Many of our clients now manage their content using one of InnovaIT's Content Management Solutions (CMS). This benefits both the client (who has improved control and immediacy of their content) and InnovaIT (who sees content publication as a relatively low value task for a strategic consultant and application developer). However, along with the benefits of CMS, come the challenges of organizational change in managing the content - particularly in larger organizations who have substantial information to manage and various sources of content. This month, I thought I'd provide some tips on web content strategy development. 

The first step of any communications strategy ought to be figuring out who your site visitors will be and what you want to say to those audiences. Consider both the internal users (members, clients, subscribers, branch members, etc.) as well as the external audience (visitors, potential clients, advertisers, vendors, etc.). Given those audiences, what needs to be communicated? In addition to the overall communications objectives for website, what member specific information and resources and general information for external users will you need to present? Also, how will you integrate those external and internal requirements? 

Planning how your information will be distributed across the landscape of your site is an important step. This speaks to the site structure and navigational tools used on your site. Ask yourself how you expect people to browse, search and find information on your site. While the 2-click rule (all content available within two clicks) might be a great objective, a rich content site should ensure that you develop strategic pathways for your information so that users are exposed to the content you want as well as the material they want. With many CMS tools, you can develop specific Channels or sections for your content, and give authoring rights for specific channels to a person or department in your organization. This segues nicely to the next area of consideration. 

Managing content is much more than providing the tools to put content on the web. They say a camel is a horse built by committee. We have seen many poorly presented CMS websites designed by committees and even worse by disconnected departments. In establishing a strategy, you must establish where the content will come from, how you will develop consistency of style and who will play a role in the communication channel. Often the web content authorization workflow will result in the creation of numerous roles such as Content creator, Content reviewer, Content editor, Content publisher, and Content authority.

 

Content sources do not have to be restricted to internal resources in your company. These days there are plenty of sources of syndicated content that would be useful to you and your clients. However, this provides another challenge; that of ensuring information validity and reliability from external resource links. 

In developing consistency of site design, you should determine the style standards that will be required. Design consideration includes fonts and colors (Hint: use a Cascading Style Sheet to enforce these style decisions), usability - including visually challenged or other supports, the appropriateness of types of content, copy writing (grammar and style), and the use of multimedia (pictures, document attachments, sound/video).

Good quality assurance principles would suggest you revisit the standards and processes from time to time. You should also develop procedures to ensure currency of information. Manage expectations within your organization about immediacy and response time to get content through the authorization channels. You may need to develop procedures for both planned content changes (regular updates) as well as ad hoc content (special notices, urgent announcements). Also, consider how long content should appear before it is retired and procedures to deal with expired content (delete or archive).

 

Establish a flowchart for content publication identifying decision points and authority, steps for adding to the site (e.g. create, review, edit, authorize, publish), and steps for managing materials (retire, edit, delete content). Plan your Continuous Quality Assurance process - the regular review of content and process, collection of feedback, and change implementation.

 

The strategy discussed above is not exclusive to website management - it is a good strategic guide for any communication and PR strategy. Treat your web content with the same respect you would give your publications and press releases. If you don't have a strategy for that - maybe you can read the foregoing and replace "site" or "website" with "communications", or "PR materials".