Content development templates

Guide the development of content for your website or intranet using an appropriate template.

These templates can help when you have:

  • occasional writers among your staff and you need to guide them on structuring content and creating metadata
  • content being sent to a publishing team and you want to provide them with metadata to include
  • contract writers and you need to provide instructions on a page-by-page basis.

We’ve included four templates for you to try.

General template

Use this template for unstructured content. It has fields for:

  • Metadata – page title, meta description, file name
  • Content – main heading, body.

MADE formula template

Use this template when you need more structure in your content. It has fields for:

  • Metadata – page title, meta description, file name
  • Content – main heading, main message, action, detail, extra detail

Structured content template

This is an example of a structured template. It’s based on creating information about scholarships for students in higher education.  It has fields for:

  • Metadata – page title, meta description, file name
  • Content – scholarship name, benefits, number offered, selection, eligibility, retention, applications.

You can adapt this for any content type that’s highly structured.

Page table

Page tables are instructions to guide writers on the content they need to produce. Content managers usually produce a series of page tables at the start of a content project (for a new site or redevelopment). Writers should still do detailed planning as content managers usually only consider the content at a high level.

This page table has fields for:

  • Content requirements – page topic, business objective, target audience, main message, secondary content, related content
  • Content sources
  • Content management – writer, reviewer, content owner, template to use, assets/rights, other notes/comments

You can adapt this for any content project.
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