We integrated a topic architecture in Communications Control, which allows you to organize your content planning and publishing systematically and strategically.

You can use ideas, stories, content, topic categories, and topics. Applied consistently, this makes your work easier when planning, publishing, and analyzing your communication.

In this article, you will learn how to make the best use of topic management in Communications Control.

How the Topic Architecture is Structured

In the topic architecture, we distinguish between three different content types (ideas, stories, and content) and two categorizations (topic categories and topic).

The Hierarchy of the Topic Architecture

1. Topic Category
2. Topic
3. Story/Content
4. Cross Posts

Creating Topic Categories

Topic categories are stable over time and are suitable for things you want to communicate about all year round, such as content marketing, digitalization, or events. They are used to strategically define the areas you want to communicate about.

Topic categories are used to assign campaigns. No content or ideas are directly assigned to them.

Creating Topics

Topics are periods of time in which you plan to publish your content, such as on the occasion of an event or a theme week. By definition, they are always limited in time.

Creating Ideas

Ideas are a great way to start your content workflow and can be created with or without being assigned to a topic.

Creating an idea is very easy. By clicking on the pink plus button, a mask opens where you can add all the information about the idea. Choose a title for your idea and define a content type.

The ideas created by you or your team members can then be found in the idea-collection. This is a smart way to collect all your marketing ideas in one central place and share them with your team members. The idea-collection is the preliminary stage of editorial planning. Therefore, ideas have no time reference.

Creating Stories

Stories are actually contents with a specialty: When creating cross-posts to a story, unlike normal content, the text of the original post (=story) is not copied. Instead, the post editor remains empty. This way, the story can be used for a detailed briefing, which includes instructions for the cross-posts to be created. Stories visually differentiate from content in the calendar.

Creating Content

There are several ways to manage the planning and publishing of content in Communications Control. You can develop content from an idea with just one click. You can also create new content directly.

When creating content, there are some useful functions available. For example, you have the possibility to define publishing options. You can set the status of the content creation or define a publication date and a deadline. At this point, you can also assign a topic to the content.