Content Governance - Key to well-managed Content
Content governance guides the daily practices of content creation and publishing so that the work aligns with your company's content strategy.
"Most digital governance challenges come from not knowing
who’s supposed to decide things.”
Lisa Welchman
​
Content governance is known as the structure and policies around how organizations manage content creation, along with proper guidelines for the use and distribution of the content, including the implementation of a content strategy and content guidelines.
​
​
​
Why is governance a cornerstone of a successful content strategy?
If your content is currently:
​
-
Unorganized
-
Lacking a clear voice
-
Consistently confusing to customers
Then content governance deserves your attention
(Note: In this context, we specifically focus on content governance, not web governance, which addresses consistency across content, technology, and design.)
Understanding Content Governance:
Content governance involves the meticulous day-to-day management of content delivery and style, as well as the sustained execution of content strategy tactics.
Picture content governance as a comprehensive structure that:
​
-
Determines priorities
-
Provides detailed guidelines and standards on how content should look, behave, and interact with your customers
-
Assigns ownership to individuals within the organization, empowering them to make strategic decisions about content
The Significance of Content Governance:
​
While some perceive governance as a mere phase in content strategy, akin to planning or creation, I assert that governance should be at the heart of any robust content strategy. This is because governance:
-
Creates a consistent customer experience across channels
-
Prevents content bloat
-
Establishes internal organizational controls
Tools of Content Governance:
Various tools contribute to effective content governance, including:
-
Content workflows
-
Editorial guidelines
-
Style guides
-
Taxonomies
-
Archiving standards
Content Governance serves as the linchpin that ensures your content strategy is not only well-planned but consistently executed. It fosters a seamless experience for your audience, prevents content overload, and instills control within your organization. Embrace content governance to refine your content delivery, enhance customer interactions, and sustain strategic advantage in your industry.
​
​
​
Key Components of Content Governance:
Guidelines and Standards:
Why: To establish a framework for creating and evaluating content. Impact: Consistent messaging, brand alignment, and quality assurance.
​
Approval Processes:
Why: To ensure content undergoes review before publication. Impact: Error prevention, compliance, and alignment with organizational goals.
​
Roles and Responsibilities:
Why: To define who is accountable for different aspects of content creation and distribution. Impact: Clear accountability, streamlined workflows, and efficient collaboration.
​
Editorial Calendars:
Why: To plan and schedule content creation and distribution. Impact: Timely and strategic content delivery, avoiding ad-hoc approaches.
​
Consistency and Brand Alignment:
Why: Ensures a consistent brand voice and messaging across all content. Impact: Builds brand identity, trust, and recognition.
​
Regulatory Compliance:
Why: Helps meet legal and industry-specific regulations.
Impact: Avoids legal issues, penalties, and damage to reputation.
Quality Assurance:
Why: Ensures content meets established quality standards. Impact: Enhances credibility, professionalism, and audience engagement.
Efficiency and Collaboration:
Why: Defines workflows, roles, and responsibilities. Impact: Streamlines content creation, minimizes errors and promotes collaboration.
​
Risk Mitigation:
Why: Identifies and mitigates potential risks in content creation. Impact: Reduces the likelihood of content-related issues or crises.
Audience-Centric Approach:
Why: Focuses on meeting audience needs and preferences. Impact: Increases relevance, engagement, and satisfaction among the target audience.
Strategic Content Planning:
Why: Facilitates long-term content planning aligned with business objectives. Impact: Supports strategic goals, campaigns, and overall business success.
​
As businesses continue to become heavily content- and data-driven, content governance will be an important and required process for organizations to operate efficiently and effectively.
Digital governance formalizes which members of your digital content team are responsible for all the various aspects of content creation, production, distribution, and maintenance – and creating, maintaining, and communicating those content standards across the organization. It is a kind of assigning roles and responsibilities for making decisions about your company’s digital presence – particularly important for behind-the-scenes responsibilities. It’s pretty tempting to think that it’s OK for your team to be in chaos if you are “getting the job done.” However, teams in chaos aren’t getting the job done from the customer’s point of view. You can typically look at any company’s website and tell how aligned its teams are. If your information is siloed, chances are, so are your teams. On the other hand, if your information is focused on the customer, chances are your teams are as well. Content Governance is about operationalizing your content strategy at scale. It’s a way to bring order to the chaos that probably exists in your company’s content operations and to help everyone who creates and relies on that content to deliver better business outcomes.
In its most basic form, content governance may just be a series of guidelines and manual quality control processes intended to ensure that content is on-brand, accurate, and of decent quality. Content governance is the framework and processes you use to create, store, and maintain your content. Content governance guides the daily practices of content creation and publishing so that the work aligns with your company's content strategy. Let´s keep it in line. Without properly managing content and data, businesses can end up in serious trouble for mismanagement. The amount of different content channels and contributors throughout a company can be just overwhelming. Often internal guidelines, governance, and good coordination throughout all channels and involved stakeholders are mandatory but in reality way too often simply missing.
​
Navigating the Strategic Management of Content
Content governance is the systematic orchestration, planning, and regulation of an organization's content lifecycle. This involves the establishment of guidelines, standards, and processes meticulously crafted to ensure that content not only aligns with organizational objectives but also sustains quality, complies with regulatory frameworks, and resonates effectively with the intended target audience. Organizations, through the adoption of robust content governance practices, gain the ability to navigate the intricacies of content creation, uphold quality standards, adhere to regulations, and ultimately realize their overarching business objectives. By embracing content governance as a strategic imperative, businesses empower themselves to harness the full potential of their content, turning it into a driving force for success rather than a potential stumbling block.
Stumbling blocks when dealing with company content
Some pitfalls that you should avoid to work efficiently with company content:
