Metadata is just data about data. And our context, it’s information about our content, placed in pre-defined fields.
Metadata ensures we are collecting the same information about each content item. You can have different metadata for different content types.
And such as images, videos, events, articles, and landing pages. Each metadata field defines as a specific type of field, just as in a database.
We can take fields like a text field, a date field, a contact field, and a controlled list field, among others.
What Metadata Do We Use?
- The organization defines what we want to know about our different types of content. As we work through the content strategy project, some of the things we define are:
- Audiences
- And user journey stages
- And topics
- Also, content workflow and governance
- And business goals for content
- Each type of content, whether it an image, video, event, article, or long content page, will need specific attributes so we can track it:
- Which team and business unit created this content?
- And who is responsible for keeps it up to date?
- When does the content expire?
- And what is the topic about it?
- What kind of content is it?
- And which audiences is it targets?
How Do We Define Content Types?
- Once we take this list of fields that we need, we need to define each content type’s areas.
- However, as with any specification, we can list out fields for the content type, whether they appear on the page and use for more administrative purposes and not shown to the user.
- For example, the business unit did not display to the user, but the topic and content type may be.
- Each content type must list:
- The metadata fields
- The on-page fields (we may and may not know these in the early stage of development, so it’s ok it iterate on this area)
- Whether each field is required or not
- The allowing value (date, text, contact, controlled list, number, etc.)
- And the number of times the field can use do we allow it to use once, and do we allow multiple values for the area?)
- These fields must program into the CMS with the help of the appropriate developer.
Who Adds Metadata?
- Now that we take the metadata we want to collect programmed into our CMS, and we need to collect the actual values.
- Also, at the appropriate point in our content workflow process. We might delegate metadata creation along these lines:
- Subject matter experts SMEs assign the topics the content is about and at whom the content target.
- And content authors who are writing the content and working in the CMS input the format, expiration date, content type.