Monthly Archives: November 2014

Joanna Pineda

Joanna Pineda
CEO & Chief Troublemaker

One Taxonomy To Rule Them All: How to Integrate your CMS & AMS

November 25, 2014
By Joanna Pineda (CEO & Chief Troublemaker)

A shared taxonomy (across your sites, your AMS, your meetings, etc.) is the key to better content and user experience. In this series of blog posts, we’ll define taxonomy, tell you why it’s important and show you how to develop and implement one.

interlocking colored circlesHow to integrate your CMS and AMS

You’ve developed a great taxonomy and now need to integrate it across your content and your AMS. How do you do that?

Prepping Your Content: Content prep is key. Work with your in-house staff and/or your web vendor to help you figure out the easiest way to categorize all your content.

  • Within your CMS
    • Implement categories – does your CMS already have a system in place? If so, use it. If content already has categories, map the old categories to the new set and work with your CMS/web vendor to migrate the information. Often, this can be done with a data script. If you don’t have a categorization scheme already, start now. Pick the top 20% of your existing content and categorize it.
      • Top 20% may be new or old content or a mix. Sometimes, older content can be extremely valuable to a particular topic.
    • Train staff on how to categorize
      • With every new piece of content that gets entered, each content item needs to be categorized to match the new taxonomy scheme. Hold training sessions for all staffers who enter content and emphasize its importance.
  • Within your AMS
    • Implement categories into all content modules – as with the CMS, whatever content modules exist with your AMS should be categorized using the new taxonomy scheme. Work with your AMS vendor to establish these categories.
  • Train staff on how to categorize
    • As with the CMS, the membership & meetings staff (and anyone else who uses the AMS regularly) will need training on the new taxonomy. Hold training sessions and demonstrate how the AMS categorization works with the CMS categorization to provide an enriched user experience on your site.

Connecting People to Content

 

Joanna Pineda

Joanna Pineda
CEO & Chief Troublemaker

One Taxonomy To Rule Them All: Developing a Taxonomy

November 18, 2014
By Joanna Pineda (CEO & Chief Troublemaker)

A shared taxonomy (across your sites, your AMS, your meetings, etc.) is the key to better content and a better user experience. In this series of blog posts, we’ll define taxonomy, tell you why it’s important and show you how to develop and implement one.

Hand drawing chart in whiteboard isolated on whiteDeveloping a Taxonomy

The hardest part of developing a common taxonomy is deciding what belongs where. How do you choose your topics and issues? Here are some tips to help you decide.

Look at:

  • Government affairs issues
    • What are the top 10 issues for your association/organization? What are ongoing issues that are always discussed?
  • Topic areas
    • What topic areas do you currently have? Look at your navigation & how your site is divided now. Can any of these be topics? What is each item about?
  • Conference tracks
    • Your conference tracks and sessions are often great indicators of what’s important to your members. Take a look at the two or three most recent and/or upcoming events. What are the session topics?
  • Committees
    • Committees are often formed around important topics/issues to an organization. What committees do you have? Can these topics translate to the taxonomy?
  • Look at search referrals
    • Check your usage analytics? How do people find your site?  These referrals are often a great way to see what users are looking for.
  • Look at site search keywords and phrases
    • On your own site search, what keywords and phrases are your own members/site users typing in to find content? You’ll often find clear patterns.

 

How to Integrate your CMS and AMS

Joanna Pineda

Joanna Pineda
CEO & Chief Troublemaker

One Taxonomy To Rule Them All: Why is Taxonomy Important?

November 11, 2014
By Joanna Pineda (CEO & Chief Troublemaker)

A shared taxonomy (across your sites, your AMS, your meetings, etc.) is the key to better content and a better user experience. In this series of blog posts, we’ll define taxonomy, tell you why it’s important and show you how to develop and implement one.

colored sheets of paper Why is Taxonomy Important?

Taxonomy is all about connection and classification. It’s making sets of things and subsets of those sets. Think about a library’s groupings in the Dewey Decimal System. All books is the larger set, while books about history is a subset and books about world history a smaller subset.

Taxonomy:

  • Connects content to content
    • You can create pages that display content of all types (articles, blog posts, meetings, etc) that match certain taxonomy classification(s). For example: all items about a new piece of legislation that affects your industry could show up on the page.
  • Connects people to content
    • If you’ve got topical experts in your organization, make sure their content contributions are part of the taxonomy.
  • Facilitates searching and wayfinding
    • Users search for topics and issues, not by content types nor by your internal divisions. If someone needs information on safety, they may go to a specific section of your site, but what about all the other content that discusses safety (expert advice, news items, even training sessions and/or meeting events)?
  • Provides a way to tag content
    • Tagging content is how it works in today’s content-rich web. A set taxonomy provides an easy way to create content tags that match the topics/issues in your overall scheme.

How To Develop a Taxonomy

 

Joanna Pineda

Joanna Pineda
CEO & Chief Troublemaker

One Taxonomy To Rule Them All: What is Taxonomy?

November 4, 2014
By Joanna Pineda (CEO & Chief Troublemaker)

A shared taxonomy (across your sites, your AMS, your meetings, etc.) is the key to better content and a better user experience. In this series of blog posts, we’ll define taxonomy, tell you why it’s important and show you how to develop and implement one.

question markWhat is Taxonomy?

  • “The practice and science (study) of classification of things or concepts, and the principles that underlie such classification” — Wikipedia
    • You remember school and how in biology, organisms were classified into things like genus and phylum. In general taxonomy, it’s taking items and grouping them into classifications.
  • Overarching categorization scheme
    • For a website/AMS/etc., taxonomy is your overall classification and organization of each discrete piece of data. A news article can be classified as belonging to membership and government affairs and even more detailed, to a specific topic of discussion.
    • This taxonomy (or topics/issues) are specific to you. What do you and your members/site users care about?

Why is Taxonomy Important?