SYNTHESIS / ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE • RESEARCH DELIVERABLE
18 Content Inventory & Audit
A content inventory tells you what your content is. A content audit makes recommendations as to what your content should be.
Content is more than just text, and it can encompass all the information that you package and publish for your customer’s benefit. Everything a customer can read, watch, interact with, or listen to can be considered content, as each of these activities plays an important part in how people will feel about your product or service.
The content inventory and auditing process assumes two things: first, that you have content to index, and second, that you have someone on staff with an affinity for organization and information . If you meet those two requirements, here are a few situations in which to perform an inventory and audit:
• When beginning a website redesign
• When merging multiple sites, or conversely, a site is being split up into smaller, niche sites
• When preparing content for multichannel distribution or a Content Management System (CMS)
A content inventory is a quantitative exercise that aggregates all of your content assets, and is typically organized in a spreadsheet. In content inventory, the spreadsheet’s rows usually represent the content items, and columns represent content attributes. During the content inventory stage, the information listed in the table below under “General Information” is recorded.
The content audit is both quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative content audit follows the content inventory, and begins the assessment, or evaluation, of the content using the attributes of “Governance” criteria below. The evaluation of content continues with the qualitative content audit, which rates the criteria in the “Content Quality” column below. The qualitative audit can also identify unifying themes and patterns across content sources.
| GENERAL INFORMATION | Identification/ Numbering System |
| GOVERNANCE | Created by |
| CONTENT QUALITY (LOW/MED/HIGH SCALE) | Credible? |
| GENERAL INFORMATION | Title/Name |
| GOVERNANCE | Create Date |
| CONTENT QUALITY (LOW/MED/HIGH SCALE) | Original? |
| GENERAL INFORMATION | URL or Data Source |
| GOVERNANCE | Updated Date |
| CONTENT QUALITY (LOW/MED/HIGH SCALE) | Accurate? |
| GENERAL INFORMATION | Document Type |
| GOVERNANCE | Owned by |
| CONTENT QUALITY (LOW/MED/HIGH SCALE) | Relevant to Audience? |
| GENERAL INFORMATION | Comments/Notes |
| GOVERNANCE | Due Date |
| CONTENT QUALITY (LOW/MED/HIGH SCALE) | Relevant to Business? |
| GENERAL INFORMATION | – |
| GOVERNANCE | Legal Review Required? |
| CONTENT QUALITY (LOW/MED/HIGH SCALE) | Accessible? (508 Compliance) |
| GENERAL INFORMATION | – |
| GOVERNANCE | Any TMs or © |
| CONTENT QUALITY (LOW/MED/HIGH SCALE) | – |
Although affordable, content inventories and audits can take a lot of time and care to be done well and comprehensively. Once you have established the process, ongoing audits can be used to help you prepare a business case for your next initiative.
Further Reading
Halvorson, Kristina. Content Strategy for the Web. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 2009.
Jones, Colleen. Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2010.
Rosenfeld, Lou. The Rolling Content Inventory. 2006, www.louisrosenfeld.com
Veen, Jeff. Doing a Content Inventory (Or, A Mind-Numbingly Detailed Odyssey Through Your Web Site). 2002, www.adaptivepath.com