Websites may look awesome to begin with, but without trained content authors, your website viewers will soon be boycotting your website due to a lack of fresh content. To avoid this, content authors should be trained on how to effectively use a Content Management System (CMS) to ensure the content is well managed and is up-to-date. Once a CMS author gains the knowledge and skills required to update the website they will be empowered to keep the website up-to-date with fresh content. This article explains my approach to training content authors and the benefits that being well trained in using a CMS can deliver.
First of all, what is a CMS? A CMS is a system used to maintain a website’s content including videos, images and text via a secure interface. There are many CMS’s in the market and each is unique in the way it works. To get the most out of a CMS it is important the key end-users are trained on how to use it.
Often CMS training is an after-thought at the project planning stage of a website. By the time the website is launched it is unclear to the end-users of the CMS how the content will be updated. This can be avoided by planning to run a CMS training session prior to the website being launched. The best time to have the training session is when the website is released for User Acceptance Testing (UAT). This gives the end-users adequate time to familiarise themselves with the CMS prior to the website going live.
Updating a website’s content can be quite daunting for some people who often fear breaking a webpage. In my experience, CMS training can help alleviate those fears by empowering content authors to feel confident enough to make changes and knowing if they break something it can always be fixed.
We have our own proprietary CMS called DTD.Manage. It is quite simple to use yet powerful with many tips and tricks to make managing content a simple task. In saying that, we also provide training sessions to ensure our clients can get the most out of their CMS. When conducting training sessions, I have developed my own methods which seem to turn relatively complex tasks into easy tasks. When I run my CMS training sessions they are always face-to-face. This way I can ensure the key end-users fully understand what I am teaching and I can adjust my teaching style to suit. The following is my process for running CMS training sessions:
- Run through a demo of the CMS showing the key tasks
- Question time
- Training activities of the most complex tasks which can include:
- copying word content into a WYSIWYG and formatting it correctly
- creating a new CMS security group and adding a user to it
- creating new pages and assigning a template to them
- Question time
By showing a demonstration of the CMS, the end-users can see a high level overview of how it works. When they jump into the training activities it is a great chance to test out their newly acquired skills and ask any questions. I also find that it is a great bonding experience for the participants as they end up helping each other out with the training activities.
So what are the common questions I get asked during my training sessions?
Does the content I submit go live straight away? Yes! Be careful what you put out there because in most cases it is visible straight away.
Can I update all of the content on my website? In most cases the answer is yes. There are however instances where content cannot be updated such as the navigation and other elements that don’t need to be updated. This depends on the setup and configuration of the CMS. For example, users can update general copy but can’t update the structure of the website.
Why don’t you want me to be able to change the font size/colour/style of the text? When we create a website much thought goes into the design and look/feel of the website. The CMS is simply a place where content can be added and updated. The styling is already inbuilt as to maintain consistency of the website. Normally this is determined by a style guide.
Once the training session is complete content authors are empowered and can’t wait to update their website content in the live environment! The bonus for businesses is that they will have a great looking website with powerful content that grabs attention. This in turn becomes a powerful marketing tool.