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Part 3 in Glide's three-part series to finding your perfect content publishing system.
Do you craft your editorial products to the needs of your audiences, or to suit the limitations of an old CMS? You would not be unique if it is the latter - a CMS can easily become one of the most restrictive factors in what you actually produce.
But there is a rising belief in publishing and content management that a CMS should be a proactive tool which drives change and accelerates launches, and gives you high capability from day one with all of its features ready to go, no dev needed. The clock is ticking for old systems, especially DIY setups that require you to do customisation and maintenance.
We've been in your shoes when it comes to old CMS, in product, editorial, and technology teams at publishing companies, working around the minefield of a bespoked CMS that is out of its comfort zone, fighting to get the basic features a big publishing business will actually need, and to launch new things in spite of the hurdles we faced.
But it's 2024: the build-your-own-CMS game isn't sustainable for publishers at a time when readers and audiences demand more variety and speed than ever.
That's what prompted us to throw away a perfectly good publisher CMS to create a better one from scratch and double down on giving publishers and media companies the tools they need out of the box, in a turnkey always-on SaaS that never needs bespoking or maintaining by users. Publishers today have to spend their effort on the stuff that matters — audiences and business goals.
In part three in our series to helping you find your perfect content publishing system, we look at how to leverage this new paradigm to its maximum in editorial and publishing product development, and also how to work around some of the shortcomings of your old systems.
One of the most frustrating occurrences in product development is when a Proof of Concept or Minimum Viable Product - a dummy, in olde worlde editorial terms - elicits a fantastic customer reaction, but can't justify its cost of launch because of prohibitive development hurdles to make it into your product suite.
The Agile Alliance, a consortium sharing best practices and knowledge in agile development, say MVPs should let you gauge customer interest without the cost of full development, yielding insight quickly and cheaply compared to a full-scale commitment.
As such many digital MVPs are simply Photoshop or Figma mockups that simulate a new site and its flow, or a single-page website whose sole task is to test the waters of a concept. Nothing actually works.
In this scenario, ideas for new launches can be conceptualised very quickly. Sounds great! But the wheels can come off when it comes to working out how to build the proposed product, and then modify the existing back-end to make it all work. That's when it gets complicated and expensive, and the great ideas get shelved.
In publishing and media projects, MVPs are typically created in sterile conditions because the production CMS(s) underpinning everything is the unsteerable supertanker laden with precious cargo — real data, real content — and just too risky and expensive to slow down or modify on the move.
Hmm. Can you now see why so many promising MVPs end up DOA?
Times have changed however. The new breed of cloud CMS services promote launch capability by allowing new product development on production tooling. Modular and agile, adaptable and scalable, such systems are flexible enough to experiment with, and scalable enough to run the biggest production projects. They allow the dream scenario where a successful MVP can be slid into the production workflow with minimal impact and no back-end modification needed.
They let you test MVP and PoCs in a real-world setting, even to use real data, workflows, and staff. How transformational would this be to you? It removes major background blockers to new product dev and lets you focus on customer-facing innovations. The advantages are many, but — aside from lower costs — we personally think the biggest benefit to our industry is speed of idea to launch: launch 75% quicker or even better.
What could you do with that extra time?
No-one can guarantee success for new launches, but we can help you in convincing one of the other most important groups of people key to new launches: your colleagues.
Publishing has always been a team game. Journalists, editors, producers, technology teams, commerce department, marketing teams, and distribution wings all rely on each other to keep the show on the road, and audiences to make it sustainable.
Where do you and your product team fit in? Probably everywhere, perhaps with the widest range of touchpoints and the most reliant on other teams to succeed. Their blockers become your blockers. so a little foresight and knowing what causes them pain can work wonders in keeping them on side.
For editorial, imposing ideas on them without their consultation will mean missing out on crucial insight into impacts on their workflows and workload. If you unexpectedly ramp up demands on a busy editorial team, cooperation will be hard to win. If your new product idea needs content to work - the editorial team should be your first sit-down.
The technical and development teams also want to know ASAP what's on your mind. Like editorial, they can flag up blockers out of your eyesight: technical barriers are poison to new product development and it costs nothing to ask what's possible. Getting an early thumbs-up from those who have to turn your idea into reality could be what keeps it out of that dreaded DOA pile.
Third in the vital trio is the commercial department. In publishing, product success can be measured in many ways, but the one which adds the most gunpowder to your ammunition is having a cheerleader in the commercial team. If it will make money, you have a powerful friend.
With these three heavyweights in your corner, you are speed-running your ideas forward. Then, it's up to you to see if your audience likes it.
Good luck!
Here is a quiz to perhaps try out at work: who do you think knows your company's main CMS better — you and your product team, or the editorial team, or your tech team?
This is more than just some thought experiment. In publishing, new launches and ideas rely on product, technology, and editorial teams working alongside one another. They all benefit from knowing how the CMS really works - and typically none of them completely do.
Many old-style publishing and news CMS seem more like an Indiana Jones puzzle than something nimble and helpful for product dev, a technological boondoggle built up over years and filled with threat and traps. In that scenario, you tend to learn what you need to and treat everything else with circumspection.
However, times have changed. In The Era of the New CMS - specialist publishing platforms and headless CMs for news and media companies - we advise editorial teams to train key superusers to know all the system's superpowers to the same level as their tech colleagues do. This same advice is true for the product teams too: have a CMS specialist who understands its principles and capabilities if you are all to leverage it best.
So, nominate or become the person who knows your CMS's full capability - and stay in the loop on its new features and powers. Then you will see the possibilities unfold in front of your eyes, as you and your editorial colleagues intersect to reach far better outcomes.
Have you seen the YouTube channel 5 Minute Crafts? With more than 80m subscribers it's a YouTube global Top 20 channel, totalling more than 250M subscribers and followers across all major socials, and is crammed with "tips" implying everyday items can solve almost every imaginable problem.
Camera lens scratched? Rub it with toothpaste! (Don't!). Have frizzy hair? Brush whipped cream through it! (Eww...). Can't cut a watermelon in half? Use your car's electric window! (And immediately book a valet.): it's Home Economics according to The A-Team.
We're not commenting on the content - a whole cottage industry of other YouTubers already does - but under all the clickbait (and humour) is perhaps what people are really clicking for: well-known things having surprising new uses.
What's your equivalent of that? Data lists, product reviews, archived long-tail content, content by author or expertise, whitepapers, case studies, galleries, images, ratings, guides, features, videos and more. All could drive new products and new channels. For many content operations, vast volumes of content is used once or twice and then drops out of circulation. Let's bring it back with a new lease of life.
Embed lots of videos in articles? You might have plenty to collate and curate a new video section — all grouped together and categorised nicely. Great for SEO and site authority. The same goes for audio, galleries, and more. Lists, ratings, topic pages — all can drive new sections and add power to your voice. And much of it will be perfect for — and probably expected by — paid or premium readers and members.
New CMS services let you think more aggressively about new launches, knowing you don't need to reinvent back-end tech to test them out.
Historically your new launches might have required all-new content created. But now the scene is set to create new products from existing and archive content.
If you spent years wearing heavy boots to plough through mud and mulch, it will feel strange being on solid ground in sprinter's spikes. It takes a while to adjust, and your old running times are no guide to your true pace.
It's much the same in product development. If you have spent years working round an ageing or hobbled CMS and within its limitations, be sure to recalibrate your expectations of achievability and delivery when you get a new modern publishing CMS.
It would be a shame if, instead of testing and building faster with your new tech, old methods and delivery rates were maintained simply through organisational inertia.
Our advice: start small, and start incremental. Look for small micro-projects that can be created and driven forward quickly, probably using existing content and in existing channels.
Keep these projects discrete and start to track how quickly they can be executed. Get a feel for new project velocity and for the resources freed-up by the new CMS, and for what your people can turn round when no CMS dev is required.
For a business a new CMS can be a Big Bang to change the entirety of how it operates.
For Product Teams, it can be a time for lots and lots of little bangs.
This is part 3 of Glide's three-part series to finding your perfect publishing system.
Part 1 - Tech teams: Seven secrets to doing your CMS right
Part 2 - Editorial teams: How to get better a CMS and better results
See how the Glide headless CMS enables your tech, editorial and product teams focus on business objectives, not broken technology. Request a demo today.
No matter where you are on your CMS journey, we're here to help. Want more info or to see Glide Publishing Platform in action? We got you.
Book a demo
