You may think your CMS already does a good job at assisting your various editorial and publishing processes, but there’s probably a lot more it can do for you.
Admittedly, the solutions we’re about to present will depend on the type of content you publish and the size and type of your operations. New businesses may benefit the most from simply going beyond basic CMS templates and customizing dashboards and workflows to match specific publishing tasks.
More established enterprises on the other hand, with existing custom CMS builds in place, will benefit from more sophisticated solutions that help their websites adapt and scale, handling and potential bottlenecks or inefficiencies more effectively.
We’ve outlined the top 8 ways your CMS can support your editorial and publishing efforts.
1. Content creation
While your CMS won’t be able to do everything your marketing team can, it can get everything in place so that when it comes to actualling creating your content, the process is a lot smoother. This can include content templates and layouts, as well as suggested topics and links that can be used to speed up the writing process.
In addition to gathering new data from predefined sources, your CMS can help you compile reports or updates based on existing templates. Some publishing entities even choose their editorial angles based on suggestions made by their CMS based on how users interact with published content.
2. Content distribution
Having the right CMS in place is probably the best way to ensure you can distribute your content across the many multiple platforms and technologies that exists today. This might be a pressing requirement if you are growing as a publishing brand and you’ve made the decision to deliver content across new channels.
A Headless CMS can help you to deliver unique content across different devices, screens and outputs, without the need to develop fresh content each time. As long as you integrate APIs that convert your raw data into different formats, you can access almost any channel with your content, if your CMS is set up in the right way.
3. User management
The larger you grow, the more people will be using your CMS. From staff writers, contributors, editors to senior members of staff, each person will require specific tools to complete their jobs. Furthermore, they’ll want to see things from a certain perspective without the confusion of navigating multiple functions and settings to do what they need.
The best CMS designs offer a unique experience and workflow for each member of your marketing team, supporting their role and reducing the production time necessary for content. Items can also be viewed batches if necessary by executives who are looking for an overarching view of performance, and those who are involved in analytics, can be given a dedicated dashboard from which to see this information.
4. Polishing your content (fact checking)
Polished content is good content. As well as making sure you’re free of grammar and spelling mistakes, you’ll want to tidy up any meta crumbs that could impact your SEO score. Broken links and page errors for instance will be registered by Google and will affect how your site is ranked. These can be picked up quite easily with the right CMS tools in place, which can also help to optimise link networks and site navigation.
Your CMS can also make sure your content doesn’t go out of date by notifying you of any stories that go beyond a certain life-span. This will allow you to get rid of redundant, trivial or out-of-date content while protecting your appearance as a trend-conscious, up-to-date publishing entity.
5. User behaviour feedback
Your CMS is naturally the central hub of your marketing activities. As such, it is a great place to track and store data about user behaviour. With the right analytics tools installed, you can monitor the kind of topics and subjects that are trending, in order to adapt your editorial approach from week to week.
This information can also be harnessed through promotions and offers. Ultimately, if you know what interests users, you can use this to your advantage.
Also, gathering and reacting to user feedback is an important part of knowing your audience as a publishing enterprise. Effectively collecting user contributions and comments can help you build loyal fans. This will require a well-structured approach to gathering and processing this information through your CMS.
6. Improve workflow
A good CMS should support the way you create content. A bad CMS will force you to adapt your creative and editorial process to meet the rigid framework of your CMS. Therefore, building a system that factors in your workflow and helps to improve your processes is essential.
7. SEO performance
We all know SEO best practices need to be factored into editorial content. However, some don’t know how much of a helping hand your CMS can be when it comes to fine-tuning this content so its scores well. Plug-ins can be easily set up to track things like readability, keyword placement and title optimisation. Links, meta descriptions and tags can also be factored in more harmoniously to deliver strong SEO site content on every page.
8. Personalisation
All organisations are now charged with creating meaningful and unique experiences for their users, in order to secure their attention. There are many ways to support this personalisation process with your CSM, including the removal of generic content and promotions to be replaced by links and suggested editorial that users actually want to interact with.
The best way to do this is to invest in a CMS that can gather and store large amounts of
centralised data. This data can then be used to inform various marketing decisions that tailor content to different users and demographics. But remember, you’ll first need a strong analytics framework in place to achieve this.
Creating the perfect CMS for your organization
Sometimes changing the way your CMS works can seem like a scary task when it’s so entwined with your online activities. However, the benefit that could be had from a few modifications here and there can actually save you and your marketing team huge amounts of time that can be used to further other aspects of your business.
Whether you’re considering a complete overhaul of your CMS or just want to explore how plug-ins or custom dashboards can be set up to improve your efficiency, get in touch with one of the experts at Powered By Coffee who can take you through your options.
