Determining a Content Management Strategy

Now that you have a high-level understanding of Liferay's CMS capabilities, the next crucial step is determining how you’ll use it. A content management strategy outlines how your organization plans to create, deliver, manage, and govern content to align with specific business objectives. Developing a strategy before diving into content creation can help avoid inefficient, ad hoc processes down the line and ensure your content is purposeful, consistent, manageable, effective, and compliant.

This article explores general strategic considerations, while later lessons will explore how to apply specific Liferay CMS features to particular content management challenges and use cases.

Key Strategic Considerations

When determining your content management strategy with Liferay, several key factors require careful consideration. Evaluating these factors can help you make informed decisions about how to best leverage the Liferay’s CMS capabilities.

Aligning with Business Objectives

Ensure your content strategy directly supports key business objectives like lead generation or customer support. Define specific, measurable goals for your content – quantifiable targets trackable via Liferay Analytics. This focus on measurable outcomes proves content value and facilitates data-driven optimization using features like A/B testing and personalization.

Analyzing the Target Audience

Who are you trying to reach with your content? Define your target audience segments, personas, and their specific contexts or needs. A deep understanding of your users should inform your choices regarding content types, tone of voice, delivery channels, and information structure. Liferay enables you to act on these insights directly; you can deliver highly relevant experiences by defining user segments based on profile data or behavior captured by Analytics, and then use content page experiences to deliver tailored content variations to those different segments.

Defining Content Scope and Requirements

From the start, identify the types of content you'll need for your solution. This enables you to plan a coherent organizational structure and begin translating your requirements into specific web content structures and document types. Additionally, you can determine whether you have any unique, data-centric needs that are better modeled using object definitions. With your content models clearly defined, you can then effectively plan appropriate workflow processes and determine the best storage strategy for your solution (e.g., sites, asset libraries).

Establishing Roles, Responsibilities, and Team Structure

Clearly identify the necessary roles within your content process (e.g., author, editor, publisher, strategist, subject matter expert, administrator). Define distinct responsibilities for each role and plan how teams will collaborate on content creation, review, and management. Liferay’s robust role-based access control (RBAC) system enables you to implement this structure effectively. You should define roles (Regular, Site, Asset Library, Organization) that mirror your identified responsibilities, assign granular Permissions for specific actions on relevant applications or assets (create, edit, review, publish, etc.), and leverage teams for efficient role management. You can even use these roles for task assignment in your workflows.

Implementing a Governance Framework

Establish clear rules and processes to ensure content quality, consistency, and compliance. For example, you can define strict web content structures for articles and document types with required fields to ensure you capture necessary data. Then you can create reusable templates and fragments to standardize content presentation.

Additionally, you can implement custom approval cycles using Liferay's Workflow engine to manage content review, translation approvals, and multi-step publication processes. This helps ensure quality, accountability, and compliance before content goes live. You can also employ Liferay’s publishing tools for controlled updates to live environments, track changes with content versioning, and use roles and permissions to control who can access your data and perform specific actions.

Identifying Environmental Dependencies

Assess your current technical environment to identify constraints and requirements. For example, your hosting architecture and requirements may dictate which Liferay publishing setup you use (e.g., remote staging). This assessment should also include any necessary integrations with external content systems (e.g., CRM, DAMs). Throughout this process, also consider how current infrastructure capabilities or performance goals might influence Liferay configuration choices related to features like Search and caching. Understanding these technical factors upfront helps ensure your strategy is feasible and avoids potential roadblocks during implementation.

Planning for the Future

Your initial strategy is just the starting point; content management is an ongoing process, not a one-time setup. Therefore, design your implementation with future evolution explicitly in mind. Anticipate future needs such as growth in content volume, new content types, team reorganizations, or changing business goals. Avoid shortcuts that seem faster initially but create long-term obstacles. For example, relying solely on the default web content structure or embedding content directly in page fragments make central updates, content reuse, and granular permissioning significantly more difficult.

Instead, build flexibility into your implementation from the start. Create adaptable content models, develop scalable taxonomy classifications and file structures. Leverage Asset Libraries strategically for reusable resources, and implement permissions thoughtfully using Liferay's RBAC system.

Be aware that teams focused solely on initial project delivery might sometimes overlook long-term adaptability. It's crucial for project stakeholders to champion designs that prioritize not just immediate requirements but also future flexibility and ease of maintenance, ensuring the solution remains effective as the business evolves. Focusing only on immediate project requirements can create significant roadblocks later.

Applying Strategy to Clarity

Applying these consideration to Clarity Vision Solutions can guide their Liferay DXP implementation.

• Business Objectives: Clarity aims to use their website content primarily to generate qualified leads and reduce customer support costs through effective self-service content (e.g., FAQs, policies, documentation). They can define measurable KPIs that they can track using Liferay Analytics Cloud.
• Target Audience: They need to cater to multiple distinct audiences across the globe, which requires personalization to deliver relevant content and experiences effectively. They can implement this using Liferay’s segmentation capabilities and content page experiences.
• Role and Governance: With multiple teams involved, Clarity needs to effectively manage collaboration while ensuring content quality and consistency. They must clearly define specific content roles and responsibilities using Liferay's RBAC system. Additionally, to maintain brand voice and accuracy, they should leverage Liferay workflows to establish and enforce the necessary review and approval processes.
• Content Scope and Models: Clarity must identify their core content needs, including product specifications, support documentation, marketing articles, and regional promotions. They should implement these content requirements as web content structures and document types. Additionally, their storage strategy should ensure content is accessible and reusable across their sites.
• Designing for Evolution: Clarity must plan beyond immediate needs, anticipating future requirements, such as content structures for new product lines or dedicated resources and functionality for their growing distributor network. This strategic thinking helps Clarity align their Liferay implementation with their long-term business goals, ensuring the platform can adapt alongside the company.

By planning these aspects upfront, Clarity sets the stage for a successful Liferay implementation aligned with their goals.

Conclusion

Developing a comprehensive Content Management Strategy is not just about choosing tools; it's about defining goals, understanding users, planning processes, and anticipating the future. By carefully considering these key factors, you can make informed decisions and configure Liferay DXP's powerful CMS features effectively.

Next, you’ll explore key Liferay storage options and considerations.