Content Strategy
According to usability.gov, “Content strategy focuses on the planning, creation, delivery, and governance of content. The goal of content strategy is to create meaningful, cohesive, engaging, and sustainable content.”
“The goal is to create meaningful and sustainable content.”
In other words, before creating new content or updating existing content, you should think through the purpose of the content, how you will know if it’s successful, and who, when and how it will be maintained.
Below are a few tips on how you can ensure your website is successful.
Planning
Whether you are creating a new website or web page, or maintaining content on existing web pages, it’s important to evaluate why the content was created or why it should be created.
Your website content should meet the goals of the University (and those of your office) and the goals of the website visitor. Finding the sweet spot where both overlap means users will find both what you want them to find and what they want to find.
Ultimately, the user is why your website exists.
Governance
It’s been said that having a website is a lot like having a pet; each requires the owner to commit to taking care of it.
It’s important to periodically evaluate how your website is performing and to take steps to make changes or adjust your strategy as necessary. You may consider creating a calendar to plan for when certain sections of your website will be evaluated, who will be responsible for evaluating and who will be responsible for making changes.
If you are interested in working with our office to use Google Analytics to measure website goals, please contact Nick Simson at nsimson@tennessee.edu.
Content Lifecycle
Your content strategy should address all six stages of the web content lifecycle.
- Set goals
- Create content
- Publish
- Promote
- Maintain and measure
- Retire