The document outlines a workshop focusing on the concepts and importance of content inventory and audits, emphasizing their role in shaping content strategies and improving site effectiveness. It explains the processes of conducting these audits, the data involved, and their benefits for understanding existing content to inform future design and strategy. Key participants include content strategists and project managers, and the workshop provides practical tools for automating content inventory and analyzing audit findings.

1. Inventory to Insight to
Action
Content Auditing Workshop
Paula Land
Content Insight

2. Introductions
Paula Land
Co-founder and CEO of Content Insight
Owner and Principal Consultant at Strategic Content

3. Today’s goal
Introduce the concepts and value of the content inventory and audit and get practical,
tactical tools and experience in conducting an audit, extracting insights, and
presenting the findings

4. Introduction to content
inventories and audits

5. What we’re going to talk about
The
Who
What
When
Where
Why*
How
What next?
*Not quite in that order

6. Content inventories and audits
Early steps in a content project
Form the foundation for the larger initiative
Strategy
Gap
Analysis
AuditInventory

7. Inventory vs. audit
Inventory - Quantity Audit - Quality

8. Another way to think of it
Inventory - Data Audit - Analysis

9. Yet another way to think of it
Some rights reserved by phil_g
"Not doing an inventory is like starting to bake when you don't know what ingredients you have in the house.“ – Rahel Bailie

10. Why?

11. Why inventory?
• Assess as-is landscape of a site or content set
• Scope a project for resource estimation
• Identify patterns in content structure
• Set a baseline to measure to-be site against (ROI)
• Establish a basis for migration tracking
If you don’t know where you are, how do you map to where you’re going?

12. Why audit?
• Assess current state of content to inform strategy
• Identify whether content consistently follows brand,
template, editorial, style and metadata guidelines
• Assess whether content supports business and user goals
• Establish a basis for gap analysis between content you
have and content you need
• Prepare content for revision, removal and migration
• Uncover patterns in content to support structured content
initiatives
• To develop a deep understanding of the content
Business
Goals
User Goals
Content

13. “When you take the time to understand the content
that already exists, not only will you be able to
ensure that it’s supported in the new design, but
you’ll actually make the entire design stronger
because you’ll have realistic scenarios to design
with and for…. chances are there’ll be stuff out
there that you’ve never thought about, much less
designed for. ”
–Sara Wachter-Boettcher

14. Organizational value of audits
Become the content expert
Be the content advocate
Drive change forward
Image by Thibault fr (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

15. “[Use] the content audit as a platform for facilitating
often-difficult conversations with stakeholders about
the purpose of the site, the priorities of users, and the
operational constraints and opportunities.”
– Christopher Detzi

16. When?

17. When do we inventory and audit?
• Planning and executing a content strategy
• Website redesign
• CMS implementation
• To guide a governance initiative
• Ongoing

18. Who?

19. Audits aren’t just for content strategists
Content strategists
Information architects
Project managers
Site managers
Everyone who interacts with your content

20. Where?

21. Where do we look?

22. How?

23. How do we create a content inventory?
Automate your inventory using CAT, the Content Analysis Tool. Free trial available at www.content-insight.com.

24. What goes into a content inventory?
Data captured by CAT:
• URLs — How many pages are there on the site?
• File types — What are all of the formats?
• File size — How large are the files?
• Level — How deep does the site go?
• Images — How many of them, what format, where do they live?
• Media — How many audio and video files exist, what format, where do they live?
• Documents — How many, what format, where do they live?
• Metadata — What title, description, and keyword metadata is on each page?
• Links in and out — What links to and from each page?
• H1s — What is the H1 text (matters for SEO)
• Analytics — What traffic is each page getting?

25. How do we turn an inventory into an
audit?
Scope the audit
Gather information
Analyze

26. Scoping the audit
Why are you auditing?
• Scoping a project
• Content strategy initiative and/or site redesign
• CMS implementation
• Ongoing
What do you need to learn?
Who is your audience?
How much time do you have?
What’s your project timeline?

27. Assembling the audit ingredients
Information to gather before beginning:
• Inventory data
• Business requirements
• Analytics data and other metrics
• Editorial and brand guidelines
• Personas
• Customer journey maps
• Customer feedback
• Search logs

28. Example: Business goals
• Increase sales by x%
• Achieve a high level of content engagement
• Decrease customer service calls by x%
• Create brand loyalty

29. Example: Guidelines and standards
Editorial
Brand
Legal / Regulatory
SEO

30. Example: Voice and tone guidelines
Attribute Content characteristic
Friendly  Written clearly and conversationally
 Uses short, simple sentences
 Uses familiar, common language
Approachable  Gives users ways to contact you
 Content is easy to scan
Conversational  Written as if you’re speaking to a friend, and want
your friend to know what you know
 Written informally
 Uses contractions
 Written in the second person: “you,” “your,” and
“yours”
Energetic  Uses the active voice
 Empowers the customer with action verbs: Find,
Search, Explore, Get, Shop, and so on

31. Example: Voice and tone table
Source: Kevan Gilbert, https://blog.gathercontent.com/a-simple-tool-to-guide-tone-of-voice

32. Examples: Tone
MailChimp
We’ll start by getting a few definitions out
of the way that should help you
understand this policy. When we say "we,"
"us," and "MailChimp,” we’re referring to
The Rocket Science Group, LLC d/b/a
MailChimp, a State of Georgia limited
liability company. When we say “you” or
“Member,” we’re referring to the person
or entity that’s registered with us to use
the Services.
Microsoft
This privacy statement applies to
Microsoft.com and Microsoft websites,
services and products that collect data and
display these terms, as well as their offline
product support services. It does not apply to
Microsoft sites, services and products that do
not display or link to this statement or that
have their own privacy statements.

33. Personas
Fictional characters based on real users
Represent key characteristics, motivations, goals

34. Example Persona: Volunteer
Name: Sonya
Role: Volunteer
Occupation: Former Tech Worker
Quote: “I really try not to spend a lot of time online, I
focus on the face to face stuff. Last year we went on a
trip to Montana and there were forest fires. This is
what Twitter was made for!”
Wants: To grow as a person and give back to the
community.
Pain Points: Doesn’t think the website is useful or
updated. Sometimes there are closures due to
weather, she’d like a way to be informed without
being inundated.
Motivations
• Find volunteer activities that keep her
active and outdoors and working with
horses.
• Originally had no history of working with
children and was intimidated by the idea. Little Bit gave her an opportunity
to become more comfortable with working with youth.
Goals
• Continue to learn about hippotherapy and be a useful volunteer
• See that it’s a good use of volunteer time
• Spend more time doing and less online in general
Behaviors
• High usage of smartphone, Twitter and Facebook judiciously. “It bothers me
to have to be on Facebook to get something. So, I just won’t go on it.”
• Reads the newsletters. Doesn’t visit the website, doesn’t think it is updated.
“I imagine people go there when they start, then don’t go back.”

35. Example: Customer journey map
Source: Adaptive Path

36. Customer actions
Content engagement
Customer feedback
Search logs

37. What we audit for
Quality
Breadth and depth
Performance and effectiveness
Competition

38. Auditing for content quality
What to assess:
• Content is relevant
• Content is current
• Content is accurate
• It is easy-to-read/scan
• Tone is audience-appropriate
• Content communicates key messages
• Content facilitates key user activities
• Content is engaging
• Content presentation is consistent
• Nomenclature is clear and consistent
What to assess against:
• Editorial style guide
• Brand guidelines
• Voice / tone guidelines
• User research
• Personas
• Customer tasks

39. Auditing for structure and function
What content elements and interactions exist on the site?
How well do they perform?
What are the implications for redesign or migration?

40. Auditing for breadth and depth
What to assess:
• Range of subjects covered
• Comprehensiveness of
coverage
• Format
What to assess against:
• Competitor sites
• Business requirements
• Personas
• Customer journey map

41. Auditing for content performance
What to assess:
• Analytics data
• Site metrics
• Search data
What to assess against:
• Business goals
• Personas
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Search rankings

42. Auditing against competitors
What to assess:
• Audience(s)
• Type and quantity of content
• Formats
• Language (tone and voice)
• Contributors (numbers, names)
• Community features
• Frequency of publication
• Overall impression
• Stand-out or differentiating features
What to assess for:
• Breadth and depth
• Consistency
• Completeness
• Currency and frequency
• Findability

43. Example: Scorecard

44. Turning insights into
action

45. Presenting audit findings
Know your audience
Choose your focus
Select format

46. Presenting audit findings – context
Who are the stakeholders and what will persuade them?
What decisions need to be made?
What change are you trying to drive?
Context
Content Users

47. Presenting audit findings – focus
What are the most compelling data points?
What is the call to action?

48. Presenting audit findings – format
Presentation
Document
Graphics

49. Example: Audit infographic
Source: Christopher Detzi, uxmag.com

50. Delivering the news

51. Stay in touch
pland@content-insight.com
@content_insight https://www.facebook.com/content.insight Content Analysis Tool (CAT)
www.content-insight.com