What is a content audit?
Accounting of all currently published content and qualitative analysis.
Audit tells us:
What needs to be removed, revised, written
Where content should be mapped to if moved/redirects
Content audit exercise
Title
Priority - how important is this for the knowledge base
Content or knowledge type - Guide, reference
Associated project
Topic/category
Subtopic
Audience
Language
Keywords/synonyms
Preliminary work → drives the content model → metadata → overall taxonomy [navigation scheme on UI]
Knowledge-specific content consists of:
Job aids
Procedures
Lessons learned
System documentation
Project plans
Templates
Reports
Training
Content audit and mapping process
Inventory
Organize
Identify content assets
Understand if it’s located properly and up-to-date
Understand why you’re doing the audit and what you intend to do with the results; success factors
Determine the scope - determine which areas that should be captured
Components:
Title
Content ID
URL
File format
Author
Location
Meta description
Meta keywords
Categories/tags
Dates created, revised, and accessed
Quality assessment
Quality, value relevance
Duplications and overlaps
Mapping
Classify content under various dimensions (personas, for example)
Does the content satisfy needs/preferences
Identifying gaps
Identify content that needs to be created, updated, or repurposed
Determine internal priorities and objectives
Templates, style sheets
Prioritizing
Determine resources and budget for content dev
Planning for content development
Create content roadmap including a detailed editorial or content calendar to map creation and publishing timelines