Reusing content with linked items is the next superpower you’re going to learn.Using linked items will speed up your content creation process and add semantic connections between your content items. These relationships may power various “You might also be interested in this article“ sections or similar on your website or in your app.
How content linking works
Watch this video to get familiar with the concept of linking content together.
Create reusable content
We recommend you use content items for content you want to reuse or don’t intend to embed at all in other content items. For example, you may find reusable content useful for a customer testimonial you want to put in different parts of your website. Or whenever any of your existing single-use content needs to be reused.Unlike content components, content items have their own workflow and you can find them in Content & assets. You can insert content items in rich text elements by clicking and then . You can also insert them in linked items elements.Watch the video below to find out about different ways to use linked items in Kontent.ai.
Create relations in your content
Let’s say you want to link blog posts to their respective authors or link products that fall under the same category as your new product.
Add related content using a dedicated element
To link existing related content to a new content item in your project, open the item for editing and look for the option to Add existing items. See the image below so that you know what to look for. If you don’t see any such option, it means there’s no linked items element or it’s in a content group you have no access to. You can ask your project manager about it.Adding an existing item creates a relationship between the two items. You can expand the related item to view it directly from the parent item. You can also publish all linked items along with the parent item.After you add linked items to the element, you can reorder, remove, or expand the items. To open an item in the element for editing, click . Read more about linking related content together.
Add content items directly into the rich text editor
Another way to add existing content items into a content item is to embed related content items directly into your rich text. Adding existing content items into rich text elements works the same as adding components to rich text. The sole difference is that the added content item has its own life cycle as any other content item. This is true regardless of whether you add it via rich text or linked items element.After you add content items to rich text, you can publish them together with their parent content item. Same as you would with items in the linked items element.
Reuse unstructured content
If you need to reuse just a sentence or a paragraph with no metadata attached, see if you can find a content type called content chunk or similar. The goal is to create an item with just a single rich text element and reuse that item wherever you need it. It’s simple yet effective.If you can’t find a content type that would suit such needs, talk to your content manager. It’s easy for them to create one and, more often than not, doesn’t require much work on the developers’ side, either.
What's next?
Assets as your biggest asset
Last but not least, your third superpower is the media asset library.In this lesson, you’ll discover the capabilities of the asset library, how to use images in content items, and how to reuse images and other assets in multiple places.
Create once and use anywhereThe linked content items are independent and can be accessed outside the content items they are used in. This means you only need to edit a specific linked item once, and the changes will be automatically reflected everywhere.
Try it yourself!It’s more fun to try it out yourself. Go to your project in Kontent.ai and add linked items to your content. You’ll feel more confident using linked items and also learn where linked items are used in your project. As always, when trying this out, be sure to use a safe environment where changing content wouldn’t be an issue.
Content & assets. You can insert content items in rich text elements by clicking 
and then 
. You can also insert them in linked items elements.
Watch the video below to find out about different ways to use linked items in Kontent.ai.
. Read more about linking related content together.
