Using a content management system (CMS) can be a game changer for your strategy, creation, and distribution. Let’s take a closer look at the ins and outs of using a CMS to make content creation and distribution smooth.
Key takeaways
- Choose the best CMS based on your business goals, budget, and staffing capabilities.
- A CMS organizes and streamlines your content creation process, which leaves more time to make even more great content.
- A CMS makes your content more seamless by providing website templates, social media scheduling, and SEO analytics.
- The long-term benefits of using a CMS to improve your content process far outweigh any initial training needed.
Content is the lifeblood of a business's successful marketing strategy, but producing high-quality, engaging content at scale is not easy. A content management system (CMS) can help. Implementing a content management system will free up time and streamline your content creation and distribution process in no time.
A CMS is a software solution that allows you to collaboratively create, edit, manage, and publish content on channels like your website, social media, newsletter, and more. The centralization, organization, workflow management, and automation capabilities of a CMS make it an invaluable tool for streamlining content operations.
In this post, we’ll explore what content systems are, their key features and functionalities, the different types of CMS platforms, and how implementing one can boost your content production and distribution without overwhelming yourself or your staff.
What are content management systems?
A content management system is a software tool that helps manage the creation, editing, publication, and organization of digital content. The core components of a CMS include:
- A central content repository to store and organize both text-based and rich media content assets like images, videos, and documents.
- Content authoring and editing tools like WYSIWYG editors to create, modify, and optimize content.
- User permissions to define access levels and collaboration workflows.
- Automated workflows for content review, approvals, scheduling, and publishing.
- Templates and themes to easily control design and structure.
- Taxonomy and metadata tools to categorize, tag, and optimize content.
The primary goal of any CMS is to make content creation and publishing easier, more efficient, and more streamlined. A CMS empowers both technical and non-technical users to produce content at scale while ensuring brand consistency, quality control, and findability.
Key CMS platform types
There are three main types of content management systems:
- Self-hosted CMSs like WordPress or Drupal require companies to host, configure, manually update, and manage the platform themselves. They offer the most flexibility and customization options but also require more technical know-how.
- Cloud-based or SaaS CMSs like HubSpot or Contentful are hosted on a vendor cloud infrastructure. These require minimal IT involvement, but simplify management with ready-made solutions.
- Open Source CMSs like Joolma or Strapi feature open-source code which can be freely used and customized by developers. This option requires the most technical knowledge but offers the most flexibility.
The right CMS platform depends on your business goals, resources, and capabilities. Larger companies often go with open-source or self-hosted solutions, while smaller teams benefit from the ease of software-as-a-service (SaaS) options.
CMS functionality for content publishing and distribution
There are a number of ways a CMS makes content publication and distribution more seamless:
- Smart content organization and management
Messy one-off pieces of content make for a poor content strategy, a CMS keeps content organized and discoverable:
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- Content can be grouped into logical collections, categories, and subsections for easy findability.
- Tagging and metadata allow for detailed labeling of content for discoverability.
- Taxonomies and content models enable the creation of content types with specific fields and attributes.
- Omnichannel content delivery
Manually posting social media assets takes time and is inefficient, a CMS can automate social media content so you can set it and forget it:
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- Website publishing is simplified with templates, themes, and custom layouts.
- Social media integration allows easy sharing and resharing of content.
- Email newsletters and alerts can be directly fed by existing CMS content.
- Mobile apps can pull content through CMS APIs to reach users where they are.
- Syndication feeds like RSS enable content distribution beyond your website.
- SEO and discoverability
A quality CMS will provide powerful SEO features that help:
- Custom URLs and permalinks for search engine crawlability.
- Meta tags, titles, and descriptions for better indexing.
- Sitemaps and robots.txt for discovery.
Overall, a CMS handles the complexity of powering content across channels and saves your team time while optimizing for search visibility.
Implementing a CMS for Efficient Content Operations
As with any tool or process, there are best practices to be aware of as you get started with a CMS. Here are some of the top CMS best practices:
- Audit existing processes
Identify pain points and bottlenecks across your content process. Look for how a CMS can fill the gaps for ideation, writing, reviewing, approving, scheduling, and publishing content.
- Define goals and requirements
Drill down on your must-have capabilities, integrations, and workflows based on your business goals, challenges, and your defined objectives. This will guide your CMS selection.
- Select and customize the CMS
Research both enterprise and cloud CMS tools to find the best fit based on your goals. Then optimize it for your needs through extensions, custom fields, and templates, etc. Work with your tool's customer success representative for a smooth implementation.
- Migrate existing content
Strategically plan your content migration into the CMS to retain URLs, metadata, content integrity, and consistency. This will ensure you avoid duplicate content issues and provide a better overall transition.
- Train and support teams
Work with your tools-related customer success representative and any internal trainers you have to ensure all content creators maximize the CMS. Make sure to provide ongoing training, learning resources, and documentation.
Integrating a new tool into your business workflow can be challenging, but by investing the time upfront to implement a CMS customized for your work systems, you’ll be rewarded with a content creation and distribution process that delights both creators and ultimately customers.
The Benefits of Using a CMS to Improve Content Operations
Here are some of the biggest upsides of using a CMS to improve content operations:
- Improved team productivity
With a CMS, you’ll eliminate tedious manual tasks by automating content publishing across channels. With this time freed up, this empowers creators to produce more content.
- Enhanced collaboration
CMS workflow tools like the ability to make comments, annotations, and approvals foster better cross-functional collaboration and communication.
- Brand consistency
You can create templates, workflows, and permissions that will ensure consistent on-brand output across channels.
- Quality control
Content review processes reduce errors and drive consistent messaging.
- Better content discoverability
A CMS has built-in SEO capabilities to help drive more organic traffic.
- Analytics insights
A CMS provides data on content performance across channels so you can ideate and optimize.
Adopting a quality CMS solution sets your content marketing team up for scale, speed, and success. The time and effort investment pays huge dividends across content operations and improves brand growth as well as customer engagement.
If you’re still feeling overwhelmed by implementing a CMS into your business workflow, that’s where ContentBacon comes in. We’ve got teams of content creators and strategists who benefit every day by working within a quality CMS that optimizes content operations. We can also share tips, tricks, and coaching around how to optimize your CMS and therefore your content creation and distribution.
Let’s talk about how the right CMS can support your team’s content operations and streamline content creation and distribution – schedule a call with us today!