teresa lane - content modeling - wordcamp st. louis 2016

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


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


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


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.


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?


2. Pull apart page/post pieces.

• What are the clearly individual pieces? • Title

• Text sections

• Images

• Image captions

• Featured content

• Author


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


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.


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?


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


Another type with obvious pieces: recipes

• As seen in Google search results:

Rich snippet

Keyword- and

chocolate-rich

meta

description

Page title


4. Put the pieces back together.

• Prioritize

• Describe connections

• Customize details


More complex content model sample


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


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


What we get out of a content model

• Content

• Layout

• Functionality

• Flexibility

• Structure

• Reusability

• Future-proofing


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/


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/

Thank you!Teresa Lane

@teresaalane

[email protected]

teresa lane - content modeling - wordcamp st. louis 2016

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