Practical content strategy: Content inventory & audit
Geplaatst op 23 augustus 2011 door Robert van Velzen met de tagscontentmanagement, contentstrategie
Content strategy and content marketing are currently getting a lot of attention. While fully acknowledging the need for discussions about what it exactly is, and why it is of such importance (how to sell it), I decided to focus on the practical application of content strategy principles.
This post is the first in a series of posts covering tools, deliverables and activities under the content strategy umbrella:
- Content inventory & audit (this post)
- Editorial calendar / content planning
- To be determined (content specifications, workflow & procedures)
Enjoy.
What is (in) a content inventory?
A content inventory basically is a complete listing of all content and its location (URLs/URIs, sections, medium/channel), ideally combined with its characteristics (type of content), and some administrative metadata (owner, last update, etc.).
And if you go the extra mile, include quality review input (ROT/OUCH, remarks, customer feedback, usage statistics), effectively turning it into a full-blown content audit.
Not just a deliverable
Be careful to not treat the content inventory as a one-off activity or deliverable at the start of a project. Getting and keeping a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of all your content is simply part of the job, a recurring activity.
When you are working with content on a regular basis (maintenance, editorial) or on a project basis (migration, improvement initiatives, campaigns), it is essential to know what you have got, where it is, what state it is in, and how it is performing. It is your starting point, your frame of reference.
Not just websites
Ideally, a content inventory should cover the content in all media/channels in use, not just website content. Your audiences are expecting/demanding consistent messaging across all media/channels they use, and it helps if you take the same perspective.
How to develop a content inventory?
It usually takes a combination of automated reports/lists (what is there, where is it) and manual labour (structuring and enriching it) to complete a content inventory.
This also allows you to combine an inside-out perspective (structure as in system it is maintained in) with an outside-in perspective (structure and context of content as it is presented to the user)
Tools of the trade
The following tools (software/web applications, services) can be of use in developing and maintaining a content inventory:
Scrapers, spiders, crawlers
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Spreadsheets, databases
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| Content management systems
Generating an up-to-date content inventory should be a core feature of any serious CMS contender. Is that really the case? In our extensive experience with a lot of CMS-es, the reporting features are rarely able to provide the structured overview you get from the ‘humble’ spreadsheet. |
Visualization, diagramming
For a more visual understanding of your content and/or site structure, drawing a content/site map can be beneficial. |
Our recipe
At Data Direction we use a combination of tools to develop content inventories and audits. We mix:
- CMS reports/exports for obtaining a listing/overview of all content (if possible/available)
- Xenu for listing site/page structures (of websites)
- Excel for cleanup/restructuring of the CMS and Xenu data (filtering, sorting)
- Smartsheet for auditing/analysis, as well as sharing and collaboration (with editors, owners/stakeholders)
We came across Smartsheet a while ago (via the Google Apps marketplace), and have found it is a nice addition to our arsenal. It complements Excel very well, as it is hosted online (single source, stop mailing around spreadsheet versions), allows for more interactivity (sharing, commenting, collaboration), and is less two dimensional (add discussions, files, and links to any row/item). On top of that, it exports nicely to PDFs for sharing with other stakeholders.
Disclosure: we are not affiliated to Smartsheet, just a satisfied customer.
Step-by-step approach
- Try to get reports/listings of all content from the various systems used to maintain it (content management systems, call center applications, knowledge bases). These exports are usually in a structured format (CSV) that allows them to be opened/imported in a spreadsheet program. Additionally, scrape, crawl or spider your website with a tool like Xenu or SiteOrbiter.
- Structure/sort these generated listings by traversing/navigating the content as an end user would. Adopting the user perspective gives you a clearer overview of the context individual content items are presented in. You can do this in your spreadsheet program, or directly in Smartsheet (imports Excel files).
- Add additional characteristics, metadata that are necessary for analysis or governance purposes (owner, date of last change, content type & format/template, statistics).
- Periodically/continually audit the quality of the content (rolling audit, per section/topic), in Smartsheet.
- Rinse and repeat … keep the content inventory up-to-date (maintenance, governance)
Illustration: Smartsheet content inventory/audit template (click for full view)
Next step
Coming full circle: feed/merge the output and findings of the inventory and audit into the editorial calendar or content planning. But that is a topic for the next post in this series. Stay tuned.
Resources
- LinkedIn: Content strategy group (several discussions on content inventories and other deliverables)
- Google Knol: Content strategy (Jeffrey MacIntyre)
- Doing a content inventory (Adaptive Path)
- The content inventory is you best friend (Braintraffic)
- The rolling content inventory (Louis Rosenfeld)
- Doing a content audit or inventory (nForm)
- Content strategy deliverables (Shelly Bowen)
- Content audit tool (Contentini)
- Content strategy applied toolkit
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