Create a maintenance plan

Set content review dates and the people responsible, in any content maintenance plan you create.

Your business-as-usual content process needs to ensure continuous value for the user. Be clear about how you are going to maintain and improve content when you have a new content request.

Identify content owners

Every piece of content, whether new or existing belongs to someone. Working out who owns what content can be a challenge.

Is it the approver, manager, writer or editor, or does it belong to a team of people? Who is responsible for accuracy and currency? Who is responsible for its success?

If you can’t identify the content owner, nominate someone else to be responsible for its maintenance and improvement.

When creating new content, ensure you have a process in place to record who is responsible.

Content types

Some content will need to be regularly maintained. The frequency will depend on the content type and the needs of your users.

For example, social content, news, service-type content or an annual report will each have unique maintenance needs.

High profile services will often have key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with them and thus clear measures for success and how to improve.

Use your CMS

You may be able to set your maintenance review dates in your content management system (CMS) at the time of creating content. For example, if you have a field to set a review date and a reminder, including the person who needs to be pinged, this can be very helpful.

If you don’t have this feature in your CMS, it may be possible to discuss this type of functionality with your CMS developers. If you are considering a new CMS, be sure to include this in your requirements.

Use a content register

Alternatively use a spreadsheet to manually record ownership, responsibility and to schedule review dates. You might like to start by identifying owners for highly strategic content.

Use the register to schedule the actions you will take to maintain and improve content.

• Record who owns the content.
• Record who is responsible for its its creation and approval.
• Add the date of publishing.
• Add the date for removing (if relevant).
• Assign the post-publishing content review to someone.
• Set actual dates for its review.
• Note actions to be taken to improve, edit, remove or leave as is.