What does it mean to actively manage your content
Content management is the continuous process of organizing, improving, and maintaining the information you publish for constituents. This includes:
- Webpages
- Files and other downloads
- Images, video, and multimedia
- Datasets, including data dictionaries and accompanying materials
- Copy that is part of user interfaces (e.g. in web forms or transactional apps)
Content like this is “alive.” You must update it as your organization accomplishes new things and responds to events. To do this, you need dedicated staff time, processes, and the right skills.
Your content team may be a part of your communications team, or a separate, complementary team. They’ll do things like:
- Unpublish and archive content that’s no longer relevant
- Update content as programs and services change
- Coordinate messages across websites and communications channels
- Monitor for broken links and fix them
- Identify content that needs improvement and improve it
- Remediate accessibility issues
- Review feedback for opportunities to improve
Why do it
Organizations manage content to control risk and to improve constituents’ experiences.
Here are 3 scenarios that illustrate the problems that unmanaged content causes:
- You publish a new version of a document, but don’t unpublish the old, obsolete version. Constituents still find the old one (for example, in a Google search) and act on its outdated, wrong information.
- Many teams at your organization add information to the website based on what they’re working on. However, it’s nobody’s job to review old content and make sure it’s still accurate. As a result, constituents apply for grants you never offer, click on links to an old website, and find pages with contradictory information about your services.
- You typically publish a new dataset each month. However, as the months pass, this list of files grows longer and more unwieldy. You’ve also changed the structure of the data, but haven’t documented it. Now the old files are difficult to combine with the new ones. People who might want to use this data find that working with it is too hard. This causes them to give up or look for alternative sources.
These examples show how undermanaged content creates poor, sometimes unnavigable experiences for constituents. You’re more likely to leave information published that provides people with the wrong information. You’ll have content gaps that prevent your websites from being truly self-service. You’ll also have broken links, accessibility problems, old versions of documents mixed with new ones, and references to obsolete services.
But good content management both avoids these issues and enhances people’s experiences. It means they’ll find relevant, understandable information when they need it most. It also helps them do things they might otherwise have to contact you for. It even improves the discoverability of your services through better search engine rankings.
What you're aiming for
Your goal is to ensure your content helps people use your services. This means your content should be:
- Easy to find, use, and understand
- Up to date
- Accessible to everyone
- Getting better over time because of feedback
Good content helps people do what they need without asking for help. They can fill out forms correctly, follow your instructions, and understand the information you share. People who need your data can find it, understand what it means, and use it to solve problems.
You’re also aiming to have a team dedicated to creating and managing your content. This team makes sure your content works well on all platforms. They check that it helps people, and they keep improving it.
The team also protects you from risks. They look out for content that violates accessibility requirements, refers to old policies, or leads to complaints or legal issues. This team costs money, but they help you get a lot more value from your public content.
What you need
The right people
Your content team needs to know how to keep your content up to date as your organization changes. They'll also help make sure everyone who works on content is following the same rules.
This team should include at least one content strategist. Content strategists manage, write, edit, and publish content. They create strategies focused on constituent needs, accessibility, navigation, and organizational priorities. They should be strong writers and work well with others. They'll often collaborate with subject matter experts and legal teams.
You can hire vendors to do this work if you don’t have the staffing or time to do it in-house. Vendors generally charge $150-$250 per hour per staff member. They might also need a project manager to guide the work, since they may not know your organization as well.
The right processes
You also need clear steps for how content gets reviewed and published. Some organizations create editing processes to approve content. These processes also ensure content meets legal, expert, and accessibility standards.
Automation tools may also help you save time. For example, Siteimprove can scan your pages and let you know of any broken links.
How to get started
If you don’t have one already, form a content team. At this stage, the “team” could be one person who can dedicate at least a few hours a week. It could also be staff from across the organization who agree to manage at least their team’s content.
The team can begin with simple things:
- Check for and fix broken links each month. If you’re evaluating content on Mass.gov, Siteimprove will automatically find them. Someone just needs to fix them.
- Fix basic accessibility issues. Mass.gov authors can use Editoria11y to help them find these.
- Look for redundant, obsolete, and trivial (ROT) content. This will probably require subject matter experts from across your organization to play at least a small role. It may be a big task, depending on how much you’ve published. If so, bite off one topic at a time.
- Get familiar with data you have about how people use your content. Review feedback, web analytics, social media interactions, and Google Search data. The team may be able to make improvements based on what it’s learning.
The team will likely need training. The 3 most common trainings new content teams need are:
- Plain language
- Accessibility
- Using the tools and systems where you publish content
Maturing your practice
For most organizations, maturing in managing your content means:
- Increasing the team’s size and skillset. You want to ensure you have enough staff to manage all your content. You may also need new skillsets, such as experience research or visual design.
- Building and improving processes. Content management tends to be iterative and cyclical. Having documented, tested processes in place helps with both. For example, you have a monthly review for finding and fixing broken links. You update your home pages quarterly with news and seasonal content. And you pass along feedback to subject matter experts to inform plans and revisions. Processes will help your team stay organized.
- Enabling coordination between the content team and other content owners. The things other teams do usually have implications for your content. If they create a new program, you may need to develop Mass.gov pages about it, write social media posts, share press releases, and more! Content teams that collaborate thrive.
- Becoming more sophisticated in measuring your content's success. Instead of just reviewing feedback, conduct monthly thematic analyses. Test critical content with real people. Have at least one staff member skilled in interpreting web analytics.
Guidance and resources
Here are some recommended first steps for actively managing your content:
- Conduct an audit of your Mass.gov content
- Get a list of all your Mass.gov pages or documents
- Collect and analyzing feedback
- Book a consult with a Mass Digital content strategist
- Join Content Lab, a community of practice focused on content strategy