Content Strategy Example
Scenario:
My client needed a completely new content set that encompassed all teams and all bodies of work they performed. Their existing content included policies and procedures that were stored on SharePoint. The employees had difficulty finding relevant content, and some employees had saved older versions to their local computer. As a result, there were many versions of the same procedure floating around, and many employees were using outdated procedures.
Solution:
In analyzing the project, we identified three sequential aspects of the work:
- Content creation
- Content verification and publication
- Adoption and continuous improvement
Content Creation
Among the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), we identified a “Content Captain” who would be responsible for their team’s deliverables. The SMEs were not writers, so I added additional guidance for the creation process, including:
- A questionnaire to help create the content outline
- A kickoff meeting with the SMEs where they would receive resources and a mini-training for their roles to understand their responsibilities (Content Captain and other SMEs)
I worked with my client to design “first draft sprints” to help the non-writer SMEs with creating an initial rough draft. These were in-person meetings, usually 1 hour, 5 days a week, for one week. For larger scope or more complex content, we added additional in-person meetings.
After the rough draft creation, I (as the Technical Writer) rewrote and polished the content, and created visuals. I followed up on any clarifications I needed with the Content Captain.
Content Verification (Quality Assurance) and Publication
To improve the quality of the content, I conducted content reviews with Sr. Managers and cross-functional colleagues. Their perspectives helped to identify any content gaps where the SMEs left information out, because they assumed the process or concept was obvious. I incorporated this feedback and verified with the Content Captain that the revised content was still technically correct.
I then created the wiki pages and published the content on the wiki, including a feedback mechanism on every wiki page. Once it was published, I sent an announcement company-wide to facilitate awareness of the new resource.
Adoption and Continuous Improvement
To begin driving adoption, the Content Captain invited their entire team, other stakeholders, and any other colleagues who worked with their team or who was interested in learning more about their team to a launch meeting. The Vice President kicked off the meeting to explain the Content Captain’s and their team’s responsibility for maintaining and sharing their content. The Content Captain then presented their content to all attendees. This was an important formal hand off of content ownership to the team.
Another aspect of adoption was including the content in new employee onboarding and training.
To maintain this valuable new resource and to protect the return on investment for this major project and accomplishment, the Content Captain or designee then managed updates and a consistent review cadence. This process and the feedback mechanism on every wiki page also facilitated continuous improvement of the content.
The technical team pulled usage reports on a regular cadence to verify that the team was using their content. They also reviewed feedback tickets to identify any trends that impacted all of the content, not just a single team’s content.
