Managing Your Content Ideas

Learn how to set up a simple and effective system for generating, storing, organizing, and managing your content ideas.

Managing Your Content Ideas

Learn how to set up a simple and effective system for generating, storing, organizing, and managing your content ideas.

How To Store, Plan And Organize Your Content IdeasYour business needs content. Your website needs content. Your social media needs content. Your blog, newsletters, product descriptions, post headlines, sales copy, social media, ads, articles, promotional pieces, news releases, customer training sections, FAQs, forum signatures, SEO meta descriptions, etc. all need content.

There’s no way around it…to have a successful digital presence, you will need lots of content!

Whether you plan to create this content in-house, outsource it, or a mix of both, having an effective system for generating, storing, organizing, and managing your content ideas will help your business immensely in areas like content planning and content production.

In this article, we’ll show you how to set up a basic, simple, and cost-effective system that will keep new ideas for content flowing regularly in your business.

***

A Simple System For Turning Content Ideas Into Published Content

Man writing ideas down in notepad.
Coming up with new ideas and publishing new content regularly will help to improve your online business results.

Fact: Businesses that publish new content regularly get better results online. 

The most effective way to manage the content in your business is to turn every content-related area into a process and then turn your content-related processes into systems.

This includes having a system for generating new content ideas.

Illustration of gears - Content Ideas - Content Planning - Content Production
Turn your content creation process into a system.

By focusing on managing systems, your business can improve its results and realize its goals and objectives.

When using content to grow your business, it’s important to think of the processes involved in generating, storing, organizing, and managing your content ideas as a system.

This will allow you and your content team to continually generate new ideas and easily store, organize, and manage these so they can be accessed, retrieved, and added at any time to your content planning and content production systems.

Where Content Ideas Fit In Your Content System

As explained in other lessons throughout our free content management course, ideally, every content-related activity in your business should flow from your content strategy.

Your content strategy is the blueprint that describes how your business will use content to achieve its overall strategic goals and objectives.

Your content plan is the document that specifies how your content team will execute the content strategy.

Once your business has created a content strategy and content plan, you can then begin to turn your content ideas into published content through your content planning and content production systems.

Process flow: Content Ideas - Content Planning - Content Production
Where your Content Ideas System fits in with other areas of your overall Content System.

Your Content Ideas System, then, connects your Content Plan to your Content Planning processes.

Your Content Ideas System, however also requires processes for generating, storing, organizing, and managing your content ideas.

Let’s have a look at these processes and how we turn these into a simple and practical system.

A System For Generating Content Ideas

Image: man and woman at a coffee shop.
Great content ideas can strike at any time!

There are many ways, methods, and techniques for generating new content ideas for your business.

If you don’t know where to start, check out this long list of content ideas and content topics we’ve created here: Content Ideas

To save you a massive amount of time, we have also created a comprehensive and 100% free content ideas course that you can subscribe to if you need help coming up with new ideas and topics for articles, blog posts, and newsletters.

All you have to do to start receiving our +120-part email course on how to generate endless content ideas delivered straight to your inbox is go here and signup.

With this process out of the way, let’s look at the next step.

A System For Storing, Organizing, And Managing Content Ideas

Image of woman working on a laptop.
How are you going to store, organize, and manage your content ideas?

Turning your content ideas into published content typically involves a lot of researching, planning, organizing, editing, and refining a bunch of notes, files, links, media content, etc.

All of these activities can get in the way of the creative process or require putting ideas on hold until they can be further developed.

Suppose you suddenly get an idea for a new article or blog post but you’re too busy to expand further on it or do something with it.

What do you do? Do you write it down on the nearest piece of paper you can find? Do you not write it down and hope that you will still remember it later?

Your business will struggle to improve its results and grow with content if your approach is to let ideas come to you spontaneously, work through them chaotically, and publish content only when you feel inspired or have the time to write.

Too many of your competitors are regularly publishing information online to make a “spontaneous and chaotic” approach effective.

So the first step is to have a simple, practical, and cost-effective way to effectively:

  1. Jot content ideas down.
  2. Store, organize, and manage these ideas.
  3. Outline and draft (i.e. flesh out) ideas into content, and,
  4. Have these ideas ready to publish.

For this example, we’ll set up a simple process like the one shown below using free/inexpensive tools and the WordPress CMS...

Chart: content idea organization system.
A simple and effective process for storing, organizing, and managing your content ideas.

For a comprehensive list of useful tools and apps that can help you research and organize your thoughts and ideas, see our Content Research Tools lesson.

1. Jotting Down Your Content Ideas

Image of man working on a laptop and writing on a notebook.
Got an idea? Jot it down!

You can be struck with a great idea for a new article, blog post, video, podcast, ebook, lead generation report, etc. anywhere, at any time.

This could happen while you’re in the shower, getting ready in the morning, going on a walk, shopping, standing in a queue, on your way to or from work, sitting in a meeting, watching TV, just before falling asleep…even while you are sleeping!

Knowing that this can happen, then, it’s important to be prepared.

When an idea suddenly comes to you, you need an easy tool that will let you quickly jot down your idea.

This can be an app on your phone that lets you create and save simple memos, a small writing pad that you carry in your purse, briefcase, or in your pocket, etc.

Whatever tool you choose to use just make sure that you keep it handy so you can record your ideas when inspiration strikes.

For example, years ago, I spoke with a business owner after a business networking event who didn’t have a website. When I asked him why he didn’t have a website, he replied that he doesn’t believe a website would help him grow his business.

I was intrigued by this answer, so I asked him to tell me more. He then told me that a website was just something businesses need for ‘credibility.’

This business owner couldn’t see how a website would help his business grow but believed that if he didn’t have a website, prospects would doubt the credibility of his business (or even whether the business existed).

As a non-technical website owner who has spent years helping businesses grow using WordPress websites, this naturally got me thinking about how I could educate other non-techies about the benefits of using a WordPress website to educate their prospects about their business and generate new business leads.

Knowing the importance of jotting down ideas as soon as these come into my head (instead of telling myself that I’ll “remember these” for later), I took out my phone while waiting for the lift to take me down to the car park, and fired up the ‘Memo’ app I have installed specifically to record new content ideas…

Image of phone with apps installed, including a Memo app.
You can use a memo app to record your content ideas.

I then quickly jotted down some rough ideas for an article on “how to use a website as more than just a credibility tool”…

Mobile phone with content ideas for blog articles.
When inspiration strikes, you need some way to record your content ideas immediately.

tip

Note: At this stage of the process, it doesn’t matter if you know the ‘5 ways to do XYZ’ or not … the important thing is to simply record the idea as soon as you can.

I certainly didn’t know what the ‘5 ways’ were going to be when I wrote the idea down. By the time the content is written it may very well end up being the ‘3 ways,’ or the ’19 ways,’ to do XYZ, or it may become something completely different altogether.

The end result is not important at this stage, only the process of recording the idea down. This should become a habit, so you need to have some type of tool or way to document your ideas.

2. Storing Your Content Ideas

After writing an idea down, the next step is to store it in a way that it can be easily found and retrieved when it’s time to expand on it further.

A phone app makes it easy to email the idea to yourself or to your content team, and, depending on which tools you use, even to add it directly into your content planning or production systems.

Phone screen with 'Share via' feature highlighted.
Email the idea to yourself, to your content team, or add it directly into your content workflow.

Work out with your content team a process for storing and adding ideas to your content workflow and make sure to document this process.

3. Organizing & Managing Your Content Ideas

At the time I jotted down the example idea being used here, I was also using a tool called TreePad to keep my ideas organized.

This tool is no longer available, but there are other excellent content organization tools you can use.

TreePad
I used TreePad (no longer available) but now there are newer and better content organization tools available.

Essentially, all you need is a tool that lets you create a hierarchical structure of folders where you can store text snippets, images, links, etc.

If you create different folders for each section of an article or ebook, for example, you can then easily rearrange or organize these sections by moving folders up, down, or nest these inside other folders.

With an organization tool, you can easily add, organize, prioritize, and keep track of unlimited new content ideas, and make these immediately accessible when required.

In my earlier example, after sending the content idea from my phone app to my email inbox, I then added it to a simple content production planner I created using nested folders…

A simple content production planner created using nested folders.
You can easily keep track of your content ideas using a simple content production planner created using nested folders.

As you can see from the above screenshot, this is nothing more than a folder I’ve created and labeled “Content Production” with new folders created for every new content idea.

A simple content production planner like this lets you easily:

  • Add content ideas with a rough working title (you can change it anytime)
  • Work on developing any idea you have stored further at any time it suits you.
  • Prioritize ideas in the content production schedule (just move folders up or down to prioritize items)
  • Add rough notes and bullet point sections, play with title ideas, etc.
  • Add and save research notes, URLs of videos, images, additional references, resource links, etc.
  • Archive the folder containing all of your notes for the content idea once you have completed and published it (just create an “Archive” folder and move completed projects into it.)
  • Delete the content idea folder if the idea turns out not to be worth pursuing further.

Once the idea has been safely stored and saved in your simple content planning system, you can get on with other things and come back to it anytime to work on the idea and develop it further.

Whenever you come across new information that would be useful to add or help expand on the idea, simply open the tool, paste in the content, save, and continue working on it later.

For a list of great tools you can use for this step, refer to the Content Research Tools section.

4. Outlining And Drafting Your Content Ideas

Image of woman blogging on WordPress
What tool will you use to flesh out your new content ideas?

An important part of your content ideas system is to set aside time on a regular basis to either work on coming up with new content ideas or to develop your content ideas further.

When the time comes to develop an idea further, you will want to retrieve your idea file from its stored place and select the item to work on next.

You can then create an outline with the main points your will cover in your content, and assemble all the information and research you have gathered into a draft article, blog post, video/audio script, etc.

During the outline creation and draft stage, don’t waste time worrying about things like formatting, styling, typefaces, font colors, font sizes, etc. These are unnecessary time-wasting distractions at this point.

The best way to create a draft of your content is to write it out using a plain text file. You can format this later.

Some tools you can use for this step of the process include:

Plain Text Editor

Windows text editor.
A plain text editor lets you create draft content without distractions.

Your computer comes with a built-in plain text editor like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Apple). Using these free tools lets you focus entirely on what you want to say and create content quickly and without distractions.

Notetab

NoteTab Pro
NoteTab lets you work on multiple text files at once.

NoteTab is a plain text file editing tool that lets you work on multiple text files at once. This is like using your computer’s plain text file editor on steroids.

NoteTab is great for organizing your ideas during the initial draft phase. You can build your article in one open tab and paste in snippets of text like lists, quotes, research URLs, tags, etc. into other open tabs and perform a whole range of other functions while you work and assemble your content.

For more information about this tool, see this section: NoteTab – Text And HTML Editor

Word Processor

If you are more comfortable fleshing out your content ideas using a word processor application like MS Word or Google Docs, you can use these tools instead to create your outlines or drafts

Google Docs
Google Docs is a free word-processing tool.

If using a word processing tool, just keep in mind that all of the formatting options and features can become a distraction (remember, when working on content ideas, it’s best to focus on the message, not the formatting of the content, which is why we strongly suggest using a plain text editing tool.)

Also, some word-processing tools add hidden formatting code to the content which needs to be removed before publishing.

For example, when pasting content from Google Docs into WordPress, you will often see a bunch of hidden formatting code added to the content (switch to ‘Text’ mode in the content editor to see this).

Google Docs formatting code
Look out for hidden formatting code when copying and pasting content from word processors into your CMS.

Speaking of which…

WordPress

WordPress content editor
Jot down and flesh out your content ideas directly in WordPress.

If you’re familiar with using WordPress, you can simply jot down and flesh out your content ideas directly in the WordPress content editor and save these as draft posts.

This method works well if your website has other posts or pages that you plan to link to in your new content.

Working directly in WordPress also helps you flesh out your outline or draft content and get it closer to the initial draft stage.

You can also use the WordPress mobile app or post your content ideas to WordPress using email.

5. Publishing Your Ideas As Finished Content

After creating your article outline or draft, the next step is to move it into the content planning and content production stages with the view of getting it published.

If you are working on an article or blog post, for example, using WordPress lets you easily create a new post, paste in your draft content from a plain text file, and format it using built-in formatting tools.

WordPress classic content editor
The WordPress ‘classic’ editor has formatting tools that look similar to MS Word.

WordPress has two content editors:

The older editor (called the WordPress Classic Editor) lets you format text by clicking on menu buttons that are similar to using a word processing application like MS Word.

The newer editor (called the WordPress Block Editor) uses ‘blocks’ to add content. You then format your content using the tools and options available in each block.

Remember to save your new article or blog post as a draft in WordPress until you are done editing, formatting, and checking it for spelling or grammatical errors and are ready to publish it.

If you need help using WordPress, we recommend going through our WordPress User Manual tutorials.

If you need a grammar and spelling-checking tool, see the Content Editing Tools section of the course or check out the tool listed below.

Grammarly

Grammarly - Free Grammar Checking Software
Grammarly – Free Grammar Checking Software

Grammarly is a powerful grammar-checking tool for creating web content, reports, e-books, presentations, etc. You can install the free version of Grammarly on your web browser, Microsoft Word, etc.

After writing your content, run it through Grammarly and it will not only pick up all of your spelling and grammatical errors but also point out errors in your punctuation (e.g. wrong use of commas, double spacing between words, duplicated words, etc), poor sentence structure, style, etc.

As you scroll through each error, Grammarly shows you what’s wrong and gives you the option of automatically fixing errors with one click. You can also ignore the correction suggestions if you want and keep scrolling through to the next item.

The paid version of the software takes your content checking to a whole new level and lists advanced issues, suggests vocabulary enhancements, detects instances of plagiarism, etc.

For more information, go here: Grammarly – Free Grammar Checking Software

Managing Content Ideas – FAQs

Here are frequently asked questions about managing content ideas:

What is content management?

Content management is the process of organizing, creating, storing, and distributing content to meet strategic business goals. It involves planning, producing, editing, and publishing content across various channels.

Why is managing content ideas important?

Managing content ideas helps maintain a consistent flow of relevant and engaging content, ensures alignment with business objectives, and enhances audience engagement and retention.

How can I generate content ideas?

Utilize FAQs, customer feedback, industry trends, keyword research, competitor analysis, and content brainstorming sessions to generate diverse content ideas.

What is a content calendar, and why should I use one?

A content calendar is a schedule that outlines when and where content will be published. It helps maintain consistency, organize workflow, and ensure content aligns with strategic goals.

How do I categorize and organize content effectively?

Categorize content based on themes, topics, formats, and audience segments. Use tools like content management systems (CMS) to organize content assets efficiently.

What are some best practices for managing content ideas?

Regularly review and update content, repurpose existing content, collaborate with team members, track content performance metrics, and stay updated on industry trends.

Your Content Ideas System: Summary

Image: Finger poised on Enter key on laptop.
Having a content ideas system will help your business publish new content regularly.

To get results online with content, your business needs to publish content regularly.

This requires having a system for coming up with new content ideas on a regular basis, then storing, organizing, and managing these ideas.

This lesson provides a simple, inexpensive, and cost-effective system you can use to do this.

Here are the steps again:

  1. Jot your ideas down on a writing pad or phone memo app as soon as new ideas present themselves to you.
  2. Add your ideas to a content tool that lets you store, organize, prioritize, and add research notes and additional information.
  3. When you are ready to create an outline or draft of your article, blog post, or video/audio script, use a plain text editor like Notepad, TextEdit, or NoteTab to flesh out your content ideas with no distractions.
  4. After writing your draft content, create a new WordPress post or page (if using WordPress) and paste your content in, then format it using the WordPress Content Editor. Save it as a draft until you are ready to publish it.
  5. After you are done editing your content and checking it for spelling and grammatical errors (e.g. using a tool like Grammarly), you are ready to publish your content.

Resources

  • Free Content Ideas Course – Subscribe to this free and comprehensive course for endless new content ideas for your website, blog, or newsletter.

Next Step

We hope that you have found the above information useful. Now you have a simple and effective system for generating, storing, organizing, and managing your content ideas.

How To Store, Plan And Organize Your Content Ideas
Coming up with new content ideas and being able to store and organize these are all part of effective content management.

***

Images: Notebook, New Idea, Inspiration Strikes, Draft Content, Content Summary, Article Writing, Enter Key

Content Organization

Learn how to keep your content organized for a better user experience, improved SEO, and easier content management.

Content Organization

Learn how to keep your content organized for a better user experience, improved SEO, and easier content management.

Content Organization: Post layout grid - Content Views pluginKeeping content on your website organized is an important area of content management.

In this tutorial, we’ll cover the following:

  • Why Keeping Your Web Content Organized Is Important
  • First Things First – Planning Your Website For Better Content Organization
  • Built-In Organization Features Of The WordPress CMS
  • Making Content Management Easier With Plugins

Why Keeping Your Content Organized Is Important

“Order is Heaven’s First Law”

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

Having  a manageable website is not only “heavenly” but keeping your website’s content organized also provides your business with the following benefits:

  • Save Time – Having a “smart” way to organize your content can save a lot of time adding, managing, and updating content on your site. In this lesson, we’ll show you smart methods and tools that let you easily manage content published on multiple areas of your website from one central location.
  • Improve User Experience – A website that users can quickly and easily navigate to find the content they are looking for creates a better user experience. It helps them to engage with more of your content, keeps them longer on your site, encourages repeat visits, and increases the likelihood that they will tell others about your site.
  • Boost SEO – Having a well-organized content structure is also part of good SEO practices and helps search engines like Google to better understand and index your content, which can rank your content higher and deliver more organic traffic.

First Things First – Planning Your Website For Better Content Organization

Good content organization starts at the website planning phase, before your website is built

Ideally, your website was or will be built using a Content Management System (CMS). While there are various content management systems available to choose from, the platform that we recommend using is WordPress.

This website (ContentManagementCourse.com), for example, runs on WordPress.

As you will see from the examples used in this lesson, using a CMS platform like WordPress provides a massive advantage when it comes to keeping your content organized, because a CMS is designed to make managing content easier.

What If My Website Doesn’t Run On WordPress?

If your existing website does not run on WordPress, you can ask a web developer to set up a WordPress blog on your domain.

For example, if your website runs on the domain https://yourcompanysite.com, you can set up a blog on a subdirectory of your domain, like https://yourcompanysite.com/blog.

WordPress is highly customizable, so you can easily match your blog’s look and feel with your website’s design and layout to create a seamless web presence.

You can then use your blog for content marketing activities and link your blog content to your existing website’s pages. For example, if your main website is an eCommerce store, you can promote your products on your blog and send visitors to your store’s product pages to purchase.

tip

Check this tutorial if you don’t know whether your website runs on WordPress or not: How To Tell If It’s A WordPress Site

Built-In Organization Features Of The WordPress CMS

From here on, we’ll assume that your website or blog is powered by WordPress.

WordPress offers many powerful built-in features to help you manage and keep your content organized. Let’s go through some of these features:

Organize Your Web Content with Categories

Post categories help keep your website and your content organized, improve SEO to boost your search engine rankings, and make it easier for site visitors to find what they are looking for.

Info

  • For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to set up and use categories in your posts, see this tutorial: Using WordPress Post Categories
  • Categories and tags (see below) are normally assigned to WordPress Posts, not Pages, so this tutorial will focus on posts (if you are unsure about the difference, see this tutorial on WordPress Posts Vs WordPress Pages).

Plan Your Categories

Although WordPress is flexible enough to let you add new categories on the fly, it’s more difficult to keep your content organized as you add more content if you haven’t planned out your categories (and subcategories) properly beforehand.

If you need help with website or content planning, see these website planning tutorials and this guide on keeping your website manageable and organized.

Improve WordPress SEO With Post Categories

Here is the simplest and easiest way to improve WordPress SEO with post categories:

  1. Set up permalinks to include categories, and
  2. Install and configure an SEO plugin.

Include Categories In Your Permalinks

Permalinks are a feature of WordPress that lets you set up search-engine-friendly URLs (for more details, see this tutorial on how to set up and use WordPress permalinks).

When configuring your permalinks, make sure that post categories are included in the URLs.

Include categories in your permalinks
Including categories in your permalinks helps to keep your content organized.

This will automatically display search-engine-friendly URLs with your categories (and subcategories) and in your post title keywords.

Search-engine friendly URLs with categories and subcategories included
Search-engine-friendly URLs with categories and subcategories included.

Use An SEO Plugin

Installing an SEO plugin helps to improve your content SEO and optimize your post categories, category archive pages, etc.

Optimizing your post categories with an SEO plugin helps your content organization.
Optimize your post categories with an SEO plugin.

Adding category descriptions will also display on some WordPress themes and can also help to boost your content’s SEO.

Category descriptions can help boost your content's SEO
Optimize your post categories with an SEO plugin.

Once your permalinks and SEO plugin settings are configured for your post categories, WordPress will then automatically start delivering you the SEO benefits of using search engine-friendly URLs, such as better content indexing.

Improve User Navigation With Post Categories

Post categories can be used to improve user navigation on your WordPress site in different pages and different sections of your site, such as site maps, menus, sidebar widgets, archive pages, and even your RSS feeds.

For example, here are some of the ways you can help users navigate your content using post categories:

Categories Widget

Adding a categories widget to your sidebar lets users find related content assigned to a category.

Add a categories widget to your sidebar
Add a categories widget to your sidebar.

When users click on a category link on the categories widget, they are taken to a category archive page.

Category Archive Pages

Category archive pages group together all the posts assigned to a category.

Category archive page
Category archive page.

Breadcrumb Navigation Links

Breadcrumb navigation links display on some WordPress themes.  Displaying categories in breadcrumb navigation links helps to improve user navigation and SEO.

Display categories in breadcrumb navigation links
Display categories in breadcrumb navigation links.

Clicking on the category section of the breadcrumb link will take users to the category archive page.

Info

You can display breadcrumbs on your pages using SEO plugins or choose a WordPress theme that supports breadcrumb navigation links, like the Avada theme.

Themes like Avada support breadcrumbs
Themes like Avada support breadcrumbs.

Organize Your Content With Tags

Using tags is another effective way to keep your web content organized.

Tags are like categories but where categories tend to be a broader method of organizing your content, tags are more granular.

For example, your post may be filed under a single category but referenced using several tags.

Tag clouds are often used in blog navigation areas (like the sidebar) to help users find what they are looking for.

So, if a user clicks on a tag in a tag cloud…

Blog sidebar with tag cloud.
Tag clouds can help users find what they are looking for.

They are presented with a “tag archive” page listing all the posts filed using that tag…

Tag Archive Page.
A tag archive page lists all the posts published using a specific tag.

Learn more about using tags in WordPress.

Organize Your Content With Menus

Another useful way to organize your web content for site visitors is using menus.

WordPress comes with a powerful built-in feature that lets you easily create different custom menus using drag and drop and add these to different locations on your site (e.g. header, footer, sidebar).

For example, you can create and display your main menu on the header section containing only links to important sections of your website.

Main menu links
We kept our main menu simple by including only a few links to important pages.

And create different menus with other useful links for your site’s sidebar or footer areas, like the course outline we have added to the right-hand side of this website.

WordPress menu added to blog sidebar.
We used the WordPress menu feature to create the course outline on the sidebar of this website.

The WordPress menu feature allows you to build an unlimited number of menus with nested submenus and combine links from posts, pages, categories, external URLs, and more, all using drag and drop.

WordPress menu screen.
Menus are a powerful built-in feature of the WordPress CMS.

Menus built with WordPress also update dynamically, so if you change the title of your post, the text displayed on your menu link will also be automatically updated (you can also override this by giving the link a custom name).

Use the menu feature of WordPress to keep the content on your site’s navigation areas organized and improve your site’s user experience.

Learn more about using menus in WordPress.

Organize Your Content With Widgets

Widgets are another powerful organizing feature of WordPress. They allow you to move entire blocks of content around your site without touching code using drag and drop.

WordPress Widgets screen.
Widgets help to organize the layout of your site and the content inside different sections.

Note: WordPress eventually plans to phase widgets out because the platform has been evolving to use a new technology called “blocks” (see next section below).

Learn more about using widgets in WordPress.

Organize Your Content With Blocks

WordPress 5.0 introduced a new technology called “blocks” at the end of 2018.

As the name suggests, blocks let you insert content and functionality wherever you like on your site by adding and rearranging different types of blocks.

WordPress Blocks menu
WordPress offers many different types of blocks, so you can add any kind of content you like, anywhere you like.

With content-related blocks (e.g. text block, image block, video block, etc.) you can manage the content from within the block…

WordPress Image Block
Manage all aspects of an image in your WordPress posts and pages using the Image Block.

You can also turn repeatable content into reusable blocks, group different blocks together to form patterns, and apply global styles to control aspects of your content like typography, colors, and layout across your entire site.

WordPress Site Editor
WordPress features like global styles let you manage aspects of your content across your entire site.

Learn more about using blocks in WordPress.

Organize Your Content With Plugins

Plugins extend the functionality of your website.

WordPress offers a free plugin directory that includes thousands of useful plugins.

WordPress plugin directory.
The WordPress plugin directory has almost 60,000 free plugins you can use to extend the functionality of your website.

For example, earlier in this lesson, we mentioned that categories and tags are normally assigned only to WordPress posts, not WordPress pages. If you want to add categories (and tags) to your WordPress pages, however, you can easily do this by installing a plugin like Pages With Category And Tag.

We provide lists of some of the best WordPress plugins available for managing content on your website in the lessons below:

WordPress CMS Plugins

WordPress CMS Plugins

Use these WordPress CMS plugins to help make your Content Management System easier to use and your website easier to manage.
WordPress Content Plugins

WordPress Content Plugins

These WordPress plugins will save you time planning, creating, and managing content.
WordPress SEO Plugins

WordPress SEO Plugins

Use these WordPress SEO plugins to optimize your content for search engines, boost your search rankings, and improve your content marketing results.
WordPress Media Plugins

WordPress Media Plugins

Use these WordPress media plugins to make managing media files on your website easier.
WordPress Engagement Plugins

WordPress Engagement Plugins

These WordPress plugins will help to boost and improve user engagement with your content and your website.

tip

The above section is another example of how plugins can be used to help keep your content organized. We created this list of tutorials using the plugin described below.

Content Views

Content Views - Post Grid & List for WordPress
Content Views – Post Grid & List for WordPress.

Content Views is a free WordPress plugin that lets you organize, filter, sort, and display content from selected posts, pages, or custom post types using different views and layouts (e.g. grid, table, list) and insert these views anywhere on your site using a shortcode.

Use categories to display posts using different layouts
Use categories to display posts using different layouts.

The plugin is very easy to use and lets you create unlimited custom views and layouts without touching code. It also gives you complete control over how your content is grouped and displayed to visitors. Views are 100% mobile responsive and the plugin is optimized to help improve SEO.

The free version of the plugin provides 3 basic layouts (Grid, Collapsible list, Scrollable list).

The premium version (Content Views Pro) provides the basic layouts and a lot more, including many advanced features.

Display your content using different views and layouts with the Content Views Pro plugin
Display your content using different views and layouts with the Content Views Pro plugin.

Although this tutorial focuses mostly on post categories, with Content Views Pro installed you can create different views using posts, pages, and custom post types and filter these using a combination of different criteria including post categories, tags, publish date, post author, keywords, and custom fields.

You can also sort and organize your content using a range of methods, including post or page IDs, published date, modified date, drag & drop, post slug, comment count, menu order, custom fields, and even random sort (content displays in random order every time the page is refreshed).

Create customized views to display content on your WordPress site
Create customized views to display content on your WordPress site.

You then create Views by selecting different options in the view-building form …

Create different content views by selecting options
Create different content views by selecting options.

You can live preview your content as you build or edit your views.

Preview as you build
Preview as you build.

After creating and saving your views, the plugin generates a shortcode that you can use to insert into your posts, pages, widgets, etc.

Use shortcodes to insert views into your content
Use shortcodes to insert views into your content.

To add a view anywhere on your site, simply add the view’s shortcode to your content, wherever you want it to display. Republish your page and the plugin will automatically populate your content views with the content you have assigned to it.

You can control the content on all content views from the plugin’s settings area. As you add new content to your site, the plugin will automatically add it to the right content views, depending on your configuration settings.

tip

You can also use the Content Views plugin to add an attractive site map for your visitors with post thumbnail images and descriptions. To learn more, go here:

For more details about using the plugin, check out the video below, and visit the FREE version plugin page here, or check out the Content Views Pro website for a full list of features, comprehensive demo site, premium plugin pricing, FAQ section, and more.

(Overview of WordPress Content Views)

Let’s show you now how you can use this plugin to keep your content organized in post lists, site indexes, course outlines, site maps, etc., and improve the layout of your content for your site visitors.

Tutorial: Organize Your Content Layout With The Content Views Plugin

We use Content Views Pro on all of our sites to organize, filter, and display content in our tutorial sections and lessons using mostly post categories and subcategories. We use the premium version of the plugin as it allows us to mix different content types (e.g. posts and pages) and use other advanced features when creating content display views.

Here is an overview of the process using this site as a real-life example:

For our content management course, we wanted to create different training modules and submodules, so the course plan included lessons grouped into categories for each training module and subcategories for submodules.

Course Outline Diagram
Our course plan included lessons grouped into categories and subcategories.

In the website planning phase, we decided to build this course using WordPress.

In the content planning phase, we worked out what the course would cover, and created an outline of the course’s training modules, content, and lessons using a spreadsheet. We also assigned categories and subcategories to each module.

Content planning spreadsheet.
Our content planning spreadsheet.

We used this spreadsheet to make sure that we were assigning the right categories and subcategories to all posts, tutorials, lessons, etc. as we created the content.

tip

Keeping an accurate record of all the content we create for this site on a spreadsheet with additional related information like categories, post titles, post IDs, which content view it is assigned to, post URLs, etc. effectively helps to make other content management processes like running a content audit and scheduling content production easier.

***

After working out the course’s training modules and assigning a category to each module, we then added the categories and subcategories to our site in the Post Categories section of our WordPress admin area.

WordPress post categories screen
Set up all your categories in the WordPress Post Categories section.

After installing the Content Views plugin, we then created all the site’s content lists (i.e. content views).

Content Views screen
The plugin lets you create unlimited views to keep your content organized everywhere on your site.

Next, we configured each view to list the right content and the information we wanted to display about each lesson.

As mentioned earlier, there are many ways to filter and organize views.

For example, we could have created a view of all content assigned to a specific category. This view would then automatically include any new content we create assigned to that category.

Content Views Plugin - Advanced Settings
Automatically keep your content organized in content lists and indexes by creating a view of all posts assigned to a specific category.

For this course, however, we wanted to display lessons in a particular order.

So, for each training module, first, we first filtered posts (i.e. lessons) by category (1), and then we recorded each post ID number (2)…

WordPress Posts filtered by category.
Lessons filtered by category with Post IDs column

We then added each post (i.e. lesson) to the content view and arranged its order…

Edit View screen - Posts included by Post ID
Posts included by Post ID and arranged in order of display.

After creating the view, we added its shortcode to this page.

Content View shortcode
Just add the shortcode and the plugin will do the rest.

The plugin automatically populates the published page with the content we assigned to the content view.

Content organized using a grid view.
This content is now organized and displayed in a neat grid view.

Using the above method makes it easy to organize, automate and manage all the course information on this site from one central location.

tip

If you know how you will organize your site’s content (from your content planning phase) but haven’t created all of the content yet, you can set up “empty” content views and add these as placeholders on your pages.

As you begin to add new content to your site, these “placeholder” content views will then automatically populate your pages with the right content.

***

Here are some additional examples of how we use this plugin to keep our content organized and manageable:

The main content shown on the content management course outline page was created using the plugin’s shortcodes.

Content Management Course Outline Page with Content Views.
Our Content Management Course Outline Page is kept organized using the Content Views plugin.

The only things we have added to the page are section titles and a brief description of the training modules with some graphic elements.

Content Management Course Outline page in edit mode.
Here’s what our course outline page looks like in Edit mode.

We also use this plugin on our WordPress training site to display a list of all of the site’s WordPress tutorials. Instead of displaying items by categories, however, we use Post IDs to display them in a logical sequence.

WPTrainingManual.com's WordPress Tutorials page
We also use the plugin on WPTrainingManual.com to display a list of 130+ WordPress Tutorials.

Similarly, we use the plugin on our video training site to list our video courses (using image thumbnails, the course title, and price fields only) in random order.

WPMasterclasses.com Video Courses list.
We use the plugin to display our video courses list on WPMasterclasses.com in random order.

We also use the plugin on another site called WPCompendium.org to organize content by post categories and subcategories.

Each tutorial category has its own page.

WPCompendium.org - WordPress Installation Tutorials list.
This list of tutorials is grouped by category.

Some sections, however, display a list of subcategories on the page.

List of post sections grouped by subcategory helps with content organization.
This list of tutorial sections is grouped by subcategory.

If a user clicks on any item listed on the category page (e.g. on the WordPress Plugin Tutorials list), they will be taken to other pages that list all the tutorials assigned to that subcategory, e.g. (Security Plugins, eCommerce Plugins, etc.)

Additional Content Organization Methods

In addition to using the above methods, here are some other tools we use to keep the content on this site organized and manageable:

Serve All Images From A Remote Service

We serve most images used on this site (and videos, downloadable files, etc.) from our Amazon S3 account.

Having all media files stored in one location not only makes things easier to manage but if the same files are used on different posts (e.g. an image banner or a downloadable PDF file), then all we need to do is replace the file on the Amazon S3 bucket where it is stored, and all instances of that file will automatically update on this site.

Diagram: Managing media files on Amazon S3 bucket helps with content organization.
Storing media on a remote service like Amazon S3 makes managing media files on your website easier.

You can upload and manage all your media files to Amazon S3 (including protecting your content from image hotlinking) using a file transfer tool like S3 Browser.

S3 Browser screen.
Drag and drop files from your hard drive to your Amazon S3 buckets with S3 Browser.

To learn how to set up an Amazon S3 account (and use the S3 browser tool), see this tutorial: How To Set Up An Amazon S3 Account and this Amazon S3 video course.

Note: Some media files in WordPress (like featured images in posts) need to be stored and managed in the WordPress Media Library. The WordPress Media Library stores media on your own server and also lets you easily manage your site’s media files.

Content Organization with the WordPress Media Library
The WordPress Media Library is useful for managing media stored on your own server.

Use A Link Redirection Tool

Another method we use to help us manage and organize the content on our sites is to use a link redirection tool to point content to external sites, download files, etc.

This is useful because sites we link to can change their URLs (without informing anyone outside their organization of the change) and this can lead to broken links and a bad user experience.

For more information on using link redirection methods to manage your content see this lesson: Link Management

Final Tips…

Trash old posts and pages from your site when these are no longer used or whenever you redirect the URL of a post or page to another page or website (make sure to create a backup of your content first). This helps to keep things organized on the backend of your site and reduces the size of your database.

Content organization tip - Use WordPress Redirections plugin.
Trash old posts and pages from your site that you no longer use or have redirected.

Organize your hard drive and external storage folders and choose “easy-to-search” naming conventions when storing your content, saving your files, choosing filenames for your images, videos, etc.

Content organization - File search feature
Make your content folders, files, and media easy to find.

For additional ways to keep your content organized, see our Content Management Checklists section.

Also, for a list of useful content-organization tools and note-taking apps, go here: Content-Organizing Tools

Content Organization – FAQs

Here are frequently asked questions about content organization:

What is content organization?

Content organization refers to the systematic structuring and arrangement of digital content to make it easily accessible, navigable, and understandable for users. It involves categorizing, labeling, and structuring content elements to facilitate efficient retrieval and consumption.

Why is content organization important?

Effective content organization enhances user experience, improves navigation, increases search engine visibility, and facilitates content maintenance and scalability. It ensures that users can quickly find relevant information, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

What are the key components of content organization?

The key components include taxonomy creation, metadata implementation, content categorization, navigation design, information architecture, and content hierarchy establishment. These elements work together to create a cohesive and intuitive content structure.

How can I improve content organization on my website?

Start by conducting a content audit to assess the existing structure and identify areas for improvement. Develop a clear taxonomy, use descriptive metadata, implement intuitive navigation menus, and create a logical content hierarchy. Regularly review and update the organization based on user feedback and analytics.

What are some common strategies for organizing content?

Common strategies include categorization by topic or theme, tagging with relevant keywords, creating hierarchical structures (such as parent and child pages), and using metadata to help describe and retrieve the content more effectively.

How can I improve the searchability of my content?

To improve searchability, use clear and descriptive titles, utilize metadata and tags effectively, ensure that content is well-categorized, and regularly update content to maintain relevance and accuracy.

What role does metadata play in content organization?

Metadata provides additional context and information about content items, such as titles, descriptions, keywords, and tags. It helps search engines understand the content and improves searchability, aids in the automation of content processes like archiving and security settings, and helps users to quickly evaluate the relevance of the content.

How does content organization impact SEO?

Proper content organization enhances SEO by making it easier for search engines to crawl, index, and rank website pages. Clear taxonomy, optimized metadata, and logical content structure contribute to higher search engine visibility and better ranking for relevant keywords.

What are some best practices for organizing content across multiple channels?

Standardize your taxonomy and metadata conventions, maintain consistency in content presentation and labeling, and ensure seamless integration between different channels. Use cross-linking to connect related content across channels and provide a unified user experience.

What is content organization in a CMS?

Content organization in a Content Management System (CMS) refers to the way content is structured and managed within the system. This includes how content is categorized, tagged, archived, and retrieved to ensure efficient use and accessibility.

How does effective content organization benefit a CMS user?

Effective content organization improves navigation, enhances the user experience by making content easier to find, and increases the efficiency of content updates and management. It also plays a critical role in SEO performance.

How should FAQs be integrated into content organization?

FAQs should be organized to directly address common customer questions, grouped by themes or topics to facilitate easy navigation, and be easily accessible from related content areas or via site search features.

Summary

Keeping content on your website organized is an important area of content management.

Getting organized and systematized before you even publish content will also save you a lot of time later, especially when searching for content items that have already been previously created.

Using a CMS like WordPress and the various tools mentioned here will help you keep everything organized so you can access and manage your content more easily and more effectively.

Action Steps

Complete this lesson and spend some time carefully planning and reviewing ways to better organize your web content.

Resources

  • WordPress Training Manual – A comprehensive WordPress training site for non-technical website owners and WordPress users with access to hundreds of detailed step-by-step tutorials, video tutorials, guides, resources, and more.
  • WordPress Plugin Directory – Browse and access thousands of free plugins that help to extend the functionality of your WordPress website.

References

Next Steps

***

Image: Content views plugin