as its understanding of the decisions that need to be made. 

Also, a lot of the time content intelligence is sometimes mentioned in relation to content marketing but in recently covering Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for WCM 2018 we see Gartner emphasize it as part of the overall WCM system. With the advent of intelligence becoming more and more prominent in delivering a modern digital experience, the system that houses all of your content should also be able to make use of it in offering up actionable insight on the content while it has it. 

Although I'm only giving you a glimpse of what Laura and I discuss, click below to listen to our entire conversation:

So, to start things off, I asked Laura what exactly content intelligence means and what the capabilities are that fall under the umbrella. Laura dove in to explain that “content intelligence really refers to the insight and knowledge that machines can offer based on how content is used and who’s engaging with it”. You have to also remember that’s it’s crucial with the curation of the customer journey and making sure every piece of content that is served up to the customer is the most relevant in order to keep them engaged. Of course when you think of intelligence, you also think about AI and machine learning, these should come hand in hand.

I definitely agreed that with all of the content that with all the content we are surrounded with, it’s important to keep the customer engaged. You should be thinking about why this user should be looking at YOUR content and not someone else’s and always thinking about ‘how can keep this user engaged to stay on my site?’.

In our second topic, we discuss how your web content management system is pretty much the gatekeeper to all of your content so it is imperative that the intelligence matches your content needs especially when it’s used to highly target your audience base.

A really interesting fact that I mention is Forrester actually reported that 72% of US consumers online would much prefer using the internet to obtain an answer to a question instead of contacting the consumer directly by email or telephone. So with that right there, it’s telling us that our content needs to be exceptional, as we know.

Laura made the point that you have to remember that your WCM is touching every other system when it comes to content and serving it up to every touchpoint on the other end of technologies in your stack so really that's where the intelligence should start.

I also mention that it’s really important for your WCM to store all your content in a way that makes sense for an editor. Remember, they are the ones who are back there constantly making changes and updates so it’s important to have it as seamless and user friendly as possible. Having your content easily accessible in the backend will make things really make sense from a reader’s perspective on the front end as well.

Our third topic covers what the greatest benefits are of being able to really infuse intelligence into the WCM platform and strategy. This topic actually reminded us a lot of BloomReach Connect 2018 that we  just attended a couple weeks ago in San Francisco. Raj De Datta, the CEO and Co-Founder of BloomReach said in his opening keynote that in today’s day and age we are surrounded by so much intelligence and software, this is when you really want to look at your content strategy and think “This is what we need to do more of, and again what we need to do less of” as Laura mentions. Especially when it comes to upgrades of systems, tons of organizations of every size accumulate an abundance of content.

My last question to Laura was how she thinks this will affect internal digital teams and she made very good estimate by saying that a good idea is to really marry your IT team and marketing team to leverage both attributes on either sides.  

We then turned to our audience who submitted questions via email. We had a great one come in from Dennis Shiao, a well-known marketing consultant in the industry with a deep expertise in the content marketing space. He asked us a really great question “How can a marketer measure whether content intelligence is working?” Laura quickly and accurately answered the question saying in part, of course increased engagement is huge and is what every marketer wants to look at. But in terms of actually seeing the results you want, “I would look at perhaps different devices”. Laura says to see what content is working best on mobile let's say and then how you can make content more engaging for the customer on every channel.

Dennis’ question actually tied in well with our next question from David Reimherr, the Founder of Magnificent Marketing and the host of his own Magnificent Marketing Podcast. He asked us “What sort of data should you bring into your initial content discussion?” There’s no right answer to this question as you can never have enough data when it comes to content marketing but if you can think of a way to effectively use the data then that’s probably the most important thing. “Obviously content analytics are key but also look at what the different technologies in your tech stack have to say about engagement and conversion” says Laura.

What’s Next

Using technology to connect all the dots with one powerful solution can also help you identify how visitors are really using your website by collecting that user feedback and data. Using Hotjar for example can really leave the guess work out of finding out how my users are engaging with your site or page which in turn can turn those visitors into customers.

Thanks so much for listening to our second installment of our podcast. If you have any thoughts you would like to add feel free to reach out to us on our social channels or if there are topics you’d like us to cover in the near future, please let us know! And stay tuned for our next episode where we will be discussing the world of digital marketing.
 

Gabriella Pirrone

Gabriella is the Digital Marketing Assistant for CMSC Media. She brings a wealth of knowledge from not only a CMS perspective but also content, SEO and eCommerce. She enjoys everything social media and staying ontop of the latest trends in the digital marketing world.