Is Your Content Aligned with Your Technology?
By Jeff Mihalich, President
Marketing is built around content, this seems obvious. So why are organizations still not centering their technology around content? Technology is ever changing, and content is ever-growing, so how do you align content strategy and technology?
Content is an asset for every organization, so starting a content audit should be the first step in the process. The audit should include the following;
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Name of the content
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Location of the content
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Format of the content
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Age of the content
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Type of content
This should be a starting point of data you aggregate. You will need to create some groupings by type (news, product literature, customer surveys etc. ). Audits can be time-consuming, but are invaluable in creating a content strategy. We have built complete project plans around content audits, and this should be part of any web project.
Once you have a working catalog of your content, the next step in the process is called "content engineering." This is how you can add value and longevity to your content assets. Content Engineering is mapping parts of any piece of content to various fields. You should start with "base types," which are fields that every piece of content need to include.
A base type content map would look something like this:
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Name
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Catalog ID
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Type
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Date Created
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Date Modified
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Meta Description
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Tags
When you expand the base content type you might see this for a news article:
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Name
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Catalog ID
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Type
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Date Created
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Date Modified
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Meta Description
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Tags
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Article Summary
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Article Content
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Author
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Thumbnail Image
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Main Image
This process happens for every content type. We add to this by mapping these fields to data types and helping in conversion from the content‘s current form to the newly engineered content types.
The benefits of this are huge, as the content is now available to be used in multiple channels and can be grouped in various taxonomies, indexed for search.
Content Auditing and Content Engineering can create the synergy needed to leverage current and future technologies and channels. Without this process, your content is isolated, and far less valuable to your organization.
Does your organization need help aligning your content with your current and future technology? Contact Codesummit - we can help.