Content modeling makes it easier to identify and categorize reusable content and the elements within particular pieces of content. For instance, it can help you identify assets you might want to use for social media posts. By structuring content elements, businesses can efficiently reuse different types of content.
Improves collaboration
A marketing department consists of many different staff members in different roles. However, they all need content to effectively do their jobs.
For instance, a designer can't design a website without copy, and a website developer can't create a website without design. Collaboration is crucial in marketing projects, but it's not always easy.
Content models define content's structure, making it easier for content creators, designers, developers, and other marketers to work together to create, reuse, repurpose, and distribute content.
Increases content adaptability
Structured content is more adaptable and scalable. Content models enable content to be modified and updated to evolve with the business. For instance, content modeling is modular, meaning each element is categorized and stored independently from layouts and other formats.
A good example of this is how the images used on a website are stored as images rather than in a folder for that specific web project.
By separating elements, the content can easily be adapted and presented in various ways and on different channels to provide a seamless user experience.
In addition, a well-designed content model is scalable and flexible, allowing your content strategy to adapt to changing business needs, such as future content growth.
How to introduce content modeling to your business
Content models can significantly improve your marketing workflows, drive efficiency, and promote a better user experience. By implementing a structured framework for managing the content creation and management process, you can ensure consistency, scalability, and flexibility while supporting your ultimate business goals.
Here's how you can introduce content modeling to your business to streamline the content creation process:
- Consider current processes: How do you create content now? If you don't have a predefined process for creating content, you'll need to develop one before you can begin content modeling. One of the main goals of content modeling is to improve collaboration and allow different elements to be used across platforms. Therefore, you should determine whether your current processes need to change to support the new structure and align your new model with your existing marketing calendar.
- Evaluate existing content: Evaluating your existing content can help you identify which types of content you have and organize them in the most effective way. You can identify everything from white papers to blog posts, testimonials, product pages, and so forth. You should also capture information like titles, descriptions, metadata, images, categories, tags, and so forth to help you plan your content.
- Create documents: Content model documents can help you keep track of all the content you create or have created within your overarching content strategy. You can make a content model spreadsheet with important information like titles, content attributes, types, elements, and so forth.
- Use the right tools: Content modeling tools like a content management system (CMS) can support your content strategy while helping you effectively organize, categorize, create, and distribute various types of content.
- Start small: If your teams are new to content modeling and it's changed other internal processes, you should start with a small content modeling exercise. You can provide training and education to help content creators learn about content modeling and how it works.
- Refine: After monitoring the effectiveness of your new content model and gathering feedback from your marketing staff, you can make adjustments as needed to improve performance and address challenges. Then, as your business grows and content needs change, you can continue to evolve your content model by regularly assessing and updating it as necessary.
With these factors in mind, start your content modeling project.
Streamline your workflow and improve content production
Content modeling can streamline the content workflow while driving efficiency. Adopting this structured approach empowers teams to work more collaboratively on your content plan, reuse content, and scale production with the business, improving the quality and performance of your content on various channels.
Streamline the content modeling process with Mailchimp. Our content management system enables you to create a content model that works best for your business. Easily build web pages, social media posts, emails, and ads from an easy-to-use dashboard. Our content creation tools seamlessly integrate with your content model to help you produce higher-quality content faster. Try Mailchimp today.