Why You Should Be Using Content Maps To Plan Your Website Content
A content map can be a very handy thing to have! Used for all sort of applications from higher education to web design and content creation for internet marketing, content maps are highly useful planning and visualization tools. Some people can create long lists of bullet points or organize everything as if it were a file tree. This is just fine if this is how you best organize your data and your thoughts; there are several different styles of learning and expression, with content maps being a favorite of the more visual styles of each.
What is a content map?
A content map is a visual representation or abstraction of an idea or set of data. Imagine being able to take a complicated-looking spreadsheet or pages-long Word document and condense it into an easy to understand visual format? Content maps are just the thing for doing this, and can help you get a better overall picture of your goals and where to go next.
How do you create a content map?
This is the fun part! There is no one way to create a content map and each one is often unique to the creator’s thought process. By nature, content maps are often just the stepping stones to bigger and better things, so do not place too much importance on their appearance or structure; just grab a piece of paper, a pencil, and get started!
When should you use a content map?
Any time you need to expand upon an idea or plot out how different ideas might be connected to one another, a content map is the perfect tool for the job. Content maps are especially useful for planning the content for a website because of the ease of drawing connections (quite literally) between different aspects of the site and its design.
For a web design a content map might be used to plan out the different areas that will be a part of the site. When it is time to begin to create content for the site you will then have a basic map to work from when organizing your information! This can be an asset if you would like to distribute things like audio or video content more evenly around your site. Color coding can be very useful in these cases as well.
Marketing departments can also make use of a content map to see where interests might intersect, and visualize new ways to encourage cross-selling and up-selling between different products and services.
Can a content map be given to someone else?
If someone else, for example a web design company like Webnovation, were designing your website or helping you with the content for your website having a content map to hand them may very well help them complete your project that much more quickly and give them a better idea of what it is you want to happen. with your site and its content.
Comments:
Have you ever used a content map for your website content?
