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Editorial commenting refers to the process of sharing suggestions and feedback from collaborators on a piece that needs to be resolved before it can be published. This process is helpful as it corrects any mistakes present in the piece, thereby improving its quality and value for the audience.
With the availability of content collaboration software like Google Docs, the editorial commenting process has become asynchronous. However, it was still an issue for WordPress content development teams while maintaining an efficient publishing workflow.
Challenges like moving content back and forth between the editing application and WordPress editor, the inability to receive editorial comments on dynamic content, data security, etc., are roadblocks to faster content approval when using tools like Google Docs.
As 43% of all websites use WordPress, a slow content editorial workflow is causing a huge waste of time for countless publishers.
Fortunately, Multicollab, a WordPress collaboration plugin has solved this issue.
In this article, you’ll learn how the WordPress editorial commenting process used to work and how Multicollab has redefined the process altogether.
Traditional WordPress Editorial commenting process
Google Docs or third-party document collaboration apps
Ironically, in most cases, the WordPress editorial commenting process doesn’t happen in WordPress at all. Content writing teams use third-party document collaboration applications such as Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365.
Reviewing content this way had a few disadvantages:
- Moving content back and forth between Gutenberg Editor and the third-party editorial application throughout the WordPress content publishing workflow.
- Reviewing dynamic content remained a challenge as it was not possible to do so through these applications.
- Last-minute content formatting has to be a constant in the WordPress editorial workflow as third-party content editing apps are not blog editors.
These challenges made the review process long and the possibility of errors was increased as there were more steps and apps involved.
Long email and message chains
This method is still in practice in organizations that do not use cloud-based content collaboration platforms due to security reasons.
Review processes of this nature bombard lots of detailed messages and emails to the content team. These messages (and emails) contain what should be improved and why.
It is unsurprising that these messages are long and do consume a lot of time while leaving the content team flustered. As the number of review cycles increases, the deadlines get pushed more.
Apart from the delay in the process due to the obvious inefficiency, it poses a serious challenge when it comes to reviewing dynamic and multimedia content.
Audio and video conferences
Getting everyone on a call, sharing the screen, and collecting reviews is quite straightforward. The content development team can get feedback on both multimedia and dynamic content.
However, this nature of WordPress content review is not without roadblocks:
- Scheduling a video conference for all of the team can be challenging, especially if the team is remotely distributed.
- This will make the review process tedious as it won’t be asynchronous.
- Each review cycle will be longer as the clients will share their feedback one-by-one and there could be a live discussion.
One of the potential solutions here is to send a screen-recorded video where everyone shares their feedback. Even then, it will be tough for the review team as they have to go through each of them and revert accordingly.
An inclusive WordPress collaborative editing solution where content developers can collaborate asynchronously and in real-time will be ideal to make the WordPress content publishing process optimal.
Multicollab has done just that and has redefined the WordPress editorial commenting process.
How Multicollab has revamped WordPress editorial commenting
As editorial commenting is necessary for a smooth WordPress content publishing workflow, it needs to be a central part of the content production process. Multicollab has done that by enabling it inside the WordPress Gutenberg editor.
Commenting directly in the Gutenberg editor
Just like you do in Google Docs. Take a look.
This makes the asynchronous review process possible as collaborators can add WordPress inline comments. This will reduce the duration of the WordPress editorial process in two ways:
- Collaborators can share their feedback with the editors at their convenience.
- There will be no back and forth from third-party content editing applications.
- No more last-minute editing to make the format readable as you will be editing on the Gutenberg editor directly.
Mentioning and tagging collaborators
The WordPress content editorial process could get messy when there are multiple authors working on the same document. This is because when working on feedback, authors will need to know which comments are relevant to them.
This roadblock can be removed easily when collaborating on content collaboration software such as Google Docs where you can tag someone and share your feedback with them. However, using Google Docs has challenges as we mentioned earlier.
To solve this problem Multicollab has added the commenting feature where collaborators can mention and tag others. This will make collaboration much more streamlined. Take a look.
Commenting on multimedia and dynamic content
Dynamic content makes a web page more interactive, increasing retention time and conversion rates. Dynamic content changes as per the user’s preference which improves personalization.
However, creating dynamic content or working on its formatting is quite difficult as traditional content editing platforms don’t have that feature. The only way to collaborate and get feedback is through video calls which have their own challenges as we mentioned above.
Similarly, collaborating on multimedia content via third-party applications is ineffective as it is hard to gauge their impact without seeing them on the blog editor.
Multicollab solves both issues by enabling collaboration on multimedia and dynamic content by enabling editorial commenting for WordPress. Take a look.
Compatibility with Grammarly
Readability is one of the most important aspects that an author has to take care of while creating content for their WordPress site. One of the factors that govern it is grammatical correctness ensuring sentence clarity.
Fortunately, Grammarly has come to the aid of writers. Grammarly has decreased the workload of WordPress content editors by pointing out mistakes and suggesting alternatives for words and sentences that improve readability.
The best part is that Multicollab is perfectly compatible with Grammarly. Now, as you edit blog content on the WordPress Gutenberg Editor, you can improve readability with Grammarly as well. Take a look.
Summing Up
The traditional WordPress editorial workflow posed challenges such as moving content multiple times, collaborating on long video conferences, etc., which made the process inefficient.
Multicollab has solved that by enabling WordPress collaborative editing directly to the Gutenberg Editor. As a result, editors didn’t need to move the content multiple times from third-party content editing apps and could collaborate on the dynamic content on WordPress.
This made the WordPress content publishing workflow agile.
With useful features like suggestion mode, permissions management, and pro support, Multicollab is becoming a must-have for WordPress editorial teams. Try it for free.
