…Using different types of content.
Storytelling Starts With Words
What do I want to say about myself and my business on my company website? Most of us start with a few of the same building blocks. Things like staff or team biographies, office locations, products or services and maybe a blog.
95% of us think about our own content in a siloed way. We think that blog articles belong in the blog section of the site. Similarly, the office locations belong together, and so do the staff biographies.
Dauntlessly Sweep Visitors Off Their Feet!
But content doesn’t have to be siloed. It must be knitted together to become larger than the sum of its parts.
A good, tangible example of how this works is a client of ours who owns a growing physiotherapy business, whose content management system (ExpressionEngine) includes Practice Locations, Staff and a range of Treatments.
“Content doesn’t have to be siloed. It must be knitted together to become larger than the sum of its parts.“As a visitor, the first piece of information that I might look for is their physical location. No problem – I can browse the Practices page and choose the one closest to me.
Usefully, I can also see a list of treatments that are available to me at that specific Practice, but there are ALSO display photos of all of the treatment and physiotherapist members of staff who work at that location as well.
From my perspective as a visitor, I’ve looked at a single Practice Location page and learned the following:
- Where to go
- What other treatments I might benefit from
- Whom I’m likely to encounter when I visit
In the same way, if I click and view a Staff Biography page, I might gather the following:
- Information about the person who might be treating me
- Which treatments they specialise in performing
- Relevant testimonials left by their clients
Leveraging A Content Management System (CMS)
There a plenty of reasons to carefully plan your content design – including the fundamental practice of working out how different types of content can be stitched together. This example, and plenty more besides it, only becomes apparent once you – as a Content Administrator or Editor – begin to interact with a well executed CMS.
If you edit a piece of content, it should be updated throughout your site instantly, because well designed content should only be stored in your CMS once, and once only.
Let us know your thoughts on this, or call us if you’d like to talk about how we can give you the tools you need to publish well!