1. Content Modeling Teresa Lane @teresaalane
Director, Digital Content Strategy
Washington University in St. Louis

2. 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
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3. WordCamp St. Louis 2016 @teresaalane #WCSTL

4. Content Design + Engineering
Clear, relevant
Engineering structures
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5. 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
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6. 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
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7. So let’s make a model! Dismantle the big blob. Pull apart the pieces.
Identify purpose and use for each.
Put the pieces back together.
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8. 1. Dismantle the big blob. Identify the website’s overall goal.
What are the discrete messages that we need 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?
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9. 2. Pull apart page/post pieces.
What are the clearly individual pieces?
Title
Text sections
Images
Image captions
Featured content
Author
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10. 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
Excerpt
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11. 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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14. 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?
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15. 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
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16. Another type with obvious pieces: recipes
As seen in Google search results:
Page title
Rich snippet
Keyword- and chocolate-rich meta description
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17. 4. Put the pieces back together.
Prioritize
Describe connections
Customize details
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18. More complex content model sample
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20. Why do we need models? Designers Developers
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 @teresaalane #WCSTL

21. 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
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22. What we get out of a content model
Layout
Functionality
Flexibility
Structure
Reusability
Future-proofing
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23. Resources
example
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24. Teresa Lane @teresaalane teresa.lane@wustl.edu
Thank you!
Teresa Lane
@teresaalane