What is structured content management?
Structured content management is an approach to creating, managing and delivering digital content more efficiently.
It allows content to be organized in a predictable way -- defined by a set of rules called a schema or content model -- and typically also enriched with descriptive information called metadata. Structured content schemas specify relationships between content components (also known as modules, atoms, topics or fragments). XML is a common format for storing and sharing structured content, but other formats also exist. They're all hardware and software-agnostic, making information accessible to any application or channel, readable by both humans and machines.
What is structured content management used for?
Structured content management is used in various industries and applications where content needs to be flexible, reusable, and consistently maintained across multiple platforms or documents.
In technical documentation, it's used to create and maintain product manuals, user guides, and online help systems. A company might use structured content management to create a modular user manual for a product line, where common features are written once and reused across different product versions.
Healthcare organizations use it for managing clinical guidelines, patient education materials, and regulatory documentation. This ensures that critical medical information is consistent across all platforms and easily updated when new research or regulations emerge.
In marketing, structured content management is used to create and distribute content across multiple channels like websites, social media, and email campaigns. It allows marketers to repurpose content easily, ensuring brand consistency while tailoring messages for different platforms.
Government agencies employ it for managing policy documents, public information, and forms, ensuring that citizens have access to up-to-date and consistent information across various touchpoints.
Why is structured content management useful?
Systems that allow you to create and manage structured content are designed to make it easier to work on, share and reuse individual content components without duplication, and combine them to deliver content in a variety of formats (for example as a PDF or web page), to any channel. Content components can easily be updated, with any changes reflected instantly wherever that content appears -- ensuring that content remains accurate and consistent no matter where it is used.
