Structure your content

Structured content 101

You've probably heard about structured content. And you might have seen examples of content modeling in Kontent.ai. But what is structured content and how can structuring your content benefit you? Find out in this short video.

Create single-use content

For content that doesn't need to be reused in multiple places, we recommend you use content components. This type of content is also sometimes referred to as one-off, channel-specific, or non-reusable. You'll find single-use content useful for things like images, tweets, videos, quotes, code samples, and more.

Content components exist only within a specific rich text element in your content items and become their integral part. They share the content item's workflow and behave as one. This means you won't find components in your list of items in Content & assets.

You can insert content components in rich text elements by clicking Insert... and then Insert new component. You can even insert components in other components and go up to 6 levels deep.

Whenever you need to use your content in only one place, pick components as your tool of choice.

Examples

Here are a few worked examples of how you can model and structure your content with components.

• Insert images with metadata to specify what they should look like.
• Add tweets to your blog posts.
• Add code samples to your technical-oriented articles.
• Model your tabular data using components and rethink your use of tables.

You can also use this approach to create other types of content such as carousels, call to action buttons, callouts, or embedded content.

For any of these scenarios, both single-use content (that is components) and reusable content (that is content items) work just fine. The decision to use either one depends on whether you need your content in more than one place at a time.

Create reusable content

For content that you want to reuse or use on its own, we recommend you use 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 the items in Content & assets. You can insert content items in rich text elements by clicking Insert... and then Insert existing item. You can also insert them in linked items elements. You'll find which element you might want to use in Examples.

You can use content items inserted in rich text elements in the same scenarios as components, such as when creating blog posts or landing pages. The difference is that content items are independent of the rest of the content. The inserted items have their own workflow and you can publish them separately from the item they're used in.

Examples #2

Content items can work on their own but you can also insert them in rich text elements and linked items elements.

When used in rich text elements, the use cases and scenarios are often the same as with components. You're structuring your content with components and reusing some of them as content items. Some may call this component-based structured content.

When used in linked items elements, the inserted content items usually represent a link between the items. A relationship whose meaning depends on your content model.

Here are just a few worked examples of how content items can be reused through linked items elements.

• Link authors to the articles they've written.
• Add information about related content to the article you're writing.
• Create landing pages from existing content.
• Build a hierarchy of existing content for navigation or breadcrumbs.