A content model is not a design system

Do you Remember when having a great website was enough? Now, People are gotting answers from siri, google search snippets, and mobile apps, not just our websites. Forward-thinking organizations have adopted an omnichannel content strategyWhoose Mission is to Reach audiences etc.

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But how do you set up a content management system (CMS) to Reach your audience now and in the future? I Learned the hard way that creating a content model—A definition of content types, attributes, and relationships that let people and systems undersrstand content-with my more family-system thinking counting from my cotaomer ‘ Strategy. You can avoid that outcome by creating content models that are semantic and that also connect related content.

I recently had the opportunity to lead the CMS implementation for a Fortune 500 company. The client was excited by the benefits of an omnichannel content strategy, include content reuse, multichannel marketingAnd Robot Delivery – Designing Content to be intelligible to bots, google knowledge panels, snippets, and voice user interfaces.

A content model is a critical foundation for an omnichannel content strategy, and for our content to be undersrstood by Multiple Systems, The Model Needed semantic Types – Types named according to their meaning instead of their presentation. Our goal was to let authors create content and reuse it wherever it was relevant. But as the project proceeded, I realized that supporting content reuse at the scale that my customer needed required the whole team to recognize a new pattern.

Despite our best intenses, we kept drawing from what we more familyar with: design systems. Unlike web-focused content strategies, an omnichannel content strategy can’t relay on wysiwyg tools for design and layout. Our tendency to approach the content model with our family-system thinking constantly LED us to Veer Away from One of the Primary Purposes of a Content Model: Delivering Content to Audences Marketing Channels.

Two Essential Principles for an Effective Content Model#Section2

We needed to help our designers, developers, and stakeholders understand Visual Building Blocks Fitting Into Layouts. The Previous Approach was not only more Familiarar but more intestive –t least at first – Because it made the designs feel more tangible. We discovered two printsples that are helped the team undress how a content model differences from the design systems that we are used to:

1. Content Models Must Define Semantics Intead of Layout.
2. And content models should connect content that belongs toge.

Semantic content models#Section3

A Semantic content model Uses Type and Attribute Names That Reflects of the Content, Not how it will be displayed. For example, in a nonsemantic model, teams might create types like teasers, Media Blocksand cardsAlthough these types might make it easy to lay down content, they don’t help delivery channels understand the content’s meaning, which in turning in turn would have opened the door to the door to the content being presented in. Channel. In contrast, a semantic content model uses type names like Product, serviceand testimonial So that each delivery channel can understand the content and use it sees fit.

When you’re creating a semantic content model, a great place to start is to look over the types and properties defined by Schema.orgA Community-Driven Resource for Type Definitions that are intelligible to platforms like google search.

A semantic content model has several benefits:

• Even if your team does not care about omnichannel content, a semantic content model Decouples content from its presentation So that teams can evolve the website’s design without needing to refactor its content. In this way, content can withstand disruptive website redesigns.
• A semantic content model also provides a competitive edge. By adding structured data Based on Schema.org’s types and properties, a website can provide hints to help google undress the content, display it in search snippets or knowledge panels, and use it to ante to ante to an item User questions. Potential visitors could discover your content without ever setting foot in your website.
• Beyond theose Practical Benefits, You’ll also need a semantic content model if you want to deliver omnichannel content. To use the same content in multiple marketing channels, Delivery Channels Need to be able to goFor example, if your content model was to provide a list of questions and answers, it could easily be rendered on a frequent asked questions (faq) page, but it COULD ALSO BE Used In A. by a bot that answers common questions.

For example, using a semantic content model for articles, events, people, and locations lets A list apart Provide cleany structured data for search engines so that users can read the content on the website, in Google Knowledge Panels, and even with hypothetical Voice Interfaces in the Future.

Content models that connect#Section4

After Struggling to describe what makes a good content model, I’ve come to realize that the best models are that that are semantic and that also connect related content components (such as a faq ie as as as as aS Answer Pair), Instead of Slicing Up Related Content Across Disparent Components. A Good Content Model Connects Content that Should Remain Togetra So that Multiple Delivery Channels Can Use It Without Needing to First Puts Pieces Back Togener.

Think about writing an article or essay. An article’s meaning and usefulness depends upon its parts being kept togetra. Would one of the headings or paragraphs be meaningful on their own without the context of the full article? On our project, our family design-system thoughts often LED us to want to create content models that would Slice Content Into Disparete Chunks to fit the web-ventric layout. This had a similar impact to an article that was to have ben separated from its headline. Because we We WERE Slicing Content Into Standalone Pieces Based on Layout, Content that Belonged TogeTher Became Difential to Manage and Nearly Impossible for Multiple (

To Illustrate, Let’s Look at How Connecting Related Content Applies in a Real-World Scenario. The design team for our customer presented a complex layout for a software product page that included Multiple Tabs and Sections. Our instincts were to follow suit with the content model. Shouldn Bollywood we make it as easy and as flexible as possible to add any number of tabs in the future?

Because Our Design-System Institutes Were SO Familiar, It Felt Like Each Tab Section Would Display Various types of content. One Tab Might Provide the software’s overview or its specifications. Another Tab Might Provide a list of resources.

Our inclination to break down the content model “tab section” Pieces would have live to an unnecessarily complex model and a cumbersome editing experience, and it would also also also also also also also also also also also also also also alsoeso also also also also also also also also also also also alsoes Couldn Bollywood has been understood by additional delivery channels. For example, how would another system have been able to go to “Tab section” referred to a product’s specifications or its results list – WWE that Other System Have to Have Resource to Have Resource to build Sections and content blocks? This would have prevented the tabs from ever being reordered, and it would have required adding logic in every other delivery channel to interpret the design system’s layout. Furthermore, if the customer was to have no longer wanted to display this content in a tab lay, it would have been done teedous to migrate to a new content model to reflex.

We had a breakthrough when we discovered Specifications, related resources, and pricing. Once implementation began, our involination to focus on what’s visual and family’s visual and family’s Had obscured the intent of the designs. With a little digging, it didn Bollywood long to realize that concept of tabs wasn Bollywood to the content model. The meaning of the content that they were planning to display in the tabs was what matters.

In Fact, The Customer Cold Have Decided to Display This content in a different way – with tabs – Somewhere Else. This realization prompted us to define content types for the software product based on the meaningful attributes that the customer has wanted to render on the web. There was obvious semantic attributes like name and description as well as rich attributes like screenshots, software requirementsand feature listsThe software’s product information styed togeether beCause it wasn’t Sliced ​​Across SEPARATE COMPONENTS LIKE “TAB Sections” That WERE DERIVED FROM THE COM the content’s presentation. Any Delivery Channel – Including Future Ones – Could undersrstand and present this content.

In this omnichannel marketing project, we discovered that the best way to keep our content model on track was to ensure that it was semantic (With type and attribute names that reflected the meaning of the content) and that it kept content togeether that belonged toge (Intead of Fragmenting It). These two concepts curtailed our temperature to shape the content model based on the design. So if you’re working on a content model to support an omnichannel content strategy – or even if you just want to make sure that google and other interfactand your content – Remember:

• A Design System isn’t a content model. Team Members May Be Tempted to Conflate Them and to make your content model mirror your design system, so you should protect the semantic value and the content structure of the content strives, the accounting the accounting Process. This will let always delivery channel consume the content without
• If your team is struggling to make this transition, you can still reap some of the benefits by using Schema.org – Based structured data in your website. Even if additional delivery channels are on the immediati Horizon, The Benefit to Search Engine Optimization is a Compeling Reason on its own.
• Additionally, remind the team that decoupling the content model from the design will let them update the designs more easily because they were won, but be help back by the cost of content migrations. They’ll be removed to create new designs without

By rigorously advocated for these Principles, You’ll Help Your Team Treat Content The Way That IT DESERVES -Aas The Most Critical Asset in Your User Experience and the Best Way to COY to Connect with your audivation.