It's common to slip into reactive content governance. This means responding to stakeholder requests by publishing or unpublishing content only when they ask.
Proactive content governance means your team always watches over the content:
You review your content’s quality in a cycle
- Get subject matter experts, web writers, or stakeholders to review the content. They can help update it before it becomes outdated or incorrect.
The best way to start a content governance model for your agency is with a RACI chart.
RACI stands for:
- Responsible
- Accountable
- Consulted
- Informed
A RACI model helps all team members, big or small, understand their responsibilities. It also ensures content quality is maintained.
Example:
Content author | Content editor | Publisher | Stakeholder | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Create new content | R | A | C | A |
Edit content | A | R | C | I |
Publish content | C | C | R | I |
Common content workflows
Content workflows follow these stages:
- Strategy: planning content
- Creation: writing, designing, filming, content
- Review: editing and fact-checking content
- Publication/Distribution: publishing and sharing content
Among your team, some people may wear more than one hat, and that’s understandable. It’s important, however, that your team identify who’s responsible for some of these tasks so each piece of content can follow a similar workflow before and after publication.
Content governance policies
Your content governance process can also include a set of content governance policies. These can be a simple document that your team agrees to and reviews every year, such as:
- How often content is reviewed
- Who’s responsible for reviewing it
- Author tools in the website CMS that help manage governance (e.g. a writer and create a page, but can’t publish a page. Publishing is handled by managers.)
- What content will be reviewed first, such as foundational or core content.
- When content is pulled down, and how it’s handled.
- The life of news releases (e.g. news releases will be archived after three years)
Digital Experience Accessibility Knowledge Articles
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