As WordPress content teams are becoming more diverse and distributed, co-editing has become a necessity as it enables authors, reviewers, managers, and external stakeholders to create impactful content collaboratively.

In this article, you’ll learn the advantages of co-editing in WordPress and how you can enable it efficiently with Multicollab.

But first, let’s take a look at whether this functionality is offered by WordPress.

Is co-editing available in WordPress?

The short answer is no.

The WordPress team had announced a four-phase development process for the Gutenberg editor where Phase 3 aims to bring co-editing to WordPress.

Gutenberg Phase 3 will enable Google Docs-style collaborative editing features on the WordPress Gutenberg Editor. It will enable managers, authors, reviewers, clients, and external collaborators to shift their content writing and editing process to the Gutenberg Editor.

Currently, Phase 2 development is still ongoing which will improve the full site editing capabilities significantly making it easier for authors to create content for any kind of page.

Although in the long run, the Gutenberg Editor will become everything you need to create content on WordPress, presently authors still have to deal with tedious content development workflows involving third-party content editing apps. 

As a result, they cannot capitalize on the benefits of co-editing in WordPress which are explained below.

Advantages of co-editing for WordPress authors

On the surface, it might seem that instead of using a tool like Google Docs, you will draft your articles directly on the Gutenberg Editor. Although that isn’t incorrect, the advantages of co-editing in WordPress are much more than that.

1. Reduced dependency on third-party content editing tools: There will be one less tool in the tech stack for all the collaborators involved in the WordPress content development workflow. Here are some additional advantages that come with it:
   • Your organizational data will be more secure as you won’t have to give unrestricted access to external members.
   • Resources such as time and labor will be saved that would have otherwise been spent on ensuring data security.
2. Faster editorial workflow: WordPress collaborative editing eliminates the back and forth of content between the content editing app like Google Docs and the blog editor. This will expedite the editorial and publishing process alike.
3. Completely asynchronous review process: Collaborators can share feedback on videos and dynamic content such as CTA boxes and image carousels directly from the Gutenberg Editor reducing dependency on traditional content review methods like video calls.
4. Shorter and fewer review cycles: WordPress multi-author editing allows multiple collaborators to work on feedback simultaneously. Moreover, they can directly communicate with the reviewers during the editing process to improve efficiency.

All of the above pros of co-editing in WordPress help every member of a WordPress content development team.

Fortunately, they are within your reach.

How Multicollab enables co-editing in WordPress

Multicollab is one of a kind WordPress collaborative plugin that has changed the Gutenberg Editor forever. Here’s how Multicollab enables co-editing in WordPress, giving you all the advantages we mentioned in the previous section.

1. Comment, tag, and suggest changes in the Gutenberg Editor

Multicollab reduces the dependency on third-party content editing solutions such as Google Docs and Microsoft Word by bringing their core collaborative functionalities to the Gutenberg editor to enable co-editing in WordPress.

You can add comments, suggest changes, and tag collaborators to share personalized feedback on WordPress, just like you do in apps like Google Docs. This gets you all the benefits like an asynchronous editing process, peer-to-peer collaboration, and faster review processes.

The above features also enable WordPress multi-author editing which facilitates faster drafting and reviewing of content.

2. Share feedback on videos and dynamic content

This is where third-party content collaboration solutions fall short. WordPress authors find it challenging to collect feedback on videos and dynamic content through multiple review cycles during content creation.

This is because, unlike textual content and images, apps like Google Docs and MS Word don’t allow that, as we mentioned earlier. As a result, content development teams often have to take the assistance of email and video calls for getting feedback.

By enabling WordPress collaborative editing in the Gutenberg editor, which is a blog editor, Multicollab simplifies things immensely. WordPress authors can now get all the feedback on all kinds of content in one place.

You can exchange feedback on video content and dynamic content just as you do with textual content.

3. Track the editing history

One of the challenges brought forward by WordPress multi-author editing is tracking changes from drafting to publishing. This makes co-editing in WordPress efficient by helping you avoid repeating mistakes and decreasing the number of review cycles.

Multicollab makes it easily accessible in two places.

First, you can access the editing history while working on a draft. This is handy for both authors and reviewers who can give themselves a quick revision on what changes were recently incorporated.

Second, you can also access the editing history of all drafts from the Multicollab dashboard. This is helpful when you are looking for something particular.

4. Compatible with Grammarly

The most important thing for every business that relies on content marketing is the quality of content being created. No matter how good the new workflow looks or the tool appears to be, if it compromises the quality of the content, no matter how much, it cannot be adopted.

Grammarly has quickly evolved into one of the most useful tools for authors who write on the internet. It helps them increase the readability of their content while taking care of the tone, spelling, and grammar.

In other words, Grammarly helps create quality content faster.

Fortunately, Grammarly is perfectly compatible with Multicollab, retaining the quality of your WordPress collaborative editing process.

That’s not all that Multicollab has to offer.

The WordPress collaborative plugin offers more features that take co-editing in WordPress to another level:

1. Get notifications via Slack and email about comments, suggestions, and more to make your WordPress editorial workflow smoother.
2. Attach files in the comments to share more details with your collaborators during the review cycles.
3. Resolve all suggestions at once by accepting or rejecting them with a single click.
4. Receive VIP support via phone or email within 24 hours and your needs will be addressed within a day.
5. Use Multicollab in the language you are comfortable with to make collaboration with international stakeholders and collaborators seamless.

Summing up

Co-editing in WordPress helps authors create better content faster by reducing the dependency on third-party content editing apps and moving the content development workflow to WordPress.

Even though Gutenberg Phase 3 is far away, content development teams can still get the above advantages including WordPress multi-author collaboration with Multicollab.

Here is how Multicollab helps you get the most out of the Gutenberg Editor:

1. Allows you to comment, tag collaborators, and suggest changes on drafts just like you do in third-party content editing apps.
2. You can share feedback on videos and dynamic content as you do on text.
3. Tracking the editing history of the drafts is easy to help you avoid repeating mistakes.
4. Compatible with Grammarly so that your content quality (in terms of readability, grammar, etc.) remains impeccable.

Want to get more out of the Gutenberg Editor to produce world-class content faster? Check out this free guide right away.