Working against the silo

Practical ways to deliver engaging content

Jon Reay – Head of Strategy, AqueductJon David – Web Developer, Eduserv

26th July 2011

#iwmw11

Agenda

1. Content silos and how to overcome them2. Case studies (three of them)3. Practical silo breaking exercise

Content silos

Content silos

Department X

Department Y

Department Z

Organisation silos

3rd party content

User generated content

Text

Content sources

Imagery

Documents

Video

Audio

Data

Content media

Main website

Microsites

Social

Mobile

Email

3rd party sites

Delivery channels

Prospect studentsCurrent

students & staff

Alumni

Researchers

Job seekers

Media

Audiences

Bloggers

Breaking down the silos

Breaking the silos

User experience Editorial Governance Technical

Editorial guidelines

Audience relevance

Channel relevance

Media relevance

Metadata & tagging content

Site navigation

Tag/category navigation

Audience type navigation

Multi-surfacing

Search

Personalisation

Ownership

Workflow rules

Regular content audits

Surveys & user feedback

Taxonomy

Test and learn

Joined up data / eCRM

Workflow setup

Auto quality checks

Metadata & tagging capability

Search capability

Automated lists & surfacing

Personalisation capability

Case studies

Case Study 1 – Technical solutions

Common Problems

• Migration to a new CMS platform• Consolidation of sites• Rebranding or restructuring• Easily re-using content in different contexts

Case Study

• Department for Education– How can we re-use content in different contexts?

• Multi-system solution– Sitecore CMS, CouchDB, Solr

Tackling the monolith

Decoupled approach

One step further

Web Administration Content Repository

Tagging

Mapping

Taking control of URLs

• URL provides context

http://domain/area1/languages/articles/french_exam

http://domain/news/2009/08/articles/french_exam

http://domain/articles/french_exam

http://other.domain/languages/articles/french_exam

Search

• Multi-surfacing affects Page Rank– Use canonical links– <link rel=“canonical”

href=“http://domain/articles/french_exam” />

Advantages

• Central content store– Can be organised logically without impacting navigation

• Navigation nodes deal with site structure– Content tagging determines where it appears

• Easy to re-work navigation– Content is not affected by restructuring

More advantages

• Content Articles can appear in multiple locations– They can also appear across multiple domains

• Content Articles can be exposed via other sources

Difficulties

• Default context– When an item can exist anywhere, where does it belong

by default?• Editor Education

– Content is self contained• Strong Taxonomy

– Requires depth and breadth to ensure good quality tagging

Case Study 2 – Multi-channel

Case Study 3 – Personalisation

What are your silos?

Questions?

Thank you.

@jreay@ jon_p_david

@eduserv@weareaqueduct