The single most important attribute of your website is it’s content. The content is what keeps the visitors coming back, and it is what attracts them in the first place. Without relevant and informative content, your website will fail to rank highly in search engines, and ultimately all of your efforts will be in vain. Most people assume that once they’ve populated their website with a decent amount of good content, then they can stop building the website and let the rest happen on it’s own. However this “set it and forget it” approach simply does not work on an ever-growing platform such as the internet.
When people surf the web, they are looking for something, whether it be entertainment, information or a product/service. If you are able to give them what they want then your website will be successful, however your success will be short-lived if you cannot do this on a regular basis. In order for your website to continue prospering, it must be updated daily. However, the process of updating a website manually is a tedious task, and ultimately it is very time consuming. This is where the use of a CMS (Content Management System) comes into play.
The Capabilities of Content Management Systems
A content management system is an online application, used to manage, collect and distribute vast amounts of relevant content automatically. A good CMS gives the user a platform in which they can effectively organize, archive, create, edit, publish, gather and spin content related to their niche. Content can be distributed and published evenly across a website on a scheduled basis ( which is perfect for a blog or news-related site). Content can also be gathered from other websites using RSS feeds, and then automatically “spun” using innovative extensions known as “content spinners.” Digital media such as videos, pictures and music can be gathered and embedded automatically, simply by selecting a few preferences. In fact, with a good content management system and a few blogging plugins, your entire website can be populated with hundreds of interesting pages in just a few hours!
The Simplicity of Content Management Systems
Judging by the features you’ve just learned about, you’d think that learning how to use a CMS would be quite difficult. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Content management systems are designed specifically for novice users, and every function within the CMS is controlled via simple settings and preferences. Users have access to unlimited options, as a good CMS is expandable beyond limits. Tasks that would normally require advanced web design knowledge can now be completed in a mater of minutes by even the most novice users.
A good CMS will not only help you populate your site with content, but it will also populate it with visitors, by automatically posting your content to many leading social bookmarking sites simultaneously. You may be wondering how massive this software must be to accomplish all of this, yet the most amazing part is that no bulky software installs are required, as the software is hosted online and can be accessed from any computer, including some mobile devices.
Life Without Your CMS
I am sure you’re impressed by the CMS features you’ve just learned about, however these features are only a small fraction of what can be done with a good CMS. Now that you know what these programs are capable of, try imagining how long it would take you to do just one task I’ve mentioned. For example, how long would it take you to submit every article on your site to 50 bookmarking sites individually? If your site has only 50 articles, and you submitted each one to 50 bookmarking sites, you would be sitting there for at least an entire day working. Now imagine accomplishing the same task, in the time it took you to read this article!