Producing and managing content for your website is one of the most important tasks to get right.
Planning the content
Before you write any content you should carry out research and analysis to understand what information your users are likely to want.
Developing the content
Once you know what content you need, you have to decide how to develop it. The best approach to creating content is to do it in stages.
You need someone to:
- write the content
- approve the content
- publish the content.
This can be done by one person or several. What’s important is that you need to establish a system that allows proper checks to be made on information that will appear publicly on your website.
You should apply the same standards as you would for publishing a research paper. The information has to be accurate and reflect well on your research.
You may wish to produce a style guide to help ensure that your content is written in a consistent style.
Managing the content
You manage web content with a content management system.
This is software that allows non-technical people to manage and publish content themselves. It is useful if you have a big site that is likely to change frequently.
Some content management systems are free, such as the basic version of WordPress. Others can be expensive – the market for buying them is highly developed and competitive.
In this area more than any other you are likely to be offered much more functionality than you can ever need or want – but at a price. It may be that your organisation already has a content management system, and you may want to negotiate to use their system.