Decentralized content governance structures often seem like a good idea because it is a fast and easy way for content editors and owners to make their own pages. (To learn more about the different content governance models see this article). Content is often created by subject matter experts (SMEs) and therefore the content will be accurate. However, having many people editing your content can create other issues. One of the primary pain points of using a decentralized content governance structure is inconsistent standards.
Below we have identified some tips and recommendations if you are currently working with a decentralized content governance model.
Create a content guide
A content guide can help govern content, even if it's being created by multiple different people. Your content guide can outline any rules that you feel is important your content follow, but there are a couple of core rules to include:
- Tone—A consistent tone helps ensure content across the site feels cohesive. It helps pieces of content, written by several different people, blend together.
- Spelling and grammar rules—Spell out the standard for this in your guide. Not only does this help make content consistent, it saves a content reviewer from having to catch a correct the same mistake repeatedly.
- Header usage—Headers greatly affect how users consume your content and it is important that the use of them remains consistent across your whole site.
Use approval features within your CMS
One of the biggest cons of a decentralized content governance model is that many different people are creating and editing content, which can lead to the addition of content that already exists elsewhere on the site. To reduce the likeliness of this happening, you can add approval requirements for new content updates depending on your CMS (we recommend Drupal). This means that one person, or a small group of people, will be responsible for approving content additions, and are able to check if content already exists elsewhere or if there is a need for the content at all.
- Drupal has the ability to create different levels of user permissions. Users with lower levels of permissions can be required to mark new content or content changes for review before it's published, allowing users with high level permissions to review the content and make the decision to publish it. Requiring content to be reviewed before it's published can also help ensure it's written to fit any content guidelines.
- There are many different ways to set up approval workflows through your CMS, but most importantly they should be set up in a way that will help your team effectively review and manage new content.
Content management
It is important to determine who owns the content after it is published to the site and who is responsible for making sure it's reviewed. Once this is done we recommend setting clear expectations for how often each content owner should be updating their content. We have outlined some example situations below:
- If the content writer owns the content, but the content administrator is responsible for ensuring content is reviewed, then the content administrator should do a quick review of the content to determine what needs updates, and then pass those pages to the content writer to update.
- If the content is owned solely by the content admin, then it is the content admins job to both review pages for necessary update, and make those updates.
- If the content is owned by the content writer, and it's their responsibility to keep it updated, then they must be reviewing their own content for updates.
There are benefits to all three formats as they are often based on who has time to regularly review and who is familiar enough with the content to review and make updates.
Bonus tip
Set an amount of time in between content reviews and create a system that helps ensure those who are responsible for review are doing it regularly.
Learn more
To learn more about digital content management view these articles: