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Affiliate Content Sharingin a CMS/WCM World

December, 2009

Shawn P. Simon, Enterprise ArchitectOshyn, Inc.

Content Sharing offers significant value by repurposing contentthat has been authored only once to be syndicated to otherwebsites. Each content sharing style provides advantages andchallenges; understanding how to evaluate the utility of eachstyle is Integral to a successful content sharing or syndicationstrategy.

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Affiliate Content Sharingin a CMS/WCM World

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

1.0 CMS Approaches to Content Sharing 4

2.0 Single Project 62.1 Authoring 6

2.2 Advantages 62.3 Challenges 63.0 Reference Templates 7

3.1 Authoring 7

3.2 Advantages 7

3.3 Challenges 74.0 Embedded Mashups 8

4.1 Authoring 8

4.2 Advantages 8

4.3 Challenges 85.0 Subscription Feeds 9

5.1 Authoring 9

5.2 Advantages 95.3 Challenges 10

About Shawn P. Simon 11

About Oshyn 11

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Introduction

Many companies face issues when affiliate websites such as local chapters of organizations, franchisees or state affiliates want to use some of the samecontent published by the national website. However, sharing this content oftenrequires manual distribution and manual uploading to the affiliate website asthere are no content sharing distribution mechanisms in place. Often times theaffiliate website uses a different Content Management System, differenthardware, different website functionality, different website layout and adifferent hierarchy for making changes to website content. National websitescan use a syndication tool to automatically share content with affiliate websitesdespite these challenges. In this white paper Shawn Simon discusses severalmethods of creating such a tool depending on the relationship between thewebsite that originally authors the website and the content will be delivered to.

Using a content sharing tool can be used to generate business value by:

Building better relationships with affiliate organizations

Ensuring brand continuity

Keeping relevant up-to-date content on affiliate websites

Reducing the cost of sharing content with other websites

Creating revenue generation opportunities

Improving SEO of affiliate websites

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1.0 CMS Approaches to Content Sharing

Content sharing refers to a “source” website having pertinent content orfunctionality of which should be “shared” with another website, the “target”.

The significant value-add for content sharing is that content published on thesource site needs only to be authored once, then syndicated allowing targetsites to share the content on their site exactly as it appears on the source.Moreover any updates by the source, to the content being shared, could besystematically reflected on all interested targets.

There are many styles of integration for the purpose of sharing content fromone website to another. Oshyn, Inc. special izes in CMS design andimplementation with an emphasis on integration and Web 2.0 technologies.

As such, Oshyn has been involved in several projects focusing on content

sharing. For the purpose of this document, it is helpful to categorize the typesof sharing common to enterprise and the general approaches for each.

Oshyn distinguishes first by the type of relationship the source website haswith its target website: as in the “Affiliate” model and the “Partner” model. Anaffiliate is an organization, company, or business unit that is closely associatedwith the parent entity (source). In these cases, often the affiliate will share alarge percentage of the parent content, including styles, templates, navigationas well as function ality and content. Examples of common affiliates arenational chains, franchises, local entities managed regionally, etc.

On the other hand, a partner is an organization, company, or business unitthat is more independent from the source then an affiliat e. Partners usuallyhave their own focus and business model but intend to leverage the servicesof the source company. Typically, the partner site will only require sharing asmall targeted area of the source site. In these cases, the partner will typicallyretain ownership of its own navigation, styles, templates but need to pull infunctional ity or content from another source. Examples of common partnersare portal pages, service providers, resellers, etc.

Oshyn further delineates these models by separating them into coupled ordetached targets. A coupled model is one where the target site is closelyconnected to the source in terms of technologies, hosting, software anddecision making. Coupled models are common with centrally managedaffili ates in a co-location. Detached targets are those where the there is nocritical overlap of technology, hosting, software, geography or d ecision makingfrom the source to the target.