Content ModelingTeresa Lane
@teresaalane
Director, Digital Content Strategy
Washington University in St. Louis
What I mean by “content modeling”
• Not a set-in-stone term
• What I’m talking about today:• Representing content types and the pieces that comprise them
• Relationships between content pieces
• Can also use this technique to develop/communicate a site model
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
Content Design + Engineering
• Clear, relevant
• Engineering structures
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
Content comes in many sizes.
• Informational “stuff”• Big text pieces
• Articles/Blog Posts
• Mission Statement
• Descriptions
• Specialized, often smaller, pieces• Groups
• Programs
• Products
• People information• Bios
• Contact
• Role descriptions
• Forms
• Events and calendars
• Recipes
• Music/artist information
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
Avoiding assumptions with specificity
• You know about what I mean by each sort of content on that list• Vague
• Assumptions
• Perspectives
• When we’re conscious of specifics,our content’s more effective
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
So let’s make a model!
1. Dismantle the big blob.
2. Pull apart the pieces.
3. Identify purpose and use for each.
4. Put the pieces back together.
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
1. Dismantle the big blob.
• Identify the website’s overall goal.
• What are the discrete messages that weneed to communicate via content?
• Of those, what are our “showcase” messages?
• Of those, how do they group together?
• These questions will get us at what our top-level (or landing) pages will be.
• What are the actions we need to ask of our visitors?• How do we guide users to these actions and/or allow them to find the
results by demand?
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
2. Pull apart page/post pieces.
• What are the clearly individual pieces? • Title
• Text sections
• Images
• Image captions
• Featured content
• Author
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
Simplest example: the blog
• One content type: post
• Parts of posts compose everything:• Single post
• Title
• Date
• Author
• Content
• Image
• Home page, search results, most popular/recent widgets• Title
• Excerpt
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A straightforward example: events
• Typical content model• Title
• Date
• Time
• Location• Address
• Map
• Link to map and/or directions
• Description
• Call to action: register, contact, etc.
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3. Identify purpose and use for each piece.
• What might we want to treat differently with visual styling?• Subtitle
• Call to action
• What do we need to use functionally?• For sorting or filtering
• What do we need to reuse in other places?
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
Defining each piece
• What’s its format?
• What’s its size/length?
• Is it required?
• What’s its structure? • e.g., field vs. tag
• Example, sort by date:• Standardize format
• mm/dd/yyyy
• 10 characters
• Required
• Field
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
Another type with obvious pieces: recipes
• As seen in Google search results:
Rich snippet
Keyword- and
chocolate-rich
meta
description
Page title
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4. Put the pieces back together.
• Prioritize
• Describe connections
• Customize details
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Why do we need models?
• Designers• Design according to sizes, relationships,
uses of content
• Developers• Custom post types• Field options• Sorting/filtering mechanisms
• Partners in content creation• Uniform content structure• Needed information• Visualize what their content will “look like” when it’s on the site
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
But to be selfish…
• Content strategist / Information Architect / Content Creator• Breaking out pieces helps us understand our content better
• Helps us do a better job of structuring our pages and creating a strong message architecture
• Get functionality out of our content
• Content guides design so that styles and containers suit the content we’ll be entering, editing, managing
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
What we get out of a content model
• Content
• Layout
• Functionality
• Flexibility
• Structure
• Reusability
• Future-proofing
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL
Resources
• http://alistapart.com/article/content-modelling-a-master-skill
• https://gathercontent.com/blog/from-blobs-to-chunks-a-real-life-example
• http://alistapart.com/column/wysiwtf
• http://responsivewebdesign.com/toast/contentmodel/
• http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/content-everywhere/
WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL