Sunday 3 March 2013

Content strategy: there's no such thing as a finished website

garden tools

"There's no such thing as a finished website," says content strategist Sue Davis, "Content has a lifecycle - you can't just fling it up and forget it."

Sue, whose clients include the European Union, was speaking at the London Content Strategy Meetup's January lightning talks.

Content Lifecycle graphic by Erin Scime
The content lifecycle by Erin Scime
Sue's slideshow, 10 Content strategy visuals that changed the world, showed us the content lifecycle. It involves setting up a proper process for creating new content and maintaining content.

How does your garden grow?

If you don't have processes in place to manage the content lifecycle, your website will quickly look and feel like an overgrown garden - not great for your users.

You end up with multiple versions of the same content. The information on one page contradicts the info on another. Search gets clogged with out-of-date and duplicate pages.

In big organisations, it can be an uphill battle to implement a content strategy. Senior people don't realise the need for a formal content strategy - they think the website can take care of itself and don't realise the risks of leaving it to grow and grow.

The big question is how do you get people to 'get' content strategy?

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