![[Column] Nick Durrant: Moving to Content as a Service](Images/Key Persons/Nick-Durrant-Bluegrass.jpg)
[Column] Nick Durrant: Moving to Content as a Service
Marketers are seeking innovative ways to get the right content in front of potential customers and to manage the increasing number of digital touchpoints throughout the customer journey. Content as a Service (CaaS) is gaining popularity in the customer experience space as brands jostle for market share.
In the digital world, marketers need to understand the power of content and redesign their strategies to include voice, video, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to continue reaching consumers. However, for marketers it could be challenging to manage and deliver content to multiple channels effectively.
In trying to reach these digital touchpoints it remains a challenge to present the same content to different devices and platforms. Although traditional Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress store all content in one place, there are limitations as to where and how this content can be used, and as such one needs to create a unique version for each platform.
With CaaS all content is stored in its original format. Various digital platforms like websites, smartphones and apps can access this content and present it by using an application programming interface (API), as CaaS separates the content from formatting.
Headless CMS
Headless CMS – also known as an API-first CMS – is growing in popularity as it separates the user experience from the backend platform. It's a CMS without a built-in frontend that determines how or where content is displayed.
True Headless CMS is built from the ground up, using APIs to deliver content to omnichannel apps and devices. It works as a central content hub, making it the perfect solution for marketers to create content and quickly publish it to multiple channels, platforms, and devices.
As a result, many traditional CMS systems like WordPress have released headless versions of their software. WordPress offers a powerful open API to build web apps, combining its peerless content management with the power and flexibility of JavaScript front-end interfaces.
Speed and flexibility
CaaS with headless CMS is a minimum requirement in content publishing today as it provides the speed and flexibility required in the current fast paced business environment.
By separating the formatting from the content, CaaS further enables marketers to gain control over what they intend to publish so that they can easily reuse it across various platforms.
Personalised content
Being able to provide targeted, personalised content is crucial in boosting brand loyalty, increasing sales conversions and increasing revenues. CaaS enables marketers to achieve this by removing the manual processes of personalising content and allowing marketers to create content dynamically, so that it can be personalised at the modular level.
To provide a unique customer experience, marketers can further integrate personalisation technologies like Optimizely and Salesforce Commerce Cloud to track and action visitor behaviour and geographic location.
Smart tech
Smart content architecture empowers marketers to deliver personal and scalable content on every single channel and device. As such, CaaS keeps content relevant in an omnichannel environment from websites to apps, chatbots, smartphones, smartwatches, home devices and voice assistants.
Nick Durrant is the CEO of Bluegrass Digital South Africa
