Content is a vital part of any digital experience. Whether it’s your website, email marketing campaigns, or in-store displays, every piece of content needs to represent your brand accurately and be consistent across all platforms.
Creating the right model is critical for the success of all of these efforts. We’ve put together an infographic to show why your competitors are using one and why you should too!
1. It’s a collaborative tool
Your brand presence online is a complex, multifaceted process that goes through many hands before it gets to your audience. From the colors and fonts of a blog post to the tone of voice behind an email marketing campaign, each piece needs to represent your brand accurately.
But it’s easy for these individual pieces to diverge from each other. A content model can help you create a web that connects all of your published pieces and ensures readers are guided to the right place and the next step in the sales cycle.
It also allows you to identify content cannibalization issues where your content is being shown on search rather than your homepage, so you can make sure to promote your most important pages. Creating and publishing a content model can be a tedious, time-consuming task, but it will pay off in the long run.
When a content model is first implemented, teams will typically start by modeling the different types of content that they need to publish in their CMS. This entails identifying content types and the attributes that make up each type.
Each content type identifies a reusable ‘template’ of elements that authors can use to create multiple pieces of content in the same format. For instance, a university might have a ‘content type’ for course pages and subject areas that includes everything from the name to the description of the course.
Once a template has been identified, developers can build out the technical framework of a website in line with the details provided by the model. This is especially helpful if you’re building a site that uses a CMS that needs to be configured to achieve your desired results.
2. It’s a roadmap
Many of the strategic leaders in content marketing–think Kraft Heinz, CDW and Bank of America–have developed multiyear roadmaps that prioritize audience, strategies, innovations, channels, talent and analytics. This allows their teams to build against a long-term strategy rather than a series of short-term tactics that can stall momentum.
The first step in creating a content model is to audit existing content and perform an inventory. This will give you a clear idea of how much content you have and how it’s performing.
Once you’ve gathered all your content in one place, you can start mapping it out in a taxonomy. This will help you port the content from your old system into the new one, and it will also provide you with a framework for creating reusable, customized content modules.
Another benefit of content modeling is that it encourages a more unified approach to the development and management of your content. Instead of chaining content to your website, a structured approach creates CMS content modules that can be used in other places — including mobile websites, voice-activated IoT devices (Hi, Alexa!), and even print materials.
Developing a content model is an important step in the content development process because it helps your team visualize how the content they create will function when it’s in the final CMS. This will ensure that everyone understands the purpose and connections between the content, so they can keep it organized.
A content model also makes it easier to integrate the UI design of your product with the content. It will allow your designers to map the content types and components that you’ve defined, so they can design a user interface that matches the way your customers interact with it.
3. It’s a marketing tool
A content model is a blueprint that defines the different types of digital information that your business or website needs to deliver. It includes everything from text, images, and media assets to metadata, user data, and product inventories.
A good content model is semantic and logical so that it can be used in multiple ways across channels such as websites, search engines, and voice interfaces. It also allows you to create cleanly structured data that can communicate with search engines and other systems, such as Google Knowledge Panels.
In today’s world, consumers are seeking out content on a variety of devices and platforms. A content model is the foundation for delivering meaningful and engaging content that meets their needs on the device of their choice.
Using a content model can help your team build a more organized, efficient, and effective digital marketing strategy. Whether you’re creating content for an email campaign, a new website, or an e-commerce site, a solid content model can make it easier to manage and distribute content effectively.
When creating your content model, you should take the time to understand your users’ needs and goals first. Ideally, you should start by discussing these with UX and design specialists.
After you’ve determined the objectives and identified key areas of focus for your team, you can start to develop a content strategy. Your model will help you identify content cannibalization issues (where the wrong page is showing for a search) and ensure that your key pages are getting in front of your searchers.
As a result, your marketing strategy can be more focused and targeted to meet the needs of your audience. This will result in a better experience for your customers and increased sales.
4. It’s a design tool
Content modeling is the process of creating a model for structured, reusable content. It helps cross-functional teams work out how to assemble and organize content in order to deliver the best user experience possible.
A content model is a collection of data about the content that will be created or managed, including its types, aspects, properties and constraints. It enables teams to modularize content, so they can better organize it for the web and across channels.
When creating a content model, teams should first define the types of content (e.g., blog post, web page, draft) and the components needed for each of these content types. Then they should define the relationships between these content types.
This helps teams understand how to assemble the information they need for the website or page, and also ensure that the right content is showing up in search results. For example, if you have a bunch of blog posts that list the features of your email software, but Google doesn’t show them on the homepage, this can cause a lot of cannibalization.
In this scenario, a content model would allow you to create a single blog post that lists all of the features, which can then be shared across multiple pages and channels. This can save a lot of time in the long run.
Ideally, content models should be created in tandem with wireframes so that UX and design teams can understand the challenges that the site faces before they start designing. This will also help them collaborate better with editorial and technical specialists who will later use the content model to build out the page design and configure the CMS.
5. It’s a development tool
Whether it’s a new content management system or other kind of development, a strong model helps teams understand the requirements. It supports content consistency, reusability, governance, maintainability, and localization.
A content model also enables teams to define the structure of their content and the elements that it contains. This makes it easier for them to reuse and automate that content.
As a result, it’s often helpful for teams to include a wide range of stakeholders in the model-building process. This includes product owners, subject matter experts, and content writers.
For product teams, a content model helps them maintain control over the hundreds or thousands of UI strings that can appear within a new product. It also helps them make sure that the microcopy they place on those UI strings supports the action users want to take.
While some of these actions can be included in a single content type, some of them may require more detailed information to capture. For example, a content type that provides information about an album or artist will need to have a separate field for captions and other bits of media that can be placed in the layout.
This more detailed model can then be used to inform the design of the pages and help configure the CMS, eventually becoming an important tool in training content creators.
Ultimately, the model is an essential part of the process because it helps team members work together to understand the content needs and the requirements that are needed to build the site. In addition, it enables several different disciplines to collaborate on content, resulting in something that not only looks great but provides real value to the end user.
