Here's why you should get your content team involved early on in a project.
Innerworks is coming soon...
This blog was originally published on our previous Cogworks blog page. The Cogworks Blog is in the process of evolving into Innerworks, our new community-driven tech blog. With Innerworks, we aim to provide a space for collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and connection within the wider tech community. Watch this space for Innerworks updates, but don't worry - you'll still be able to access content from the original Cogworks Blog if you want.
The Cogworks content team was established four years ago to meet the demand for new content services. Our team of Content Editors and Content Project Managers, working in the UK and in Poland, have helped many clients with their Umbraco content needs over the years. We are experts in content population and content migration projects and we are either the end users of the Umbraco CMS, or the trainers for our client end users. Readers who have a content team in their own agency may know that the content team usually comes in at the very end of a project delivery cycle. However, here are three main benefits of getting the content team involved early on in a project:
1. Use our editing expertise
In many projects, technical decisions are made before understanding the marketing and creative objectives of the company. This leads to challenges later on in the project when content teams try to retrofit content for a CMS that was not designed for content marketing in the first place.
We learned this point the hard way. One of our clients asked us to create an Umbraco instance for their online publishing website. During the initial project kickoff, our project teams consulted with the client side content editors about their needs. Unfortunately, because these editors did not have any experience outside of their old CMS, they just asked for a duplication of the CMS, but built-in Umbraco.
Had the Cogworks’ content teams been involved earlier in the process, we would have been able to offer suggestions about doc types or SEO optimisations with our Umbraco specific knowledge. The content team is here to ask the right content questions at the very beginning, saving everyone time and money down the road.
2. Preempt content blockers in the project
When a project has a very tight delivery deadline, it is crucial for the content team to start preparing our work in parallel to the development timeline. We recently worked with a large brand which had hundreds of products all needing to be reviewed and translated. We know from experience that in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector, there are extensive legal regulations and different timelines for different countries.
We are here to help identify content risks early on in the project so that they can be mitigated. Had the content team started after the completion of development, we would not have been able to meet the go-live deadline.
3. Kill two birds with one stone
When a website is not performing the way it should, there are two major factors: issues with the code and issues with the copy. A website health check can offer a great opportunity to uncover both types of problems. As a full service agency, we have specialised teams that can evaluate both code and content to not only get your site up and running, but also make sure that you’re reaching the right audience and that your audience engages with your site. A good website is paramount for business.
The tips from this blog are adapted from a presentation that our Content Project Manager Huan Song gave at Codegarden 2017. Click on this link to see her original slide deck.
- Content
- Content Editors
- Agency
- Project