Content Management Tidbits

Browsing through job listings you can see that companies look either for a Content Manager or a Web Content Manager. Is there any difference between the two?

No. I mean, yes.

No, because Content Managers were born more or less with the first big wave of corporate websites.
Yes, because, in time, companies with a vision realized that managing web content can’t be really detached from the task of managing the whole content produced within a company.

Those companies understand the pivotal importance of centralizing their content: communication-wise, of course, but also money-wise. I will deal with the economic aspect of this process later: now I just want to stress the importance of having a strong unified strategy when the means of communicating with people tend to multiply. Websites, intranets, corporate blogs, newsletters, forums, but also brochures, houseorgans, direct mailing, press releases. Can you imagine so many heads delivering so many different forms of content without a unified strategy? In the best case scenario (where there are no redundancies, or, worse, inconsistencies) the overall time spent by all heads involved will be anti-economic for the company. The worst case scenario (well depicted by the analogy of silos in Managing Enterprise Content by Ann Rockley) is so scary I will have to devote multiple posts to give a faint idea of the horror.

So, back to the differences:

• do we always need a Web Content Manager? Yes, if you are a company and you want your Internet presence to be at least not damaging;
• do we always need a Content Manager? Yes, if you are a company and you want your content to be effective and consistent, and you don’t want to invest (and lose) loads of money on producing it;
• do they have to be different persons? No, not necessarily. It depends on the size and on the type of the organization the company has.