Content Governance Guide: From Audits to Continuous Improvements

Keeping every piece of your organization’s content up-to-date can prove to be a mammoth task—and as changes pile up, the issues multiply. At some point, every content manager finds themselves with a content backlog, whether it’s because of a brand refresh, internal policy changes, new privacy and accessibility guidelines, information architecture adjustments, or just content becoming outdated over time.

The effective short-term solution: run an audit, develop a plan of action, and wrangle your content back into shape. But a more powerful long-term solution is content governance: a framework to keep your whole library iteratively updated and improved, and make sure much-needed changes don’t slip through the cracks.

We’ve been helping companies move from cycles of mounting debt and total redesign to more consistent feedback rhythms for nearly 30 years. Below, you’ll find our guide to the fundamentals of content governance, a step-by-step rundown of how to make sure your content serves your organization today and well into the future.

If you’re seeking specific insights into how your organization’s content can become your biggest asset rather than your most persistent problem, get in touch.

What is content governance, and why is it important?

Content governance is a system of guidelines, processes, and policies that determine how your content is managed throughout its lifecycle. Governance moves beyond simply creating individual assets and then overhauling everything during site-wide refreshes. It gives you a proactive, iterative strategy to make sure your content is always relevant, up to date, and provides your site visitors with the best experience possible.

When devising governance frameworks for our clients, we focus on three key elements: documentation, a designated team to devise and maintain the documents, and a mechanism for making and communicating policy changes. 

Content strategy vs content governance: from next steps to the whole content lifecycle

A content strategy is a plan for creating and maintaining content. For mature organizations already managing hundreds or thousands of pages, the cornerstone of a content strategy is likely a plan to bring their current library back under control—deleting or archiving old and irrelevant material, restructuring their information architecture to make key pages more discoverable, and fixing issues like typos, jargon, or accessibility compliance liabilities. Even for organizations redeveloping your content from scratch, an honest assessment of what’s currently working and what isn’t will equip you with valuable data for the foundation of your strategy.

Content governance goes beyond one immediate plan. It outlines who precisely is responsible for creating, updating, and ultimately deleting content; what guidelines and policies they should adhere to in every phase of the lifecycle; and how changes will be determined and communicated to all relevant stakeholders.

If you’re looking to implement both, we recommend setting up a governance framework before or while designing your strategy: the fundamentals of governance discussed in this guide will give you support for deciding what your future strategy should cover, and who should oversee its different steps. Building a solid foundation of governance within your organization will make it much easier to implement your strategy and to maximize its potential benefits. 

How content governance can benefit your team

Simply put, thorough content governance can stop the pile-up of issues, provide a framework for implementing new changes quickly, and ensure your site visitors are always getting the most out of your sites.

When your governance framework is effective, you might notice:

• Randomized quality checks reveal pages are compliant and up to date.
• You’re fielding fewer repetitive questions—both from external visitors and internal teams.
• Site visitors who are able to “self service” by finding the information they’re seeking without assistance, relieving burdens on customer support teams.
• Your team knows who’s responsible for which domains, and who should answer which questions.
• Feedback from site visitors trends in a positive direction.

The fundamentals of a content governance plan

At the highest level, there are seven steps your content governance plan should include.

1. Set up a designated team

Your team will be responsible for designing, communicating and maintaining your governance policies. You want it to be relatively small—depending on the size of your organization, we recommend no more than 5-10 members selected to capture a good breadth of perspectives and different roles.

2. Determine scope

Before jumping into the specifics, your committee should create an inventory of everything in your digital ecosystem and decide what’s covered by your governance plan. Your inventory should include public and private websites, forms, portals, social media accounts, ecommerce platforms, newsletters, and the governance framework itself—because governance documents also require governance! 

3. Assign owners

Once you’ve set your scope, it’s time to assign ownership. Someone needs to “own” every facet of your ecosystem—this means that they are ultimately responsible for making sure their facet is up to date, well-maintained, and in line with the latest policies. Start assigning ownership at the highest level (i.e., a whole site), and from there, drill down into ownership of individual categories, pages, and sub-pages. Our website governance plan gives you a step-by-step breakdown for this.

4. Assign roles and permissions

All individuals who will actively work on your content should be assigned a role, with a clear idea of what they’re entitled to do (and not to do) on your site.

A roles hierarchy for a specific website might look like this:

• Contributors have permissions to create site content, but not to edit it.
• Editors have permission to create and edit content, but not to publish live to the site.
• Publishers have permission to approve and publish the content of others. 
• Administrators have permission to publish, and to administer accounts and permissions of other users on the website.
• Webmasters have full permissions to manage and administer content and users.

5. Content lifecycle management and policies

Your committee should create a document collecting their policies on roles, permissions, and ownership, and content management. It’s likely your organization will already have some guidelines in place, either documented or informally—you might have a style guide, a brand voice and tone guide, an accessibility policy, or rules and best practices around when content should be published, edited, and archived. Capture existing policies and practices first and fill in gaps where necessary. 

6. Communicate outwards

Content governance relies on all owners and stakeholders understanding, respecting, and adhering to policies. Policies and committee findings must be communicated regularly, and supported with clear and findable documentation for reference. Leadership also has a role to play here—creating strong buy-in from decision makers who lead by example and openly consider external feedback will help with widespread policy adoption.

7. Create cadence and change mechanisms

Governance is not a “set it and forget it” affair. Your committee will have to meet regularly to review policy, respond to feedback, and address any issues that arise in keeping content well-maintained and up to date. Set a regular cadence for meetings and decide how changes will be voted on and implemented. It’s also important to consider how committee membership will be decided once team members move on, or the size of your organization increases and you need input from a greater number of people.

Content isn’t static—your maintenance shouldn’t be either

It’s easy to think of your content as being “finished” once you’ve hit that publish button. But the truth is, a content lifecycle doesn’t just involve publishing today and deleting tomorrow. As your organization grows, your priorities shift, and policies and practices change, adapting your existing content is a much more sustainable practice than starting from scratch.

Governance allows maintenance and adaptation to become a living, breathing part of your strategy. With a diverse committee, a clear and well-communicated policy, and a firm understanding of how to make changes as you go, your organization will be in prime shape to keep getting the most out of your content.

We specialize in helping you craft content strategies that don’t just meet business requirements, but help you better solve the complex needs of your site visitors. If you’d like to discuss how your content can better serve you, internally and externally, reach out today.