A Content Management System (CMS) is a publishing system that allows marketers and copywriters to manage web content without the aid of an html designer. There are many open source content management platforms to choose from that can be integrated into existing infrastructure at minimal cost. Finding the balance between publishing features and ease of use is by far the biggest challenge in selecting a CMS. A successful content management platform will encourage marketers to produce fresh web content publication through ease of use and search engine optimization.

Open source content management system choices include JOOMLA and Open Souce CMS, which are free to license and can be customized to suit design and functional requirements. The blogging tool WordPress can also easily be configured to be used as a lightweight and extensible content management system. There are many advantages to using WordPress as a content management system because is it widely used, and has a large developer community which creates new management plug-ins that are generally stable and freely available. WordPress is supported by a number of quality desktop publishing tools that make the task of content management such more pleasurable than using a web interface.

For the most part, any given content management system (CMS) has built-in system infrastructure for SEO consideration, but content writers should be aware of best practices for including relevant key terms frequently throughout copy that is published to the system. By using a content management system in conjunction with a traffic analytics tool, such as Google Analytics, content writers can rely on data models to gauge the success of their efforts and make system adjustments as needed, including revising written content to increase keyword density.

Many companies are turning to blogging as a way to generate fresh and engaging content. Blogs articles are inexpensive to create due to the informal nature of the medium and provide a timely source of information about a bussiness not typically found in traditional marketing media.

Searching for Stock Photography

February 18, 2008

Generally during a design project I will look to Getty Images or iStockphoto for photography to incorporate into the web site design. Getty hands down has the best image search feature available and I often uses their tools to distill the terms of my search even if I take those terms to another stock image site. A case in point is last month I was looking for photos of oil field workers for a client that is in hydraulic fracture stimulation.

I first turned to iStockphoto because they have better pricing and if a search there turns up some quality graphics, I save the client a few bucks. After seeing limited results for "oil field worker" and "oil worker", I eventually turned the terms of "worker" and "workman" to find the type of photos I required. When I enter the original terms into Getty's engine, it immediately retrieved the term "roughneck". Of course! Roughneck! I returned to iStockPhoto with the keyword "roughneck" which revealed more suitable images than I was able to find initially.