What features to look for in a good content management system (CMS)?
If you are considering acquiring a content management system (CMS), the ideal is to have a technology company specialised in media, with experience in this sector and with a team that knows the needs of newsrooms supported by the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
The first thing is to know the reasons why we want to change, in such a specific industry is not easy and involves evaluating several options where we could find software that does not meet the necessary requirements for the media, lack of knowledge of the solution and little possibility of making the most of it, user dissatisfaction, lack of scalability or poor technical service.
Most of these problems can be solved by looking for a provider specialised in media, with experience in the sector and with a team that knows the needs of today’s newsroom 3.0.
There are several products on the market that can meet these requirements, but before deciding, we must ensure that the chosen solution has the latest advances to facilitate the newsroom, increase traffic, build customer loyalty and maximise profitability.
What are the pillars on which a good CMS for newsroom 3.0 is based? In addition to what are the most interesting functionalities to identify it?
- Provide a good SEO positioning with tools to optimise Link Building, based on the content of the article, which helps to optimise its qualification in the page rank, Google’s algorithm that measures quality and relevance.
- Generate keywords automatically, the importance of tags and “keywords” when positioning our articles, a tool that streamlines this process will help us writers to focus on what is important, information and news writing.
- Yoast SEO Snippet, a basic tool to help writers when writing their articles. As the writer uploads his news, WP4 News headless CMS informs for SEO optimisation, allowing to modify the wording for search engines.
- User Experience If we want our content management system to be well accepted by its future users (editors, freelancers, designers) it is essential to look at the user experience.
- Remote access is essential nowadays. With the proliferation of external collaborators and the implementation of teleworking, our tool allows editors to connect from any browser to carry out their work. To be able to see what our article is going to look like in the browser while we are writing it, “Preview WYSIWYG” is a basic requirement without which it is impossible to work efficiently.
- Drag and drop for image galleries. A good CMS cannot work in writing without a functionality like this.
- Easy Access Archives according tot he business model of the publication.
How do we manage to attract, interest and retain our audience?
If in the end we don’t manage to attract our readers, it won’t have done us any good, so we need our content manager to help us focus this content towards our audience. How? Through integrated analytics tools. Monitor performance to automatically suggest content that best suits the tastes, behaviours or habits of our readers.
Some of the parameters we consider for intelligent content recommendation are:
– last month’s reading history
– the most read topics in general
– the topics the reader is interested in at the moment
– the articles the newsroom is interested in publicising
The editorial staff can choose the importance given to the 4 points, which would help to build reader loyalty. We will also consider the impact on advertising impressions.
To build reader loyalty we should set up the portlets conditionally, i.e. by geographical location, by day of the week, time of day or by RFV profile (the more loyalty, the less advertising). All depending on whether a reader is registered or just visiting the page.
Once our reader or user has registered, he/she tells us which specific topics interest him/her based on the categories or topics he/she reads. One indication is the news that saves news as favourites.
When the medium offers content that interests each user, it is key to encourage conversion into subscriptions.
Add-Ons, metered paywall or Apps help to build reader loyalty through editorial and subscription management.
