Content Audits: A Framework for Improvement
SEtting the Stage
If you’re part of a team tasked with enhancing your organization's online presence, whether it's a website, a blog, or a digital marketing campaign and you’re ready to start creating content, stop and ask a crucial question: "What do we get out of it?"
Asking and answering that question is where the content audit comes into play. But before you can embark on it, you may need to “sell” the process and the value to your internal stakeholders. Justifying the need for a content inventory and audit requires more than a general feeling that your content experience needs improvement; it demands a solid business case. Inventories and audits are time-consuming, and their value might not be immediately apparent to decision-makers who aren't directly involved in content creation and management.
Making The Business Case
Creating a business case for a content audit is akin to presenting any investment request. You need to clearly illustrate how the business will benefit from this effort. The benefits include external and internal factors, including finances, reputation, legal compliance, and internal efficiencies. To build a compelling case, you must first understand your organization's core values and goals. This knowledge will help you tailor your proposal and messaging to resonate with decision-makers.
Managing Content as a Business Asset
Why focus on existing content? Simply put, content is a valuable business asset. It's what your current customers see and judge your business by. Managing your content is akin to managing any other asset you've invested in.
The power of an inventory and audit is that these activities set the groundwork for a successful content project. The inventory stage establishes scope and begins to reveal patterns in content quantity and type. The audit phase refines that scope, providing a fuller picture of what needs attention. Inventories and audits can serve as powerful communication tools throughout a project's or website's lifecycle. Your audit provides insights into your current content performance and informs future content planning. It also helps identify opportunities for content reuse and areas where you can avoid duplication. In many cases, it's more cost-effective to improve existing content than create new material.These activities and their outcomes facilitate collaboration among stakeholders, designers, content managers, and technologists, aligning the team's efforts with opportunities for change.
Understanding your organization's goals and the role of content in achieving them is critical. Without the context of treating content as a business asset that deserves investment and scrutiny, it's challenging to focus an audit effectively, and the results may not resonate with your audience. With a solid foundation of business understanding, you can identify content improvement opportunities that receive support within the organization.
a Framework for developing a business case
In the book Content Audits and Inventories: A Handbook for Content Improvement, I refer to the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control framework. This framework is part of the Six Sigma business process improvement methodology, typically used to enhance, optimize, and stabilize business processes and designs. There are parallels to the process of a content improvement project and applying it to your audit planning can help with the development of a compelling business case.
Define: Start by documenting customer needs, business objectives, and project goals. Collaborate with stakeholders to gain organizational buy-in before proceeding.
Measure: Collect baseline data. Determine which aspects of current processes and content performance metrics you'll analyze. At the project's conclusion, compare updated data with the initial baseline to demonstrate improvement.
Analyze: Delve into cause-and-effect relationships, identify root causes, list and prioritize issues, and explore potential solutions. Map out process flows and plan content improvements.
Improve: Building on insights gained during the analysis phase, optimize existing content and processes. Pilot new workflows and processes.
Control: Ensure the long-term health of your content by establishing standards and guidelines. Train personnel in new processes and put measurement plans in place for continuous monitoring and optimization.
While the book primarily emphasizes tactics related to the Define, Measure, and Analyze steps, it's crucial to understand that improving content and processes comes next, followed by ongoing content maintenance and governance. These latter steps are most effective when built upon a solid foundation of content strategy goals and performance metrics. It can’t be emphasized enough that the real value of doing a content audit is the follow-through — the implementation of the recommendations and plans that are the audit’s outcome.
Selling the Audit Internally
In addition to building a business case for the audit, it's essential to convey its value to the entire organization. Team members not directly involved in the project must understand the importance of investing their time in the audit. Positioning content as a business asset and content management as a crucial business function can help your organization grasp the value of this work.
In the years since the first edition of this book was published, the importance of organizational readiness has become increasingly evident. Organizational readiness involves two critical aspects: readiness to participate in the audit and readiness to implement the audit's recommendations. A team primed to accept the results because they’ve been made aware up front of the goals, outcomes, and value of the audit will be much more likely to buy into the work and support the effort.
Overcoming Resistance
Organizations can exhibit resistance to content audits for various reasons, often stemming from concerns about time and resources. Resistance to change is natural, and it's vital to identify the sources of resistance within your organization. Are potential auditors concerned about the time required? Are they defensive about their content? Addressing these concerns requires effective communication and positioning the audit as an opportunity for improvement rather than a critique.
Justifying the need for an audit to those eager to dive into creating new content can be challenging, but it's essential to emphasize that this upfront work can save resources and enhance decision-making. An audit empowers you to make informed decisions about resources and budgets, develop a clear understanding of your content landscape, and identify gaps in content that need attention.
An audit allows you to:
Make informed decisions about resources and budget
Support long-term content strategy and planning
Develop a clear understanding of your content landscape
The value of the audit lies in its ability to enable evidence-based decisions and prevent hasty conclusions based on assumptions.
Showing Return on Investment (ROI)
Defining and quantifying the ROI for your audit project can be the key to gaining organizational buy-in. Sometimes, it's not enough to highlight content issues; you must justify the need for change with hard numbers that showcase the costs of missed opportunities and process inefficiencies.
Your ROI calculations might include:
Increased sales
Faster time-to-market due to streamlined content deployment
Process efficiencies leading to reduced costs
Enhanced customer satisfaction
Reduced legal risks
Improved brand consistency
ROI can be both tangible (e.g., increased sales, reduced costs) and intangible (e.g., greater customer engagement, brand consistency). By quantifying the time and resources required for regular content inventory and audit compared to the potential costs of not doing so, you can make a compelling case for the audit's value.
Driving Positive Change
Content audits provide valuable insights into your organization's content landscape. When conducted within a framework of business goals and measurable outcomes, they drive positive change. The time spent defining goals, gaining stakeholder buy-in, and ensuring organizational readiness is an investment that pays dividends. Ultimately, content audits empower organizations to make informed decisions, optimize resources, enhance customer satisfaction, and achieve their long-term content strategy goals.