Author: Clinton Forry

A content audit will reveal many things about the state of your online content. That audit must be used wisely. Decisions must be made to keep, discard, modify, or acquire content based on an audit’s results. DO SO WITH CAUTION.

Recently, there have been a good number of articles written about the content audit. Abby Gilmore wrote a great post about a content audit’s assembly and importance.

The decision to create content should always be approached with reverence. It should carefully informed and considered in the light of your larger business goals. And the the most base level, it should be A GOOD IDEA.

Automobiles, viability, and the content audit

Auto makers have wrestled with the concept of the content audit ever since Henry Ford decided to make something other than the Model T.

To their credit, the car giants examined their “content audits” with an eye on efficiencies. In this case, the content audit would inventory the parts, assemblies, and processes available for making other cars.

If they could make a 1956 Ford sedan, they could make a 1956 station wagon with many of the same parts. Efficiency!

Boy, they made beautiful wagons. (See above image.) Keep in mind that this was a golden era for the station wagon. The post-war baby boom created a need for cars that could hold the growing American family. The station wagon became an art form. So much so, books about “Station Wagon Living” were written, even.

Auto makers saw a need not met fully anywhere else. Their then-current sedan platform and common selection of parts made the station wagon’s manufacture relatively simple. And, the designers knew the medium. Magnificent vehicles were created.

In 1966, Ford was presented with the idea of making that rambunctious, sporty Mustang into a STATION WAGON. Really. After all, station wagons had been selling. So had the Mustang.

Luckily, they passed on the idea. Sure, a few would have sold, but at what expense to the brand? They realized that it would have been a less-than-great idea. See for yourself:

Accelerate to 1996. An ugly station wagon came on the market. Saturn foisted the abomination of the model SW1 station wagon onto the innocent buying public during the height of the station-wagon-shunning SUV boom of the mid 1990s.

Sure, ugly station wagons had appeared before. The 70s saw the Pacer and Gremlin station wagons, after all.

But, Saturn wanted a part of the market. They saw things in the same way as Ford did in 1956, but without the demand of the marketplace or the design sensibility. And this is what happened:

It looked as though they had, at the last minute, carelessly grafted the bits of a station wagon on the back of their sedan.  Despite Saturn’s marketing claims of being a “different car company,” they delivered a turd.

Website content, viability, and the content audit

Many of us have personally witnessed online content audits that highlight poor content quality, inaccuracy, and a considerable disregard for sustainability. Those findings are often ignored. More content with those same attributes finds itself on websites.

The content audit can make the task of determining what stays online and what gets dismissed a much easier and presentable endeavor.

Hard questions will get asked in the audit process. Basic business principles will get called into question. Someone might say, “This sounds like a bad idea on par with making the classic Mustang into a station wagon.”

It may be difficult, but that is part of what makes the content audit such an effective tool. Nothing else lays bare, in black and white, these things:

• What is being done internally (workflow, ownership, governance)
• What content is being presented to the public
• What constitutes the public image of the company

On the other hand, audits also present some gaps, some opportunities, that might seem like good ideas. Some will be. Those revelations should be tempered by examining them through the lens of your overall content strategy.

Many of those ideas won’t fare as well. Though bright and shiny on the surface, they will ultimately prove unsustainable, unwanted, and unwise. Like that appalling Saturn station wagon.

The content audit has a great deal of power. USE IT WISELY.

Here is an advert that shows the marketing behind that beautiful 1956 Ford station wagon:

What happens when a content strategy is based upon a suspect business concept? The user experience will become the first casualty.

It has been a long time since AOL’s CD-ROMs were as ubiquitous as today’s Facebook comments. AOL is foisting ubiquity of another sort upon us in the form of dubious content.

Business Insider just posted a leaked 58-page guide AOL provides to their editorial staff. Titled somewhat ominously “The AOL Way,” the guide resembles a proper content strategy in many ways, replete with a very basic wireframe, a page table, some content production workflows, audience info, and more.

Yes, content strategy is the way

There has been quite a bit of discussion around The AOL Way document leak. Much of it points to the abhorrent content-farm practices at the core of their business strategy.

Regardless if one agrees with the content farm method or not, (and I do not), this leak points out that AOL has a thoroughly considered content strategy. The goals in the document are a stretch. The means of getting the content created are dubious and unsavory. But, this fact remains: they have done their homework.

But, you have to start with a sound premise

This raises the larger, more frightening question: What happens when a client’s business practices, aims and goals are suspect? How does a content strategist resolve the cognitive dissonance that this brings about?

The first reaction is to question a business’ decision makers and stakeholders in the project. But, often the business aims, goals, and directives will come from much higher in an organization. Legacy mindsets and practices hold firm. Shareholders and boards must be appeased. A certain strata within the company may want change, but others do not.

Ultimatum situations of “change this or I am leaving with my principles” may be too scary for most employees to consider. Those charged with creating a content strategy in a situation like this will follow Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim of “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Improvise. Make do.

Could this have happened at AOL? If it did happen, what’s next?

Bad content = bad user experience

A few years ago. I had a need for a clock radio. I went to the store and bought one. It was cheap. It didn’t hold a radio station in tune. The buttons were SERIOUSLY fragile. Some didn’t work at all. One day later, I returned it, and vowed to stay away from this clock radio brand for life.

That clock radio maker tried to fill an unmet need. They designed and manufactured something that was technically a clock radio. There was a fancy, full color box. The chrome buttons were shiny. It was sold where clock radios were sold. On the shelf, it sat right next to others that were more expensive and more substantial. A clock radio that does not work does not meet a user need.

A portion of AOL’s plan uses the content farm production method. As The AOL Way guide shows, vast amounts of this low-quality content will be produced. (See a “farmed” example below.) It will be written in a way that games search engine algorithms, launching it to top spots in searches. This content will clog search engines, crowding out other, more viable content. Just like that clock radio.

Content creators and publishers need content to fill a business need. That content must be useful and usable. A business’ reckless disregard for the end user or the end product will invariably create a poor user experience. No matter how carefully they craft the content strategy.

Perhaps the new head of content at AOL, Arianna Huffington, will make some changes for the better. Let’s hope so, anyway.

(“aol free time” image from Flickr user dehub (cc: by-nc-sa 2.0))

The best way to properly take care of your content is to give it an owner. With ownership comes responsibility. With responsibility comes reward. That reward? Content that helps you achieve your business goals.

An example of ownership: my dad’s truck

My dad takes meticulous care of his truck. He changes the oil on a regular basis and performs regular tune-ups.  He keeps an ear out for funny sounds that the engine might be making. He washes it. All of the time.

He needs to do this because he depends on it. It does the work he asks it to do—hauling things, towing things, etc.

It’s also a source of leisure for him. Every fall, he puts a truck camper on the back and goes far out West for a couple of weeks with my mom.

Not only is this truck getting them from one place to another, but it’s also serving as their lodging whilst in the mountains where the deer and antelope play.

If he were to neglect that truck, ignore regular servicing, and pay no mind to its proper operation, he and Mom may end up stranded on some mountain pass with a wild grizzly bear. (See dramatization in photo above.) His mindful ownership minimizes that risk.

Content needs ownership

Now, keep in mind, things can be owned—and not cared for. This often leads to less-than-stellar (or even catastrophic) results. I’ve seen it happen with trucks. We sometimes see it with content.

Organizations are beginning to recognize the need for useful, usable content that will help them accomplish their business goals.

But, what they often fail to recognize is the need for staff resources and processes, which are required for the responsible ownership of that content. Or, they assign ownership to the content, but don’t tie ownership to website goals.

These organizations don’t look beyond that very instant the “publish” button is pushed. They might even think (and say) things like:

• “The web is like a filing cabinet that never gets full.”
• “Someone might look for that content, so keep it on the site.”
• “Just get the content up there, we’ll deal with it later.”
• “We’ll have an intern keep an eye on the content.”
• “We haven’t touched it since 1999.”

Without ownership, and the maintenance and monitoring that go with it, content suffers. Goals become much harder to accomplish. Which puts us perilously close to having our content stranded on a proverbial mountain pass, with the grizzly bear of ineptitude pacing outside.

Have your content serviced every 3,000 miles

The best content owners do far more than just ensuring content makes it to the website. Regular service intervals apply to both Dad’s truck AND effective content.

Mindful content owners make a regularly scheduled habit of:

• Monitoring content performance against goals and benchmarks
• Ensuring ongoing relevance of content to business goals
• Verifying  the accuracy of content
• Maintaining usefulness and usability of content for those using it

Content (or truck) owners acting as good stewards will be able to use their content (or trucks) to do what their goals demand. People visiting their websites will be instructed and entertained, and they will accomplish tasks. Or take vacations with truck campers. Without fear of grizzly bears.

(Truck image from Dad, incorporating bear image from Flickr user tiredofh2o (CC: by-nc-sa 2.0))

Content, like roads, must be maintained. This maintenance must have a solid plan behind it, lest it become a haphazard series of patches and potholes.

I happened upon a quote by the travel writer Dame Freya Stark last week:

The most ominous of fallacies–the belief that things can be kept static by inaction.

This quote, plus my bumpy commute to work each day, got me thinking about the maintenance of both roads and content. Inaction in either case will bring a world of hurt to the people using them.

Maintain those roads

To the chagrin of the Department of Transportation, paved roads do not last forever.

Roads buckle and get potholes. They crumble. And they slowly become treacherous without intervention. Therefore, the DOT has a responsibility to craft a maintenance plan to ensure the road remains safe and passable.

Sometimes roads are maintained very well–problems are addressed before they become catastrophic. Ideally, the pavement problems are systematically fixed in a manner well-suited to the roadway design.

A smooth and even surface will get people where they need to go with ease. I always comment to my wife when we are lucky enough to travel on a smooth road. Like a big dork, I’ll say, “Boy, this sure is a nice piece of road.”

We’ve all seen (and felt) roadway repair problems:

• DOT lets the problem go for too long, requiring a larger fix
• Potholes get way over-filled, making the repair as bad as a pothole
• Cracks and potholes quickly become a worsening downward spiral
• Roads get destroyed by floods and earthquakes
• Small problems can cause unforeseen effects on larger systems, like bridges and on-ramps

Sometimes the solution is obviously an afterthought. This is clearly the case in my neighborhood. The red-hued concrete road was patched first with uncolored concrete (looks funny).

Later, the road crew patched it with blacktop (looks funny, too). Blacktop behaves differently in this region’s climate, and will be a bad long-term fix on the concrete roadway.

As you can see in this image, neither of the repairs are doing a good job:

Content must be maintained

Without regular maintenance, your content may become like jarring ride on a pothole-ridden avenue.

Think of that roadway as your content. Think of those filled potholes as fixes put in place along the way:

• Changes in company structure were shoehorned into the site’s IA
• A CEO insisted upon placing a stiff mission statement front and center
• A CMS update rendered your brittle customization unusable, so more custom work was cobbled on
• Stopgap fixes that were intended as temporary have become permanent
• Messaging that touts compatibility with both Netscape and Y2K

These things can all distract from the user experience, your intended messaging, and ultimately your core strategy and business goals.

Not every road or website can be pulverized and created fresh to address problems along the way. It’s too expensive. It’s not good roadway (or content governance) practice.

So, what to do?

Your content strategy must include governance

Governance is critical to keeping your content useful and usable. It is the part of your content strategy that allows for your content’s continuing maintenance, adaptation and evolution. It operates under the influence of your core strategy–what you are trying to accomplish, and why.

Like those roadways, content will not remain static if left inactive (as Dame Stark’s quote above  indicates). Outside issues like web standards will affect content. Changes in your industry will affect content. Content will also begin to deteriorate on its own via the old enemy: ROT – redundancy, outdated-ness, and triviality.

So, we must address the problems as they arise. You can anticipate some of the issues, based on past experience. For the rest:

• Strive for the most complete content metadata possible
• Recognize the signs of potholes developing via regular content audits
• Make sure that your workflows aren’t exacerbating the issues
• Be aware that fixes themselves may have unintended consequences
• Revisit your core strategy often

Then, perhaps people will comment aloud when using your site by saying, “Boy, this sure is a smooth piece of content.” MAYBE.