Content Management

It’s easy to see why social media has become the ‘front of house’ for small businesses in recent years – almost literally in the case of many independent restaurants and cafés.

Free, fast and convenient, these channels offer a multitude of functions for businesses, enabling staff to share information and content and respond to enquiries on the go.

Similarly, customers naturally gravitate towards social media because they don’t need to type in a web address, create an account or fill in a form but simply use an app already on their phone. They don’t have to contend with laggy or difficult-to-navigate websites either.

Did you know that there are more than 570 million blogs on the internet?

Staggering numbers, right? 

 This week WordPress 5.9 was released. As was hinted in the BuddyPress 10.0 article, the most anticipated new feature in this new version of WordPress is full site editing. The Site Editor is a new feature to WordPress that allows block editor users to build their entire site with blocks. Unfortunately, full site editing is only available to content creators that are using a Block theme specifically designed to take advantage of the new feature.

The third feature release of Drupal 9 recently became available. New features and improvements in Drupal 9.3.0 include:

This is old news but I thought still worth mentioning. Last month Drupal 8 reached its end-of-life. This means that all versions of Drupal 8 core and Drupal contributed project releases that are compatible with only Drupal 8 have been marked unsupported and are no longer supported by the Drupal security team.

Drupal 8.0.0 was first released on November 9, 2015. The last version was released on November 17, 2021. With the end of life approaching, I also updated my two websites from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9.

Blogging has always been a way for me to express myself creatively as I hide away in my home office for "me time". Unfortunately, the COVID-19 Pandemic changed all that with my day job requiring maximum telework which in turn transformed my creative personal space into a remote office that work owned eight hours a day. For my mental and physical health, once those work hours are up I have made the conscious decision to walk away from the computer. I now find it more necessary to find something else to do that doesn't involve screen time. This shift in priorities unfortunately reduced my writing time.

Your content offers users a glimpse into the heart and soul of your brand. When it’s on-point,  you establish yourself as an authority in your field and become the first one people turn to when they have a related question. As a result, your brand becomes the best known source to solve customer pain points. 

HubSpot's State of Content Marketing report found 82% of marketers used content to promote their brands. Content marketing saw a whopping 70% increase from the previous year. With more consumers shopping online, digital marketing has become more important than ever before for brands wishing to remain competitive. 

Life has a way of distracting us from our goals. Four years ago when I decided to retire CMS Report, I did so in the hope for opportunity to find a new voice in my online presence. It didn't work out so well. Instead of being more creative in my writings, I spent more time maintaining the nuts and bolts to my websites and publishing other people's articles than I did expressing my own thoughts and ideas. I know for many of you, you find yourself in a similar predicament.

Search engine optimization is a vital component of any winning digital marketing strategy, and it can yield substantial long-term results if you do it right. In the increasingly competitive online world, your focus should be to reach as many people online as possible, but also target the right audience to generate qualified leads and lead people towards positive outcomes. Needless to say, you can do all of that and much more if you know the key SEO factors and commit to improving your standing in the relevant search results.