Why content architecture is vital for content governance

Companies that want to endear themselves to their customers need to focus on building trust and providing them with the digital experiences they desire. Establishing and maintaining brand consistency is one way for them to do this. When an organization delivers the right messaging that aligns with customer values; it can improve the user experience and build brand loyalty that positively affects the bottom line.

In order to achieve that brand consistency, as well as deliver content to the numerous channels that customers expect, businesses need guidelines in place to ensure that they indicate the type of content to be created and how it can be distributed. They need content governance.

Establishing content governance can take some effort but to do so effectively requires a foundation for content. In this article, we’ll explain why content architecture is necessary for content governance.

Section titled What is content governance? What is content governance?

Content governance is the set of guidelines used to determine how content gets created and distributed. It falls under the umbrella of content operations and is instrumental in keeping your brand in check. These guidelines help simplify and clarify the decision-making process when it comes to content management. However, while marketers, developers, and those who focus on content management, every stakeholder within an organization should be aware of content governance.

Section titled What are the benefits of content governance? What are the benefits of content governance?

Content governance provides the following benefits:

• Increased clarity and improved collaboration: Since content governance involves everyone in an organization, it provides more clarity of the roles and responsibilities of each person.
• Better resource management: Content managers can better allocate resources when a solid content governance strategy is in place. This makes it easier to plan and prioritize since you’ll know what’s required for each campaign.
• Better decision making: Content governance helps maintain the content lifecycle, speeding up content velocity and giving content teams a more straightforward process for deciding what content goes where and when.
• Greater consistency: Content governance ensures that the brand identity remains consistent and that all content published matches that identity.
• Increased quality: With access to clear guidelines for how and when to publish content as well as the standards that are expected, content governance can help to improve the quality of content that gets produced.

Section titled What happens without a content governance strategy What happens without a content governance strategy

Without content governance in place, things can go haywire. Content will be published haphazardly, there will be less consistency in the content that does get published, and the ROI of content production and marketing efforts can be diminished.

A lack of content governance can lead to mixed messages reaching your audience and ultimately poor quality content being published.

Section titled How content architecture relates to content governance How content architecture relates to content governance

It’s clear that a content governance strategy is crucial for brand consistency and success, but where does content architecture come into play?

Content architecture refers to the way content is organized and structured. It ensures that content is presented efficiently, logically, and consistently and creates order and support for the user experience. Content architecture provides the structure for content before it gets created and acts as the backend for a content strategy by including the content models, metadata, taxonomy, and wireframes for content.

Companies need both content architecture and content governance for their content to be effective. The content architecture allows you to dictate your content governance and ultimately create a content strategy. If content architecture isn’t flexible enough to support the types of content you want to publish, then the content governance guidelines will seem limiting, and a strategy can’t be implemented.

Section titled Why content architecture is necessary for proper content governance Why content architecture is necessary for proper content governance

Content architecture is fundamental to the user experience, and without it, content governance can be challenging. Here are a few reasons why:

Section titled More people involved in the content process More people involved in the content process

Designers, marketers, developers, and writers are just a handful of the people involved in the content process today. Content architecture provides a visual element to content strategy that helps to improve collaboration between these personnel. This visual element makes it easier to create guidelines on what the content should look like, thus helping brands maintain consistency and quality.

Section titled Greater demand for content Greater demand for content

Nowadays, there is a far greater demand for content than ever before. These demands are both internal and external as content needs to be produced to assist sales teams, product teams, and more. When trying to keep up with this demand, things can sometimes fall through the cracks. Having content architecture in place provides an added layer of security for meeting these demands quickly and efficiently. Content governance then ensures that content requirements can be appropriately prioritized.

Section titled Brands need to be global Brands need to be global

Content needs to be localized to meet the needs of different audience demographics, translated to appropriate languages, and highlight specific cultural intricacies. In order to support these localization efforts, content needs to be structured in the right way.

Content architecture ensures that brands have the right models in place to personalize content in this way, as well as publish that content to different channels. Once that structure is in place, content governance can then provide the guidelines that ensure consistency and efficiency for omnichannel international campaigns.

Section titled How Storyblok provides governance and structure How Storyblok provides governance and structure

With multiple channels for content publication and various use cases for repurposing content, marketers need to be able to keep up with this increasing demand to fuel omnichannel and personalized experiences. A headless CMS can support these experiences by providing the appropriate structure and governance guidelines for content teams.

Storyblok is a headless CMS that provides all of the content organization capabilities you need to establish content architecture and implement content governance. A component-based approach simplifies content modeling and allows marketers and developers to collaborate with ease. Marketers can define the structure for their content and develop templates that can be alternated for different audiences.

Another key factor in establishing content governance is workflows, and Storyblok makes setting up workflows a simple process. With staging pipelines and content scheduling, marketing teams have everything they need to maintain content consistency and efficiency.

When Marc O’Polo needed to upgrade their legacy CMS, they sought a platform that would allow them to manage several content-related issues, including localization, omnichannel publishing, and content governance. They also needed their editors and developers to be able to collaborate easily. With Storyblok, they found an intuitive way to manage content by leveraging a modular approach to content structure and agile content governance. Their marketing and development teams are happier than ever. Learn more about Marc O’ Polo’s journey to Storyblok by reading the case study.