In recent years there has been a growing wave of different Content Management Systems (CMSs). CMS’s are online tools used to create websites and blogs. One such tool is WordPress. A significant amount of Fortune 500 companies make use of WordPress, along with certain music sites and news outlets such as CNN and the New York Times. BBC America and Bloomberg professional are also some of the big name brands that are currently using WordPress.
There are two ways to get started with WordPress. The first option is with WordPress.com. WordPress.com is a hosted solution with free and paid tiers, and allows for only limited customization. The second option is WordPress.org. WordPress.org provides the software which you can host and customize to your specific requirements. As a business you will want the custom features that WordPress.org offers.
In this article, I will introduce you to some of WordPress’s features.
1) Content Management
One of the major benefits of working with a CMS such as WordPress is the ability to add and manage your own content. This includes things like pages (such as your website’s About Us, and Contact page) or blog posts (like the one you’re reading). WordPress includes an editor known as a WYSIWYG editor, this stands for “What you see is what you get” and is similar to Microsoft Word. When you enter text, change fonts, or add headings in your pages, you can get a good approximation of how your customers will see your content. WordPress also offers convenient ways to group and categorize your content using Categories and Tags. This provides your customers and search engines with the crucial context that improves your SEO and user experience.
With a static, or custom website, to maintain control of your site, you had to know HTML. But now, with today’s CMS platforms, virtually anyone can own and maintain a website. And with a platform like WordPress, the process is made much easier. By way of a user-friendly back-end interface, you can add/remove anything you want: photos, articles, videos. In fact, you can even add the content, and then publish it any time you want.
2) Improves Efficiency
The system can help your business become more efficient. Since creating and editing content doesn’t require knowledge of coding or visual design, publishing becomes easier and less time-consuming. Updates are quicker, which can save your company time and money. Managing workflows also become easier through designing and implementing effective strategies, managing roles for all individuals involved in the development of content from concept to its release, and letting everyone involved in the creation of multiple workflows monitor them at various stages.
With workflows, your business can determine a long-term strategy before deciding on the tools with which to implement it. Executing the workflows consequently becomes quicker and easier. Moreover, a CMS promotes expedience by providing an overview of everyone charged with various tasks throughout the workflow’s cycle. Manually tracking all operations becomes obsolete. This makes your business more efficient by creating an environment where information is more accessible.
3) Improves Online Branding
Your business can increase its relevance through a CMS like WordPress, an ideal platform for marketing a company’s products and services. You can do this by setting up a comprehensive multichannel marketing campaign: mailing lists, pay-per-click advertising, brochures, excellent content management, social media, and others. Given the increasingly diverse demographics tuned in to the internet, you have to do significant research to determine which ones to target.
Yet, you also have to determine exactly how you want others to perceive you — that is, what you represent. That becomes the foundation of your brand. You will have to decide things like the direction you want to go, your logo, your brand’s features, and your business plan. When you decide on all the aspects of your brand, you should be willing to make it permanent. That way it would be easy for customers to identify you and what you sell. Brand consistency, therefore, would help maintain a loyal customer base. It could be challenging, though, given the potential complexity of the customer’s journey through a huge array of marketing channels.
4) Can Help Boost Your Search Engine Ranking
A CMS can help your business remain relevant by keeping your content fresh and up-to-date, attracting more customers through external contributions such as forums, comments, and likes. WordPress is an excellent example of a CMS that is considered ideal for search engines. It has a wide range of functions and features designed to lead search engines through all the content of a website or blog so it can collect information necessary to include your site in its database.
WordPress, in fact, comes equipped with a spectrum of search optimization tools that enable the user to create URLs like pinging, blogrolling and permalinks, as well as third-party plugins and snippets of code that can manipulate computer programs applicable to search engine optimization (SEO). A CMS like WordPress is indeed very search engine friendly. You can, in particular, be creative with WordPress themes and customize WordPress to meet your website’s needs. WordPress even gives its users suggestions on making their content SEO-friendly. One suggestion focuses on employing keywords that people can use to find your content. Hyperlinking in the right places is also important.
5) Improves Customer Service
The importance of having superior customer service can never be underrated. In fact, research firm Gartner, Inc. found that 89 percent of companies feel that competition hinges chiefly on the quality of the customer’s experience. You can improve your customer service operations through CMS-supported channels for helping improve the customer experience. These include help sections, support forms, and FAQs.
Improving the customer experience, of course, depends on empathizing with the customer. Through a CMS like WordPress, you can collect heaps of data that reveal what you need to know about your customers: how they relate to your brand, their needs and preferences, and other aspects of consumer behavior. The idea is to integrate everything that contributes to an improved customer experience, such as campaigns, channels, visitor information, and performance measurement, into one toolset. With the centralization of all customer data, digital marketers could find it easier to design campaigns to reach their intended demographics.
A CMS should aim to collect as much customer data as possible to enrich the customer experience. The goal here would be to build an ample customer profile by integrating the system with several other platforms. Access to a comprehensive view of a customer’s information allows for more real-time personalization when you market your product or service.
Think Forward Media is an expert at installing, customizing, and hosting your custom WordPress.org site.
Here at Think Forward Media, we’re not just your average digital marketing team. We go out of our way to think outside the box, offer something new and innovative to every client, and we do our best not to repeat the same old tips again and again. We hope you learned something about WordPress that you didn’t know before. If you’d like more innovative digital marketing tips, tricks, trends, or a personalized consultation with the experts, contact us today!