Proprietary Content Management System Blues?

I get a lot of calls from clients concerned about a web development company they hired to provide content management software for them. People generally see software as a product like a desk, or car, and figure you buy it and it acts like a tool for you.

They couldn't be more wrong. Software is a service, and this is becoming increasingly true as our online technology evolves rapidly to meet the creativity and demands of the users.

Web companies that offer content management systems need to be seen as partners, not vendors. Get to know them well before engaging in business because you'll be linked to them for a long time. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, particularly if your success is their success, and you both work towards mutual benefit. If control is your thing, look at hiring in house talent and make sure a solid accountability and transparency structure is in place so you don't become hamstrung by an IT "silo" inside your company.

Large corporations offer software solutions in the "Cloud" but you need to have a person independent of the corporation that is on your side and in the know so again you don't become linked to a company who might diverge from or even become hostile toward your bottom line. Wow, I'm sounding all business jargon-y!

Here is some advice I wrote to a potential client today:

"Don't invest in technology, invest in people.

If you have a relationship with an existing company, invest in that relationship, and structure your contract so that everyone benefits from your mutual success. Think of software is a service, not a product.

E-learning specialty products I build are like RSS feed readers, quiz and assessment objects, simulations in video, animation and 3d virtual worlds etc. All of my stuff can be integrated into blogger, ning, typepad, youtube etc.

My immediate advice to you would be to start a blog that shares helpful stories and tips about what you do to your prospective audience. Then, create a facebook page or group and post links to your blog there, and try to get customers and friends to join it.
Then, start a twitter account and post links to your blog on twitter every time you post a new one. Once established, these tasks shouldnt take more than 20-30 minutes a week and will provide you with huge marketing.

If you are having fun with that and find it rewarding, create a youtube channel and start posting helpful videos you film yourself about what you do and how to help people. The vast majority of your training should be free, and your premium training should be specialized beyond what you offer online. Go with the intent to help people and wealth will follow. It always does.

All of these things you can do yourself and they will not work in opposition to your website, they will only help it. Your effort should be focussed on helping people, not picking colors or deciding logos. You can pay a designer $1000 to do that and basically move on quickly.

Avoid giving advice or writing general info privately. Keep your online conversations public in the comments section of your blog and many will benefit."

Hope that helps, please leave comments below if you agree or disagree, or have something to add that might help the readers.

If you are looking for great CMS solutions, check out ning.com, joomla.com and facebook fan pages/groups are excellent tools. Blogger, typepad, and youtube are also excellent tools that all integrate with the others I mentioned and provide great cross referencing to increase your "google juice" (thats TM Jeff Jarvis).

Twitter is even a CMS in a way, it manages real time tiny bites of content that can also point to and help promote your other more "meaty" content.

If you need special functionality that these systems don't necessarily offer, try to find ways or people who can build widgets that integrate with these tools and you'll be better off than building something from scratch - unless you really can bankroll and fund the ongoing maintenance of a big system - and that is your core business...but even then, interoperability is always beneficial.

Remember, successful businesses see their people, not their software as their most precious asset and invest in their collective "brain trust" to ensure coping with change will be easy. Software then supports that relationship and is by nature light on its feet and only built to handle what is necessary, not over-encumbered with "just in case" or "because we can" code.

Good Luck!