What IS a CMS?Posted by akhila priya on November 5th, 2019 Having read a fair share of blog posts about content marketing, it’s rare that anyone dives into the basics of content management systems (CMS). You’re told to aim high and do more with content, and to do so, will need a CMS. So let’s take a very brief look at what a CMS is and why you need one. First, what is content? Put simply, content is the conversation that you have with customers. More specifically, it’s the collection of text, images, recording, and video that customers consume to engage with your brand. This blog post? It’s a piece of web content. That Instagram story you just viewed? That’s content, too. Do you browse the latest products on your favorite ecommerce sites? That’s also content. News articles, banner ads, social posts, and even something as basic as the logo on a mobile app are pieces of content. But, when we talk about content in the context of customer engagement, content usually refers to some form of digital text, imagery, video, or sound recording. To get in-depth knowledge on salesforce, you can enroll for live salesforce online training by OnlineITGuru with 24/7 support and lifetime access So, what’s a CMS? A content management system (CMS) is a technology platform that allows you to create, edit, produce, and organize digital content, usually for the web. Today, most content management systems go beyond the basics, with support for indexing, search, and SEO. The fundamental purpose of a CMS is simple: To create and update digital content for internal or external publication. Why is a CMS important? In a sense, a CMS is a tool that puts your content to work to build better relationships with your audience. Today, all businesses want to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time. This can yield huge dividends for every part of your business. For example, marketers can use content to engage customers to recommend and introduce new products. Content can be a vehicle to support better service, and it can teach customers to use your products in new ways or replace parts themselves. Content can also help drive sales, generate leads, and boost customer and partner engagement. Content management in action Consider this blog post. A blog post is one of the most common content types found in a CMS. And within this one blog post, there are multiple pieces of sub-content (content within content!): a publication date, author, title, banner image (the image that appears at the top of the page), and body copy. If you consider the entire page you’re reading, you’ll find even more pieces of content, such as links to related blog posts. Again, a blog post is just one type of content that you can create and modify for publication with a CMS. There are countless other content types, including product catalogs, FAQs, press releases, and news articles … a full list of text- and image-based content would be too long for any article to include! And many CMSs can also serve up more complex content types, like podcasts or videos. CMS: A 100-word history In the early days of the web, you could only publish content if you knew HTML or had help from a developer. As you can imagine, the process frustrated both content creators that needed to share updates with customers and developers who had to deal with nonstop incoming content requests. Over time, a variety of CMS tools have emerged to solve that problem and make experience development easy for anyone, without a computer science degree. These tools let non-developers create, modify, and publish content to a web audience, typically, with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editing tool. Types of CMSs available today We’re now in a “post-web” era where customers interact with brands across many digital touchpoints. In response, CMS technology has evolved to support Omni channel content delivery — more distribution channels, types of content, and content development processes. When we look at the current market, we see three main categories of CMS:
The future of content management systems The CMS evolution hasn’t stopped: Personalization is pushing the CMS in exciting directions. As part of digital transformation, businesses want to build digital experiences that are more relevant for their customers. The goal is to ensure each and every user has an experience that is uniquely curated for their needs — no matter where they engage with a brand. Many look to AI to drive personalization — and they should. But a wealth of personalization potential starts with CRM. So why not link your CMS and CRM and put personalization on the fast track? As CRM-powered and content-rich customer and partner portals deliver better experiences, a CMS must support the content side of the vision. A hybrid CMS, with both the pluses of coupled CMS and the flexibility of headless, provides a crucial building block for better digital experiences. Like it? Share it!More by this author |