How a CMS Can Give Your Team a Competitive Advantage – An Overview of Crucial Features

That is why you need the right content management platform for your business. In fact, a report by Statista shows that the demand for such software reached $36.39 billion globally by the end of 2020. And these figures would continue to grow in the coming years as more businesses embrace full digital transformation.

With that, here are some of the crucial features of a content management software that will give you competitive advantage over other brands.

Powerful administration controls

The key to effective content management is control. You need to be able to oversee the entire content production—from storing and editing to monitoring. Moreover, you must also be able to dictate who can do what to any part of your pages.

Having a powerful administration control to handle all tasks you need for content production and management is crucial. Some of its functionalities include managing user permissions, scheduling published content, tracking site traffic and activities, and adding functionalities within your channels. This allows you to manage all workflows and permissions to empower your team to do more.

The different types of content management systems provide varying administration controls. For example, a web content management system (WCMS) offers functions you need to manage digital components of your website. Meanwhile, the document management system (DMS) simply focuses on uploading, processing, and sharing your business files.

Intuitive publishing controls

The whole purpose of a web content management system is to make posting, editing, and deleting content on your channels easier and faster. Through it, you ensure your content would get across your audience properly and effectively.

Hence, one essential feature you should look out for is an intuitive publishing control. This will allow you to create and publish different types of contents—from blog posts, multimedia resources, and other documents—whenever and however you want. You can easily incorporate images, videos, CTAs, and more into your webpages. Moreover, it allows you to manage all your content across multiple channels in just a single platform.

With a CMS, you don’t have to be an expert in programming to manage your web pages. Anyone can be trained to create, publish, and edit content without learning how to code.

Design Flexibility

In this digital age of content, you need to make sure your brand can stand out from your competitors. Ensure your content remains unique and true to your brand by personalizing your channels and webpages.

CMS platforms provide you with design tools to enhance your pages. It offers pre-made templates, which you can customize based on your brand’s identity and needs. You can even add your own logos, themes, and extensions to make your webpages stand out.

Through customization, you have the freedom to turn your vision into a reality. As a result, these personal touches will allow you to create content and pages that are truly your own.

Built-in SEO tools

According to Datareportal, 81% of internet users across all age groups use search engines to search for brands online. Improve your content to rank higher in search results. 

Consider investing in CMS solutions with built-in SEO tools. These solutions allow you to save costs from purchasing a separate SEO tool. However, most built-in SEO tools offer basic functionalities compared to standalone ones. Nonetheless, it gets the job done, especially if you only need basic functionalities.

With SEO tools, you can determine the best titles, meta descriptions, and tags to use to boost your rankings in search engines. Likewise, it provides you with relevant and popular keywords that your customers use during searches.

Security

Numerous threats lurk online. Often, businesses’ marketing sites are vulnerable to hackers, fraudsters, and scammers. You can protect your brand by ensuring your web pages and content are secure by investing in a CMS solution with tight and reliable security protocols.

The best content management system doesn’t just help you produce and manage content for your webpages. It also makes sure that nobody else but you and your team can access your resources.

One great example is Concrete CMS. It has a robust user management system that ensures that you have complete control over who can and cannot access your pages. It also follows SOC 2 compliance standards with all their hosting to protect all your data and resources.

Integrations

Managing content requires you to work with different systems--perhaps you use a CRM for your contacts, a marketing software for campaigns, a lead generation software for collecting leads, and so on. You can maximize your CMS software by integrating it with your existing application instead of managing disparate systems. This makes it easier and more seamless to move on from one task to another without disrupting your workflow.

An open source CMS solution like Concrete CMS gives you the freedom to modify the system however you want it to be. You can add functionality, integrate other solutions, and incorporate plugins to enhance your experience with the platform. What’s more, it is all free for you to use in any way you want.

Data and analytics

There is a wealth of data to be found in various content and web pages online. From it, you can learn your audience’s behaviors and preferences, competitors’ marketing strategies, and the latest trends in the market. It would be a waste to leave it unmined and unused.

Fortunately, you can use your CMS platform to leverage data and analytics based on your content’s performance. You can also easily create forms and surveys to gather feedback from customers. It will then analyze raw data and present them to you through integrated reporting.

You can use this data to better accommodate your customers’ demands. By learning how to effectively engage with them, you also learn how to not lose a client in the process.

Welcome to the age of content

Almost everything and everyone can be found online nowadays. As a result, more businesses are leveraging digital platforms to reach out to more customers. In this age of content, you need the right tools if you want to stand out from the rest of your competitors.

If the tools you’re using to create and manage content aren’t a joy to use, you’re giving up a huge advantage to your competitors.

With CMS platforms, your content team can have people with different types of college degrees, who are all able to easily create and manage content on their own. You don’t  need any prior background on programming and coding, with the right CMS it will be just like using a word processor. So go ahead and explore what CMS has to offer for your brand. And make sure to keep Concrete CMS on your list to evaluate.