A corporation change creates an opportunity for content strategy
A client was preparing for a rebranding as the thr parent company was splitting off divisions to be individual entities. They took this opportunity to return to their existing wealth of content to “Do it right”. They saw the chance and had the project clearance, to really address issues with their content which had previously been done on the fly, with no plan or strategy in place.
The Assignment:
They client had reviewed their existing library of content and narrowed the pieces down to 150 based on analytics and industry research. They also provided key SEO research and asked me to update the content, work with the design and development teams to develop content models and mapping, and address each of the articles to ensure all were optimized for user experience, accessibility, SEO, and consistency, while also creating 20 new articles they found after doing an audit gap analysis.
The Challenge:
The client team was large and there were multiple stakeholders, but despite the collaboration and dedication of the team, they had no project management processes in place for the content, nor did they have a clear assessment of the page types or deesign components available to “tweak” the pages by type. The project turned into a more intensive engagement than originally scoped, but the deadline was fixed, as was the team size.
The Approach:
Upon recognizing the lack of project management and tracking I created a tracking and scheduling prioritization tool that we all could collaborate in, and set the anticipated schedule for the content.
This forced me to group the content by content type which allowed me to identity the page types to immediately engage both our design and development teams to give lead time for the design and development of the page types. Simultaneously they audited the existing component types which would allow me to create the content models for page types.
The Work:
Using the new approved wireframes I created the individual priority guides with the first batch being a select group from each of the page types. This allowed for us to identify any needed components as early as possible and identify edge case page types.
Each priority guide included a table with the new URL, page title, meta description, content tags, page type, target audience, SEO key phrases, internal links, and additional call outs and notes for A11Y and ALT text and direction. It also contained the old and new urls to be used for their mapping and redirection once their site was moved and rebranded.
While the project management tracking tool I created was updated regularly, and included the links to the original and updated files, the files were submitted for review in batches to maintain a schedule on both sides rather than any section of the team face a firehose of random availability. This worked well because it allowed the client to schedule their internal teams for review and commenting, including their legal teams, which keep the schedule tight and engaged.
The Outcome:
We met the deadline! It was a busy, hectic time, but the preparation and consistency paid off and we were able to overlap the batches with reviews and approvals to keep the flow constant and even, which belied the time crunch.
In addition, I provided guides for the client to follow to maintain the updates and the content additions for all different types, including content guidelines for SEO, UX, and accessibility, fully annotated with the why, so they could see and understand the impact of these directions for each different content model, to further engage the client content teams.
After several months we got an update from the client that the work we had done had significantly improved their market share without showing any significant dips during their transition to the new brand and domain names. They also told us that the engagement with the content had improved and the user journeys allowed them to better understand their user journeys to better serve their customers. They were very appreciative of the process documentation and guides I provided which enabled them to continue the caliber of work that had proven effective with their internal teams, streamlining the load on their internal teams and improving the collaboration overall.