While implementing a content marketing strategy, it does not matter if you are getting started or an established player. Your website is vital for the plan. Creating good content takes more time than it is. So, you should have a time-saving process at your end to get it distributed and published. This is when the Content Management System (CMS) comes in!
A CMS can help you to get your content to publish, distribute wild and optimize your conversions. Content marketing is more than just blogs. It can be your website which can be a hub for whitepapers, eBooks, case studies, videos, etc. The content management systems continue to evolve, and with that, the expectations from the CMS is increasing. We could see the continued development of the features marketers are demanding. For your strategy to be robust, full-proved, efficient, your CMS should have cutting-edge features to make your content marketing strategy a great success.
Below are the top features that a CMS should have to help you reach your goals:
1) Content Creation: Good and engaging content is a result of strategic thinking and understanding of business. A CMS can help you get your content pieces to move in harmony. Stages to enable approvals, allows different users to roll out their inputs in a structured manner, keeping it scheduled to hold your team one step ahead.
2) Email Marketing: Email Marketing is so far the best method to reach customers and for campaigns to scale their marketing efforts. A CMS should have email features like- Personalised emails, triggered emails, group emails, scheduled messages, and recording customer behavior.
3 Content Support: A CMS could support your content strategy by providing a flexible platform and allowing a variety of contents. We know that digital media is here and is here for the long run, and blogs are not the only type. This means there should be a clear way to manage content regardless of its kind. Videos are engaging and no doubt in the future, videos will make up to 80% of online traffic.
4) SEO tools: A content marketer should be an SEO expert. The traffic that SEO can bring in is low cost, faster at lead conversions and takes less effort and time. And while SEO factors have a variable impact — it’s not like they’re all equally weighted — it’s important to hit as many as possible to secure the best organic ranking you can. A CMS can help you hear. Built-in SEO can help you with targeted keywords while you create your content, keyword density calculations, automated XML sitemap submissions.
5) Integrated Sharing: Content production is only halfway through a content marketing strategy. The other half is the distribution of your content. A CMS could help you to expand your content to a wider audience if there are integrated platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud, etc. You can make your audience share your content through social media including Tweet options, share on Facebook. Also, you can get your content to appear on social media with least of efforts and time.
6) Accessibility, Analytics, and Tracking: On publishing your content through social media, videos, blogs, newsletters and many other channels it is most likely you slip-on ease of accessibility. CMS centralizes all your content activity in one place and gives you compliance for your new content.
A CMS should have a Tracking and Analytics feature. Because if you can’t track the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy, then there is no point in pouring content. You should know what is working and what’s not.
What content attracts the audience? What content keeps the audience engaged? How much time your audience spending on content? A CMS should analyse all these questions and give you a report to track the effectiveness of your content strategy.
7) Ease to capture Leads: The objective of your Content Management strategy is to drive sales in the most cost-effective method. Hence, your CMS should capture the Leads in the easiest ways. An efficient CMS should have integration to some of the major platforms at your end like Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The integration capabilities should be simple and require minimal staff training. API access to integrate with existing tools, third-party applications is a plus.
Here are a few robust and efficient CMS that have most of the above features:
WordPress – You may have heard about WordPress. It is the most popular website builder and blogging site. We are reviewing the WordPress software that everyone loves and use. WordPress is completely free and gives you full control of your content. It uses a powerful templating engine to enhance the appearance of your content. There are some handy plugins which you can use to improve traffic on your websites like WPForms Lite, Yoast SEO, Monster Insights, etc. Almost all favorite content marketing tools already have integrations available for WordPress. So, your email marketing software, SEO tools, CRM software, and payment gateways will all work with WordPress.
Hubspot – Hubspot is a software product developed for marketing and sales. The tool aims to provide social media marketing, content management, web analytics & SEO functionalities. It is very user-friendly and the best CMS for a beginner. It helps in creating landing pages, workflows, forms. It comes with its built-in analytics and allows you to keep a hold on lead conversions. It has its email suite and has integrations available for SurveyMonkey, MailChimp, GoToWebinar and Facebook Ads.
Contentful – Contentful is an API based Content Management system. Unlike, WordPress it is Proprietary solution and cannot be installed locally. It has well-documented SDKs for the most popular programming languages. It has a clear separation between content and visuals. If you are a JSON and API person, you will be developing apps with it in the blink of an eye.
Drupal – Drupal has substantial community support. You can join forums to ask questions, trade code and gain insights. It is excellent for website creation and management and requires custom content types and workflows to get the work start. It provides built-in, GUI-based, functionality creating content and write workflow rules. It also allows users to build web applications that can be viewed on mobile devices including your smartphones. The solution integrates with Facebook, LinkedIn, MailChimp, Twitter, and Zendesk.
Joomla – Joomla is a free and open source content management system, which are its strong points to attract marketers. Joomla is easy to use and have many user menus to select. It has thousands of third-party extensions. Joomla has built-in SEO tools. It can be used website creation, blogging, analytics. There are ready templates to select from, and you only have to create content pages, and your website is prepared to work. Many marketers recommend this as it is helpful to regardless of your level. Even if you are a beginner, you can start quickly.
Confluence – Confluence is a collaboration software developed by Atlassian. It is time-saving and helpful for great teamwork by creating unifying workflows in one place. It provides a transparent process for your content marketing strategy for your team to make equal efforts. The mobile application is useful for easy document creation and reading. Confluence is open and collaborative and can integrate with Google, Salesforce, IBM Notes easily.
You can run your content marketing without using a CMS, and many organizations do it, but with CMS there are huge benefits. A CMS provides you with a framework for your marketing strategy, flow to your content, and push to your content distribution and way to capture your leads. To reach a broader audience and drive sales, using a Content Management System is the best way possible.
7 Must have Features for Content Marketing Software | Research NXT