I’ve worked on a lot of web projects over the years and content, or lack there of, always comes up as a project speed-bump. Everyone thinks they know what they want to say and that it won’t take much time at all to write. Or they believe the existing content just needs some minor tweaking. What they always find out is that creating content takes much longer than they expected. Another content issue that occurs is keeping it up to date. A good friend of mine called it “feeding the beast”. Once you have that fantastic new site you need to keep it fresh.
This article that appeared in Forbes, Your Content is Giving You A People Problem, discusses the importance of content strategy. The example is for a large organization but the theories applies to an organization of any size. The article states that determining content owners and having a content czar are important to maintaining high quality content across multiple channels. It stresses the importance of a nimble digital content team that is no only responsible for overseeing production but also actively tweaking content strategy base on analytics.
The only disagreement I have with this article is the timing of the planning of content responsibilities. The author says the time to create roles and assign responsibilities is after the designs are set is I believe that needs to be addressed in the Information Architecture phase before designs are set. Content owners should be involved in the organization of information as should any czar that will be coordinating content post launch.