From Alison's email it sounds like we're in a similar position to
Bath's current one.
At York the majority of content authoring is devolved to departments and
administrative offices. The number of authors per department can vary
considerably depending on their size (ranging from one person to
dozens). The amount of web experience that authors have varies too -
some departments have full time web posts, while for many others it's
one of the many jobs that administrators do.
We've recently invested in a content management system (our first) and
have spent the last year and half migrating sites into it. We work
fairly closely with departments during the migration process, advising
on content issues, and only making a site live once both the web team
and the department are happy with it. We're a lot less involved once a
site goes live though, and at that point we often see a lot more
variation in quality of content.
We run a writing for the web course, but it's not mandatory. We do have
a style guide, but it's more focussed on the nitty-gritty of punctuation
and capitalisation, rather than tone of voice - the nearest we get is to
tell people to "be friendly".
I'll be interested to see how things pan out at Bath, and also to hear
about any workshops.
Cheers
Paul
--
Paul Kelly
Web Content & Design Officer, University of York
tel: 01904 434578 | email: [log in to unmask]
Visit the new Communications web pages at www.york.ac.uk/communications
and www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events
On 08/04/2010 14:08, Paul Boag wrote:
> Hi all,
> can I pick your brains? We are thinking of running a content strategy workshop like the one we did last year (http://headscape.co.uk/workshops/edweb09/). However, I am really looking to better understand how different organisations handle their content strategy. For example...
>
> 1. Do you deal with content centrally?
> 2. If you have distributed content providers how do you ensure quality and accuracy?
> 3. What training do you give content providers?
> 4. Do you set a 'corporate tone' for written content?
>
> Basically I am not sure how 'sophisticated' you all are when it comes to managing the copy on your sites. Its hard for me to judge whether a workshop like this would be useful.
>
> It is also an issue I haven't seen discussed on this mailing list which is surprising as a sites content has to be its most important aspect. Thought it might be a useful conversation starter :)
>
> Any feedback would be much appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Paul
> - - - - -
> Paul Boag [ Co-Founder ]
> H E A D S C A P E
> m: 07760 123 120
>
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