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 seems, so you should have a time-saving process at your end to get it distributed and published. This is when the content management system, or CMS, comes in.
A CMS can help you publish your content, distribute it widely and optimise your conversions. Content marketing is more than just blogs. Your website can be a hub for whitepapers, eBooks, case studies, videos and more. Content management systems continue to evolve, and with that the expectations from the CMS are increasing. We can see the continued development of the features marketers are demanding. For your strategy to be robust and efficient, your CMS should have cutting-edge features to make your content marketing strategy a great success.
The top features a CMS should have
- Content creation
- Good and engaging content is a result of strategic thinking and understanding of the business. A CMS can help you get your content pieces to move in harmony: stages to enable approvals, allowing different users to roll out their inputs in a structured manner, and keeping it scheduled to hold your team one step ahead.
- 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 behaviour.
- Content support
- A CMS could support your content strategy by providing a flexible platform and allowing a variety of content. We know that digital media 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.
- 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 is important to hit as many as possible to secure the best organic ranking you can. Built-in SEO can help you with targeted keywords while you create your content, keyword density calculations, and automated XML sitemap submissions.
- 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 expand your content to a wider audience if there are integrated platforms like Twitter, Facebook and SoundCloud. You can make your audience share your content through social media, and get your content to appear on social media with the least effort and time.
- 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. A CMS centralises all your content activity in one place. It should also have a tracking and analytics feature, because if you cannot track the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy then there is no point in pouring out content. What content attracts the audience? What keeps them engaged? How much time is your audience spending on content? A CMS should analyse all these questions and give you a report.
- Ease of capturing leads
- The objective of your content management strategy is to drive sales in the most cost-effective way, so your CMS should capture leads in the easiest way. An efficient CMS should integrate with major platforms at your end, like your CRM. The integration capabilities should be simple and require minimal staff training. API access to integrate with existing tools and third-party applications is a plus.
A few robust systems that have most of these features
- WordPress
- The most popular website builder and blogging platform. 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, and there are handy plugins to improve traffic, like WPForms Lite, Yoast SEO and MonsterInsights. Almost all favourite 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 it.
- HubSpot
- A software product developed for marketing and sales. The tool aims to provide social media marketing, content management, web analytics and SEO functionality. It is very user-friendly and the best CMS for a beginner. It helps in creating landing pages, workflows and forms, comes with built-in analytics, and allows you to keep a hold on lead conversions. It has its own email suite and integrations for SurveyMonkey, Mailchimp, GoToWebinar and Facebook Ads.
- Contentful
- An API based content management system. Unlike WordPress it is a proprietary solution and cannot be installed locally. It has well-documented SDKs for the most popular programming languages and 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, with 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 started. It provides built-in, GUI-based functionality for creating content and writing workflow rules. It also allows users to build web applications that can be viewed on mobile devices. The solution integrates with Facebook, LinkedIn, Mailchimp, Twitter and Zendesk.
- Joomla
- A free and open source content management system, which are its strong points for marketers. Joomla is easy to use and has many user menus to select from, thousands of third-party extensions, and built-in SEO tools. It can be used for website creation, blogging and analytics. There are ready templates to select from, and you only have to create content pages. Many marketers recommend it because it is helpful regardless of your level.
- Confluence
- Collaboration software developed by Atlassian. It is time-saving and helpful for teamwork, creating unifying workflows in one place. It provides a transparent process for your content marketing strategy so your team can make equal efforts. The mobile application is useful for easy document creation and reading, and Confluence integrates with Google, Salesforce and IBM Notes easily.
You can run your content marketing without using a CMS, and many organisations do, but with a CMS there are huge benefits. A CMS provides you with a framework for your marketing strategy, flow for your content, a push for your content distribution, and a way to capture your leads. To reach a broader audience and drive sales, using a content management system is the best way possible.
