Content PromotionContent Promotion

Most of the sites we manage, promoting content is satisfied by using the default Drupal Core components with a couple contributed modules.

Sometimes, content promotion requires amore complicated solution.

Promotion TypesPromotion Types

I'd like to examine the meaning of promotion before we get into solving how content management systems can do it.

Chess PromotionChess Promotion

Promotion is a chess rule describing the transformation of a pawn that reaches its eighth rank into the player's choice of a queen, knight, rook, or bishop of the same color.

What path does content follow?

Can we identify when a piece of content has no other direction to go?

Can we 'promote' content that has hit the wall?

How do we determine what the wall is?

Rank PromotionRank Promotion

A promotion is the advancement of an employee's rank or position in an organizational hierarchy system.

That's not how Content Promotes

Content is Demoted over time as it becomes less relevant.

What if we Rank our content for Promotability?

Extra NuggetExtra Nugget

The Peter Principle is the principle that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence".

Sports Promotion and RelegationSports Promotion and Relegation In many sports leagues around the world, promotion and

relegation is a process that takes place at the end of each season.

Through it, teams are transferred between divisions based on their performance that season.

The best-ranked teams in each division are promoted to the next-highest division, and at the same time, the worst-ranked teams in the higher division are relegated to the lower division.

This process may continue down through several levels, with teams being exchanged between levels 1 and 2, levels 2 and 3, levels 3 and 4, and so on.

Sometimes, qualifying rounds are used to promote and relegate.

How does content compete?

Is 'voting' useful for promoting content on our sites?

Could GA play a role?

Marketing PromotionMarketing Promotion

Promotion is one of the four elements of marketing mix (product, price, promotion, distribution).

It is the communication link between sellers and buyers for the purpose of influencing, informing, or persuading a potential buyer's purchasing decision.

Types of Marketing PromotionTypes of Marketing Promotion

Above the line promotion: the advertiser pays an advertising agency to place the ad in the media

Below the line promotion: All other promotion. Much of this is intended to be subtle enough for the consumer to be unaware that promotion is taking place. E.g. sponsorship, product placement, endorsements, sales promotion, merchandising, direct mail, personal selling, public relations, trade shows

How do we plan to do the unexpected?

The PromoterThe Promoter

'Promotion' also describes a role which entails management, advertising and logistics of running an event.

Default Drupal Promotion SetupDefault Drupal Promotion Setup

Core Publish Settings Taxonomy Add on Modules

Promoted to Home PagePromoted to Home Page

A boolean value for a promoting a node to the home page.

The core system, by default, lists nodes on the home page when checked to promote to home page.

I have used this boolean for purposes NOT exclusive to promoting to the home page.

Sticky at top of listsSticky at top of lists

Another Publishing option A boolean value for ordering nodes in lists The Core Drupal will list Sticky nodes at the

beginning of the list on the home page. I have used this boolean for purposes NOT

exclusive to make a node appear at the top of lists.

TaxonomyTaxonomy

Very flexible system for categorizing posts Promote content to landing pages using

taxonomy and the promoted to home page boolean

Setup a custom vocabulary specifically for promoting items. i.e. Terms: Promote to Home Page Slideshow, Promote to Home Page News, Promote to etc.

WorkflowWorkflow

Workflow is very similar to Taxonomy Workflow seems like a more natural fit for

Promotion.

Node QueueNode Queue

Lets you select nodes to list in a specific queue. List items from the queue where ever you want. Make a queue for the home page first read,

only display items that are in the node queue

Custom Publish SettingsCustom Publish Settings

Lets you add additional publishing settings into the Publishing options fieldset.

Use these custom booleans to further refine the promotion around the site.

Our ExamplesOur Examples

What are our current strategies, in practice? How do we make it better?

CCR JusticeCCR Justice

First Read

News Highlights

Landing Pages

Hunger CoalitionHunger Coalition

First Read

Custom Blocks

Landing Pages

Theatre AllianceTheatre Alliance

First Read

Headlines

Job Listings

Slideshows

PlanPhillyPlanPhilly

Several First Read Options

Highlights

Headlines

Event Block

Related Content Block

Landing Pages

ComplicationsComplications

Limiting Promote to … Sorting Scheduling Intuitiveness

LimitingLimiting

Limiting how many nodes that can be tagged as promote to home page.

What if you have a first read designed to handle 4 posts only? When you tag a boolean what happens to the oldest or 5th item? It does not get automatically untagged as promote.

This becomes a problem when you want to exclude promoted posts from another view on the same page.

Node Queue does bump an item out of the queue if a limit is set.

We could write a Rule which handles this.

Promote to …Promote to …

The logic begins to get cloudy if you need to promote a node to different pages or blocks on the home page.

Node Queue can do this by creating separate Queues for your distinct locations.

You can use cck and taxonomy, but shouldn't it be part of a Promotion scheme?

SortingSorting

Sorting can't be done unique to the promotion.

i.e. must use existing node fields

Node Queue has custom sorting per queue.

SchedulingScheduling

Set the promotion to automatically change based on user configured dates per node.

Workflow schedules it's changes. Rules could be configured to schedule.

IntuitivenessIntuitiveness

You get used to the Drupal publish settings Node Queue has extra clicks and the sorting is

difficult to find for the infrequent modification Workflow is the best UI, but you can only use

one workflow per node. Inline editing would rock

Content PromotionContent Promotion

A clear label for each state of promotion Specific locations to be promoted to Limits for each distinct location Easy to reorder promoted posts per location Scheduling to allow changes in promotion

automatically

Another ApproachAnother Approach

Use Promotion Ranks, Ranges and Positions as key data points for managing node promotion.

Ranks organize content from Most Promotable to Least.

Ranges identify when content will be promoted/demoted.

Positions place content in specific locations. Weight would also be a component of positions.