Websmith Group | Web Application and Software Development, Strategy and Consulting » Planning Guides

Content Review Workshop – The Content Audit

Kishau Rogers — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:51:26 +0000

Day 1: The Content Audit

Every website owner should review their website periodically to ensure that the content is up-to-date, relevant to their target audience and effective. The first step in this process is to perform a content audit, which involves cataloging and assessing your existing website content. This session will focus on cataloging or taking inventory of your existing content. This phase will serve as the foundation for the remaining activities, therefore it is important that you schedule enough time to perform a careful review.

The Importance of Effective Website Content:

(cliche alert) Content is king. Without effective content, there’s no website. There are many uses for content:

To inform.
To answer your visitors/customers questions.
To manage expectations.
To build trust & credibility.
To drive decision-making.
To entertain.
To build relationships/community.
To educate.

A comprehensive content review process will ensuring that your business goals for your website align with the needs of your target audience. Also, you want to ensure that your website is not cluttered with out-dated, ineffective, and unfocused content.

The Goal:

Here are a few important reasons why perform a periodic inventory of your content is important:

To ensure that you’re providing value to your target audience – Your website content should be reader or customer-focused. The first step to determining if your content serves the needs of your readers is to take an inventory of the content that exist today.
To serve as a reference during website development, content enhancement or web enhancement projects – This step is also critical when planning a new website or website enhancement project to ensure that valuable content stays and invaluable or wasteful content goes.
To facilitate website maintenance and emergency planning – It goes without saying that you should backup all website content. Also, knowing the last date an item was updated will give you a better sense of out dated content items. In case of an emergency, you need to know what you have on the website and where to find it (the source).

The Resource:

A content matrix is a great tool for documenting each content item and its attributes. Click the following link to download a copy of a Content Matrix tool that will get you started.

Also, download this summary, which includes a description of the column headings in the Content Matrix file.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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Content Planning Guide for Small Businesses

Kishau Rogers — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:01:37 +0000

The Content Planning Guide contains an organized list of the areas of content featured on most small business websites. Feel free to use the guide to check the content items most important to your business. This content guide is helpful in the initial status of planning a website. Once you’ve decided on the content areas, you will need to identify and provide the content for those areas.

Download: Content Planning Guide for Small Businesses

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Kishau Rogers

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Content Planning Guide for Church Websites

Kishau Rogers — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 16:08:08 +0000

This Content Planning Guide contains an organized list of the areas of content featured on most church or religious institution websites. Feel free to use the guide to check the content items most important to your organization. This content guide is helpful in the initial status of planning a website. Once you’ve decided on the content areas, you will need to identify and provide the content for those areas.

Download: Content Planning Guide for Churches and Religious Institutions

Was this helpful? If so, remember to “Like” and/or Retweet this information. Also, remember to Subscribe to Websmith Group via Email or Follow us on Facebook, Twitter or RSS!

Kishau Rogers

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Content Planning Guide for Community Websites

Kishau Rogers — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:07:43 +0000

This Content Planning Guide contains an organized list of the areas of content featured on most community or civic association websites. Feel free to use the guide to check the content items most important to your organization. This content guide is helpful in the initial status of planning a website. Once you’ve decided on the content areas, you will need to identify and provide the content for those areas.

Download: Content Planning Guide for Community/Civic Associations

Was this helpful? If so, remember to “Like” and/or Retweet this page. Also, remember to Subscribe to Websmith Group via Email or Follow us on Facebook, Twitter or RSS!

Kishau Rogers

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