CHapter 6 Rockley
Managing Enterprise Content, Chapter 6: Performing a Content Audit
(Case/Pass)
In this chapter, Rockley discusses a strategy for performing a content audit. Rockley defines a content audit as “an accounting of the information in your organization,” though the process could be described more specifically as an analysis and categorization of all the content present in your organization. Rockley identifies several steps in the process of a content audit, which include:
Identify the scope of the audit
Select representative materials
Analyze the content
Build a reuse map
Identify opportunities for reuse
Summarize your findings and document recommendations
Identifying the scope of the audit
The first step of a content audit is to decide what to audit. Most technical publication groups start with their content, and discover in the process that much of their content resembles what marketing or PR is producing. This will drive them to expand the audit out into other departments or groups to improve consistency. Rockley advises us it isn’t necessary to start big and analyze every department we can, but by starting too small, a decision could be made to use small or inflexible technology choices that won’t translate over if the decision is made to do a large-scale audit.
Selecting representative materials
This step is similar to taking a core sample of a group; it asks us to select several pieces of content from within our scope to represent the whole. Because a content audit is a comparative exercise, content that spans across the entire scope of our audit should be selected
Analyzing the content
Rockley recommends a method of breaking down each document into ‘pieces’ and observing where pieces of different documents are very similar or identical. Rockley splits this step into two parts: the top-level analysis and the in-depth analysis
A top-level analysis involves a scanning of the content for pieces of information that might be similar. Look for headings, sections, tables, graphics, product descriptions, introductory information, procedures, etc. Scanning the table of contents (if there is one) can be helpful in finding where information might repeat.
An in-depth analysis involves delving into the pieces of information that you identified as similar during the top-level analysis. During the in-depth analysis, we should identify which parts of the content are similar, which are different, which parts can be changed to become similar, and which parts could be standardized for reuse. Be sure to create some sort of system for yourself to track which pieces you identify as reusable, such as a table or a highlighting/marking system.
Building a reuse map
After performing an audit, it’s a good idea to map out findings. A reuse map is a matrix chart that identifies what content is reusable, where the content is reusable, and what type of reuse should be made. You can build a reuse map by assembling a table with your representative materials in columns and the content pieces you identified in rows. Where the pieces match up with their representative materials, you can place an identifying symbol for which type of reuse can be made.
Summarize your findings/document recommendations
Since single-sourcing could be a costly and time-consuming project, it is a good idea to write up a summary and recommendation report, because you may be pitching your ideas to higher-ups to get approval to go ahead.
Usability issues
In addition to saving time and money, a content audit might have secondary benefits as well. As you are scanning through your content, you might come across problems or inconsistencies that hurt usability and create confusion (for example, two identical procedures with different steps for completion). Content reuse is one method of eliminating those problems by making everything unified.
(Case/Pass)
In this chapter, Rockley discusses a strategy for performing a content audit. Rockley defines a content audit as “an accounting of the information in your organization,” though the process could be described more specifically as an analysis and categorization of all the content present in your organization. Rockley identifies several steps in the process of a content audit, which include:
Identify the scope of the audit
Select representative materials
Analyze the content
Build a reuse map
Identify opportunities for reuse
Summarize your findings and document recommendations
Identifying the scope of the audit
The first step of a content audit is to decide what to audit. Most technical publication groups start with their content, and discover in the process that much of their content resembles what marketing or PR is producing. This will drive them to expand the audit out into other departments or groups to improve consistency. Rockley advises us it isn’t necessary to start big and analyze every department we can, but by starting too small, a decision could be made to use small or inflexible technology choices that won’t translate over if the decision is made to do a large-scale audit.
Selecting representative materials
This step is similar to taking a core sample of a group; it asks us to select several pieces of content from within our scope to represent the whole. Because a content audit is a comparative exercise, content that spans across the entire scope of our audit should be selected
Analyzing the content
Rockley recommends a method of breaking down each document into ‘pieces’ and observing where pieces of different documents are very similar or identical. Rockley splits this step into two parts: the top-level analysis and the in-depth analysis
A top-level analysis involves a scanning of the content for pieces of information that might be similar. Look for headings, sections, tables, graphics, product descriptions, introductory information, procedures, etc. Scanning the table of contents (if there is one) can be helpful in finding where information might repeat.
An in-depth analysis involves delving into the pieces of information that you identified as similar during the top-level analysis. During the in-depth analysis, we should identify which parts of the content are similar, which are different, which parts can be changed to become similar, and which parts could be standardized for reuse. Be sure to create some sort of system for yourself to track which pieces you identify as reusable, such as a table or a highlighting/marking system.
Building a reuse map
After performing an audit, it’s a good idea to map out findings. A reuse map is a matrix chart that identifies what content is reusable, where the content is reusable, and what type of reuse should be made. You can build a reuse map by assembling a table with your representative materials in columns and the content pieces you identified in rows. Where the pieces match up with their representative materials, you can place an identifying symbol for which type of reuse can be made.
Summarize your findings/document recommendations
Since single-sourcing could be a costly and time-consuming project, it is a good idea to write up a summary and recommendation report, because you may be pitching your ideas to higher-ups to get approval to go ahead.
Usability issues
In addition to saving time and money, a content audit might have secondary benefits as well. As you are scanning through your content, you might come across problems or inconsistencies that hurt usability and create confusion (for example, two identical procedures with different steps for completion). Content reuse is one method of eliminating those problems by making everything unified.
posted by Lindsay | 11:33 AM
10 Comments:
I think that the company that I work for would greatly benefit from a content audit. If for nothing else than to see where the processes are being duplicated and therefore time and money are being wasted. I like the way Rockley presents the benefits of a content audit, noting that it doesn't necessarily mean that we need to analyze every component of the organization in order to benefit from such an audit. I think the company that I work for uses many of our resources to do what everyone else is doing and therefore other things go unnoticed and slide by without getting done. Like Rockley said sometimes you start off looking for one thing and end up finding other problems along the way therefore identifying risks before they become an even bigger problem.
I live in the world of content audits. I am involved in three of them right now. Working in a regulated industry, I am constantly performing audits on new and existing documentation - and then having my finished documentation audited again by the government. In my case it is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). These audits are serious business and the decisions of the auditors have significant impact on corporate documentation and operations. Knowing that my documents are going to be audited for content by regulators puts pressure on me to perform exhaustive audits myself so that I am reasonably certain that my documentation can pass strict external audits.
This chapter made many valid points and offered great examples of different audit scenarios. These are things I can share with my supervisor. I'd love to have the luxury of time to do this with some current documentation I work with. One tiny step I've tried to take is to import by reference in FrameMaker when I know information is repeated in multiple places. That makes it easy to only have up update one piece of content. I'd like to do more.
I work in the CSU administration office doing some marketing/design work. We recently met with the Office of Integrated Marketing to improve the overall marketing of the CSU. This improvement included updating the CSU publications, so we had to collect all of the publications we could find and send them to the MSU Director of Publications for review. I believe the purpose of this was something like a content audit - to find out what information about the CSU is being included in each document, and to figure out what information can be reused in all the publications so that everything is consistent and sends a clear message to the audience.
Although I still like the idea of a content audit and the overall benefits that can result from it, this chapter made me realize just how much time and effort would go into one. During my time at my job, I have seen an amazing amount of documentation flowing about. If someone were to go through all of these documents to conduct a content audit, I could only imagine how long it would take them. Nonetheless, I do see how the audit could be used to gain more control and consistency over the company’s documentation as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, I think the documentation department at Itron is fully capable of conducting an audit, I just had to marvel at the effort that would go into it.
This reminds me of trying to use HTML as opposed to PHP; it's really easy to have the same information duplicated numerous times even on a website. By doing a content audit and switching over to Dynamic HTML, I could have saved myself a ton of space and effort in creating a site. In regards to actually performing a content audit in a business setting, I imagine the process could be streamlined by having a program go through all the digital information and looking for reoccurring words. Not "the" or "and", but if two articles have numerous occurrences of words like "Anthropology" and "work station", that may bare investigating. The only problem is coming up with good queries.
Of all the comments I've read here, Anne makes a very good point: time is a luxury! Does this mean that no one has time to perform audits on their work? Absolutely not! On the contrary, a content audit is probably one of the more useful uses of time because it goes to the heart of accuracy of the documentation.
While I think Rockley tends to make things more complicated than they really are, the concepts presented in this chapter have much merit for using (and reusing) content. Now if there was only some way to get people who aspire to be technical communicators to learn correct grammar and word usage . . .
This is most interesting as we are currently doing a content analysis or audit in a Mass Comm class (my other major) It is quite interesting and very detailed. We are doing it for the Jumpstart organization. We didn't look at the information for reuse but it was very similar to the other steps this group nicely detailed.
This chapter discusses the benifits and various manifistations of content audits.
I meet a man that did content audits for companies as an independent contractor. He told me that many time he would be performing a content audit for companies that have never done one before. He said that most small companies do not do anything with there content as far as auditing. Mostly you find content only being replaced when updates are done or when old ones or obsolete.
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