If content has value, then take the necessary steps to manage it:

• Understand it.
• Define it.
• Measure it.
• Manage it.

Content modelling is a journey where those on the project strive to get consensus on ‘the what’ of information. The deliverable is a content model. However, the real value is in doing content modelling. Get a better understanding of what information you have and need, inspect and adapt it, define it in business terms and measure it in a way that your organisation can seek to continually improvement their business processes. Only then are you in a position to attempt to manage it.

There are many tools and techniques for doing this and yet content modelling still remains largely a downstream activity used by developers to implement the technical solution. Tech guys know the value of modelling for driving technical processes. Unfortunately, the lack of upstream content modelling is the norm for the majority of content-oriented projects. Clearly content modelling needs to start earlier with those people that see, own and want to derive the optimal value from their online content. These people are not the downstream teams such as developers, testers and system administrators. These folks are the content owners. Content modelling should start with and be continually driven by them. They should have a clear understanding on their content. And it is our job to actively help them to define, measure and manage it going forwards.

What’s Missing

I’ve found that there is not enough people and/or discussions around content modelling. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places but I continue to draw blanks in my google searches to elicit the simplest of examples around content modelling for content owners. To that end, I’ve decided to do it myself. I would of course appreciate any feedback, tips, hints, references to relevant material on the subject matter.

Take a look at the following web page:

To start with, think of pouring all the words, images, links, etc. on the page into a big bowl. We now have a big bowl of unstructured information. This is where the majority of the web sites are today. From a content management perspective there are completely unstructured. So lets add a bit of structure and see where that takes us. Lets do a little bit of content modelling.

Enter Content Types

Imagine taking that big bowl unstructured information, kneading it into a nice light dough and rolling it out on a clean surface. On the British Library web page above I see a list of news articles. Each news article has a date and a one line summary. A news article is a content type that has two fields Date and Summary. A content type describes a family of content items that have all the same fields. I like to think of a content type as a cookie cutter that you use to find the content items. Content types are used to define structured information, where fields such as Date and Summary, denote structure. All the remaining dough is the unstructured information that we need to gather together and roll out again, and maybe start cutting out some more content items and/or find other content types.

A key part of content modelling is finding content types. There are many ways to do this, so to name a few:

• An analysis of your competitor sites. What cookie cutters are your competitors using?
• Information brought to the table by the content owners/users.
• A review of the existing web site.
• Role playing / site walkthroughs.
• Content workshops / end user interviews.

As a content modeller, the end game is not about creating as many cookie cutters as possible and chopping up the dough so that there is absolutely nothing left to roll out. You need some unstructured information. Instead, you need to strike a balance between the unstructured/structured that effectively boils down to what information is of value to you now and what information is not.

Potentially Useful Content

In the South West of England the locals are very much into Potentially Useful Material, or PUM for short. One man’s PUM is another man’s junk. So, you get a new bathroom, and instead of throwing out the bath, it becomes PUM because someday, just maybe, you might need it. If I had a nickel for every time during a content modelling session I heard a someone say, “lets capture that information because it might be useful in the future”, I’d be rich man. My stock response to that is:

Show me the value today and I’ll gladly manage it tomorrow.

Nine times out of ten, these potentially useful content types (PUCs) are dropped. Be vigilant. Be ruthless. Eliminate waste. Focus on value. Do not pollute the content model with maybes and PUCs. We are already drowning in unstructured information, lets not add to it with PUCs.

Next Time

So we agree that content modelling is a good thing. We like content types and believe that they are a good way to describe a family of content items that share the same fields. But how to we capture these content types and present them in a useful and useable way that can be continually communicated to all interested parties? Well, that’s a content model.

In my next post on content modelling, I’m going to go into a bit more detail on how to represent structured information through pictures using a content model.

What’s the problem?

Project sponsors, potential authors, design folks, marketers, seo people, solution providers must work together to determine what information should be used across the site. This is the content model.

The content model is all about the “what” of information.

Now do not confuse this with the “how” of information that is typically thrown over the wall to the geeks sitting in a darkened room to sort out. Databases, XML, the content management system, whatever. This is data modelling (the how) and something altogether different, yet related, to content modelling (the what). Now, its not uncommon for projects to go arse about face and put the “how” before the “what” – the content management system cart before web site horse. It’s like being told to prepare to store X in the larder, only to be told later that X is a bag of frozen peas. Useless.

Now this all sounds like common sense and real no brainers, but there are a number of reasons why content modelling does not happen, so I’ll cut to the chase here:

• Everyone wants to talk to ‘the business’ and it simply overwhelms them.
• The very words content model causes eyes to immediately glaze over.
• Content types are perceived as difficult, divine, dark magical technology secrets.
• There are no standards, very few guidelines, even less shared knowledge on the subject.
• Only now are we beginning to focus more and more on strategy, analysis, design of content.

What’s the answer

I’m plain out of silver bullets. But I did read up on Bob Boiko‘s book, the Content Management Bible. The bible, and its that big weighing in at over 1200 pages and 1.5kg, goes into a quite a lot of detail around content types. Unfortunately, I think Bob has got one foot rooted a little to deeply in the tech, that pollutes the content model with XML and database speak. I would like to re-visit content modelling over the coming weeks and draw out the interesting parts from Bob’s book and mind meld them with what others working upstream of the build phase are thinking. For example, Stephen Gracey‘s approaches content modelling from the strategists perspective. Again, an interesting outlook, but the need for greater detail compels me dig deeper.

What’s next?

If you know what to look for, content types simply jump off the page and hit you smack bam between the eyes. A bit of refinement, a few questions here and there and a content model starts to emerge. I’ll get into all this in the next few posts. But here’s the caveat, content modelling is not easy. Its not a science. Its an art. And as we’ll see, the art has three big areas, each with their inherent challenges and trade-offs:

• Finding content types.
• Assigning fields to content types.
• Understanding the relationships between content types.

See you soon…