How Topic-Based Authoring Can Support Your Mission

Trade Associations deal with a lot of content – articles, newsletters, industry research, publications, course material, and more. If you look closely at all this content, you start to see overlaps in the information. Each asset is unique on its own, but there are often sections that are similar across assets.

If you’re managing each piece of content separately, you’ll understand the challenges associated with ensuring that content is consistent and accurate. There is a way to improve your management of this content – topic-based authoring.

Topic-Based Authoring Defined

Topic-based authoring is a content creation and management approach where information is broken down into discrete, self-contained units called "topics." Each topic covers a specific subject or piece of information that can be easily reused, repurposed, and recombined into various formats and contexts. Topic-based authoring is achieved by following a structured authoring model.

Structured authoring involves creating content in a consistent, standardized format using predefined templates and rules. This method ensures content is consistent across content assets, improves content quality, and facilitates easier management and updates.

When we look at the key benefits of topic-based authoring (structured authoring), we find that content is now:

• Consistent: Content adheres to the same standards, making it easier to read and understand.
• Reusable: A single piece of content – a topic – can be used across different content types and in different formats.
• Scalable: Trade associations deal with large volumes of content, formatted for different purposes and channels. By reusing content, these organizations will find it easier to manage and distribute all this content.
• Efficient: A topic-based authoring approach simplifies the content creation process and can reduce the time required to produce and publish new content.

For example, a trade association might produce guidelines on best practices within their industry. Using topic-based authoring, they can create modular sections on different aspects (e.g., safety protocols, legal compliance, environmental standards) that can be easily updated and reused in various publications and training materials.

Why Topic-Based Authoring Works

We touched on why topic-based authoring works by listing out the main benefits, but let’s dig a bit deeper, starting with the idea of modularity.

Content is Modular

In a topic-based authoring approach, content is broken down into discrete topics – or sections. Each topic is a standalone piece of content, such as an industry regulation, a guideline, or a section in a course. Any updates to a topic do not affect other topics, so you can update the content and not worry about how that change affects other content you have created. Modular content is easier to create and update because you are focused on one specific piece of information.

As an example, for a professional development course, the association can develop topic-based content covering different modules. If regulations change, only the relevant topics need to be updated rather than the entire course.

Content is Reusable

Reusability was mentioned as a benefit and it’s a key reason topic-based authoring works. When you create a topic, you can reuse it across different content assets, such as a newsletter, online course, or a report. For example, a topic on "industry standards" can be included in both a regulatory update and a training module.

Content is Separated from Its Format

Another reason structured authoring works is that the content is separate from how it’s formatted for publication. Let’s say you want to share a new industry standard on your website in the standards section, in your next newsletter, and as an update to a course.

Without structured authoring, you would have to create that content four different times in four different formats. Using structured authoring, you create the standard once and then reuse it in each channel, applying the formatting for that channel independently using templates.

Content Creation is More Efficient

Finally, let’s talk about making your content team more efficient. What would you rather have your content team do? Do you want them to create multiple versions of a piece of content and deal with the change management process necessary to ensure that content is accurate and consistent across every asset and channel that displays it?

Or would you prefer they create that content once, and serve it up in each channel or content asset, reducing redundancy and saving them time in the content creation and management process, giving them more time to focus on creating and delivering the content and experiences to their members?

Another good example: Monthly newsletters can be assembled from a collection of pre-written topics, ensuring that the content is consistent and up to date while saving time in content creation.

Challenges of Topic-Based Authoring

We believe that topic-based authoring is the best way to create and manage content for trade associations; however, it’s not without its challenges. Structured authoring is a very different approach to creating content and it requires a clear understanding of how it works and putting the right processes in place for your content team to do it effectively.

Planning Your Model

If you are starting with a clean slate or a smaller amount of content, the work to shift to a topic-based model is much easier but still requires careful planning and preparation.

If you have a lot of content that you want to convert to a topic-based model, implementing a topic-based model requires a significant upfront investment in time and resources to analyze content, create templates, and train staff.

In some cases, the middle ground is to do the work to understand what your content model will look like, develop all new content using that model, and slowly migrate existing content into the new model as you need it. The content management system you select may also have a migration tool that can ease this process significantly.

Maintaining Consistency

Ensuring that all content creators adhere to the structured authoring rules can be challenging, especially in large organizations. The main problem here is that content is often created and managed in different teams, using different tools. Even if the entire company uses the same content management system, it’s not uncommon for each team to manage its own content. This approach to content management results in duplicate content and content that is not consistent across teams.

To maintain consistency, you will need to bring your teams together and develop a shared structured content model that they all need to adhere to. Using the same tools will go a long way to ensuring this happens.

Finding the Right Content Management System

Managing a large repository of topics requires a robust CMS that supports metadata tagging, searchability, and version control. A component content management system (CCMS), like Discover CX CCMS, is the CMS you need.

A CCMS is purpose-built to support topic-based authoring, providing tools to develop your taxonomy and structured authoring model, the content entry forms that match your model, and a way to serve that content to the appropriate channels and in the proper format. For example, Discover CX CCMS provides the capabilities to define a structured content model, develop the templates needed to create content, and develop templates to deliver the content, whether it’s a web page, a PDF, or some other format.

Training and Supporting Your Content Team

People who deal with technical content and similar documentation are often familiar with structured authoring. But there will be some on your team that have yet to work with the model. In either case, it’s important that you plan to train your team on both the principles of topic-based authoring, particularly how your company will approach it, as well as how to use your CCMS to manage content.

The Process of Creating Topic-Based Content

Let’s wrap by talking about how you go about creating topic-based content. The entire process and strategy are too big for one section in the blog, but we will give you the highlights.

• Analyze Your Existing Content: Identify and categorize the types of information your association manages. Determine the main topics and subtopics and document who is responsible for creating each topic and subtopic. You should also develop a list of tags and metadata to associate with topics. This is a starting framework, as your content grows, the model will evolve.
• Template Creation: Develop templates for different types of content, ensuring they align with structured authoring principles. Templates might include fields for metadata, body content, images, and references.
• Writing and Editing: Define the roles and responsibilities for content authors, editors, reviewers, and approvers. Map out the workflow processes, including what steps need to be taken and who is involved at each step.
• Review and Approval: Implement a review process to ensure content accuracy and quality. This may involve subject matter experts and editors. Your CCMS should enable this collaboration, applying the appropriate permissions for each role.
• Publishing and Distribution: If you have a CCMS that also provides the ability to publish content to delivery channels, such as a website, develop the publishing templates and publishing process necessary, including leveraging features like topic-based search, and glossaries.

Ready to Get Started?

A topic-based authoring model offers significant advantages for trade associations managing diverse and extensive content. While there can be challenges in implementation, the benefits of consistency, efficiency, and flexibility make it a superior approach to traditional content management methods. By adopting structured authoring and leveraging a robust CCMS, trade associations can enhance their content quality, improve member engagement, and streamline their operations.

If you’d like more information on how Discover CX CCMS can help your trade association, let us know.