Your strategic plan says that you will have a new, state-of-the art website that delivers quality information and services to your public—compliant with WCAG 2.0 Guidelines. Your IT team and suppliers are responsible for the CMS implementation. They have the time, the budget and skills. They are amped and ready to go. Sounds good. But here’s the thing! Often the biggest part of your web project is delivered by your general staff, that is, the guts of the website—the content. Your staff are busy with their everyday jobs, they don’t necessarily have the right skills and they haven’t got an allocated budget. Everyone knows the website is a critical business asset. Yet everyone ducks and dives from the responsibility of producing the actual content. Sound familiar? How do you motivate and mobilise your whole organisation to support and actually deliver on the vision?

1. What is your content strategy?
Practical strategies for empowering your people to
produce usable, accessible and findable web
content.
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2. Today’s route: from basecamp to summit
1. Your mission: get inhouse content authors to populate a website
2. Governance, experts, training and tools
3. Break the journey down into short trips
4. Contented guides know the terrain
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3. Imagine you’re here
• Last century website with volumes of old content
• Sprawling menu structures
• Meaningless search results and poor metadata
• No regard for accessibility and no clear ownership
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4. And you’ve got to get to here
Slick new website powered by shiny new content management
system with usable, accessible, findable web content.
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5. No mean feat!
In the main, IT / web teams take care of the technology
implementation.
The content part of your project is typically delivered by the
business and requires heavy business engagement.
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6. These projects need to pack in a lot of stuff
• New content management system
• New usable menu structure and design
• Content audits and rewrites
• Staff training in web writing and new tools
• NZGWS / WCAG 2.0 accessibility compliance
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7. Governance, content experts, training
and tools
At every turn, your content project must look
strong to gain respect and ultimately to move staff
to act in the project’s interests.
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8. Executive must outwardly support the mission
Head your project with an executive: your CEO is best.
• Signals the importance of the project to the executive
• Managers more likely to resource project with authors and take
direction from the content / web manager.
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9. Brief the whole content community in person
• CEO visible from the outset.
• Start with a bold vision and explain why the project is critical.
• Follow up with live CEO briefings every 1-2 months.
• Specify content owner and author roles in job descriptions.
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10. Choose an experienced guide: content manager
• Knows the terrain and can plan the best route
• Has great leadership and communication skills
• Has real authority to lead and make final decisions
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11. And expert support crew
• Contract in specialist skills: information architecture and usability.
• Menu and design changes must be usable and meaningful.
• Involve stakeholders and authors in this process.
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12. Spend time on proper engagement
• Consult in person with key managers and staff.
• Genuinely invest in getting buy-in—never assume.
• Gently unpack concerns and niggles.
• Give solid reasons for big decisions made.
• Post weekly project updates: engage internal Comms team.
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13. Make the journey as easy as possible
• Give your troops great training and tools.
• CMS templates: support good writing and accessibility.
• PDF templates: inbuilt style and accessibility features.
• Build the draft menu structures in your CMS with empty pages.
• Make publishing processes quick and simple: 1-2 approvals.
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14. Get your team mountain-fit
• Train authors in the basics of web writing, plain language,
keywords, metadata, accessibility.
• Train them in the proper use of the CMS.
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15. Break your journey down
Short content release cycles are easier to manage,
easier to track, and less demanding on authors.
New content gets out there and working for you,
and project progress is visible.
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16. How to break the journey down
• Focus on the 20% of content that 80% of your audience wants
• Aim for a content release every 3 months
• Small scope for each release: 10-20 authors, 10-20 pages each
• Part-time author with BAU commitments: 1 page every 2-4 days
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17. Select a reconnaissance team
Find the best team to make the first trip.
• Who owns that 20% of content?
• Who is available right now?
• Which content is stable right now? Stands alone?
• Who would make a good role model?
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18. Size up the journey
Scope is critical. Content experts should work along side content
owners to nut out what’s in and out of scope.
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19. Fire the team up!
• Get the CEO to meet them.
• Workshop your approach, menu, design and content scope.
• Demo the CMS, training and tools.
• Explain processes and timeframes.
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20. Agree on realistic timeframes
• Show respect for people’s existing work commitments.
• Enter a terms of reference with each author’s manager.
• Track author progress against content scope.
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21. Support the team
• Remain actively involved.
• Meet with each author fortnightly.
• Set up monthly group meetings in the computer room.
• Find content champions to buddy up with other authors.
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22. Quality control
• Make sure content approvals are not holding things up.
• Spread the load : 10-20 approvers, 10-20 pages each
• Get one web editor to proof read each content release.
• User-test any tricky or highly critical content with 5 external people.
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23. Release your content as soon as you can
• 200 accurate, findable pages often better than 1000 poor pages
• Major CMS delays: aim to go live on existing website
• Challenges: Experts have seen it all before.
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24. Next leg: gear up to do it again
• Engage the next team for the next release.
• Improve the way you do things each time.
• CEO: publicly praise performance.
• Reward good work. Enjoy the view!
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25. Contented guides know the terrain
Content strategy and content services
Web writing and accessibility audits
Web writing and accessibility training
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26. Content author training: our specialty
• Unique in the market
• Low-cost, high impact
• Online, self-paced, mass training
Content reaches a tipping point where quality becomes the norm.
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27. Looking back
• Executive role
• Experienced content manager and content experts
• Counter technology with the human touch
• Agree to the important stuff upfront
• Explain decisions made
• Release often: keep scope small
• Spread the load
• Invest in quality training and tools
• Show and reward progress
• Learn as you go: adapt.
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28. Tell us your content project story
Keep in touch:
www.contented.com
alice@contented.com
rachel@contented.com
T: @aliceandrachel
FB: /writingskills
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