Improving web content governance
Saint Joseph’s University adopted a “By Review” content production model where content production is distributed among site managers, but the Marketing and Communications Team’s web content specialist acts as an advisor, content strategist, and publisher.
TIMELINE
June - September 2021
TEAM
Web content specialist (me), director of digital marketing, associate director of communications
TOOLS USED
Airtable, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, SiteImprove
The problem
Site managers were not consistently evaluating or updating their content because it was hard to keep track of what they needed to change and when.
How might we help site managers be more proactive about evaluating or updating their content?
Hypothesis
Creating a clear, simple process for updating and tracking content will help reduce the time it takes for site managers to find, evaluate and update web content. This will help us maintain content quality, relevancy, accuracy and consistency across sju.edu.
We’ll know this is true when we see them consistently evaluating and/or updating the content they are responsible for without the web team needing to remind them.
Outline of the process I created
What I did
Conducted a content audit of primary and secondary pages to identify pain points and opportunities
Interviewed stakeholders about the current process, made recommendations and presented them
Created an Airtable database that allows site managers to see how often a piece of content needs to be updated and when
Used Airtable’s automation features to notify site managers when an update is due
Wrote governance and process guide
Tracker I set up in Airtable
Results
Through this work, we were able to reduce the time it takes to find, evaluate and update priority web content so the team can recommendations and support stakeholders more quickly
Other highlights:
Improved accuracy of web content by eliminating any errors after an initial content audit
Allowed the team to keep track of comments about a specific piece of content using Airtable’s comment feature
Taught team how to use a valuable project management tool in 2 months, advancing their professional development