What Is A Content Review? (Benefits And Steps Involved)

Updated 19 January 2023

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Reviewing content is an important and continuous process of content management that reviews, edits, and approves new or live content on a company's website. It ensures that users of a webpage have access to current and relevant information about a company and its products and services. If you want to work in content management, it is important to know about content review. In this article, we examine what content review is, its benefits, and how to set up a reliable process.

What Is Content Review?

Content review, also known as a content assessment, is a well-defined step-by-step process that monitors live or new content on a website. This could include text-based, visual, or digital content. It identifies content to add, edit, update, archive, or delete. A user visits a website for information, entertainment, purchases, or to avail of services. If users do not get relevant or current information, the quality of their experience and the brand image deteriorates significantly. An efficient review process is important to increase traffic on a company's web page and give accurate and relevant information to its users.

What Are The Steps In A Content Assessment Process?

Content assessment is a sequential process that a content management team follows before approving and publishing content. Many members of the content management team are part of this process and perform specific duties. A content review process consists of the following steps:

1. Identifying goals

The first step in establishing a content assessment process is to set goals, guidelines, and objectives for a company's content strategy. It aims to tailor content that can help achieve organizational goals. The primary goals of content creation can be:

increasing brand visibility and awareness
driving traffic to the website on search engines
generating leads
increasing sales conversion ratio
engaging audience
disseminating information

You can create goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely (SMART). For example, you can set a SMART goal, like, 'We want to increase traffic on our website with a monthly visitor count of 5000, by generating 15 blog posts a month. Within a year our goal is to increase our subscriber base to 30,000.' A content reviewer uses these goals and guidelines as a reference during the review.

2. Defining standards and strategy for content

Once a business sets content generation goals, the next step is to define the principles and guidelines that help create content. This can include identifying design languages, content standards, software tools, and creative collaborators. The content design includes designing and selecting templates, color schemes, fonts, and layouts. The purpose of defining content standards and design is to distinguish a company's website from others, optimize the user experience and increase traffic on a website.

Examples of content standards include:

creating effective and clear content
creating useful content
creating compact and concise content
evaluating the interests and needs of users
maintaining consistency in the frequency and quality of content

3. Setting up a content management team with clear roles and responsibilities for independent contributors

A functional content management team requires content creators, reviewers, and managers. While content creators develop the written and visual material, reviewers make edits and updates to maintain consistency. Content managers create the marketing strategies, interact with senior management and web design teams and choose an appropriate content management software.

They create content creation schedules and review calendars and workflows to supervise the content team's work and progress. They secure the management's approval for publishing content after feedback and review. Defining clear roles and responsibilities for each member of the content management team helps streamline the overall process, avoiding delays and miscommunication.

4. Starting the content creation process

A content manager facilitates the work of other professionals in creating content based on the prescribed standards. They hold regular meetings with marketing teams and management staff to understand content requirements, schedules, and project deadlines. They brief the content team and writers start creating content based on the guidelines they receive.

The team can use online templates or content management systems to create, manage and review content. Once the content is ready, they work with the web design team, create mockups, present it to the management and get feedback. The reviewer can use the content management system to modify content based on feedback, after which the web design team publishes it on the website.

5. Setting up the content assessment process

A content assessment and approval process may involve multiple meetings during which management and marketing teams may give feedback before publishing content. Tools like a content management system ensure that the review and approval process is transparent and accessible to all stakeholders.

An effective content management system also generates collective responsibility for the quality of content. A weekly review may be ideal for companies that do not create frequent content. If a company generates a lot of user activity or if they work in e-commerce, a daily review may be necessary to routinely provide access to the latest products and services.

What Are The Components Of A Webpage That Require Periodic Review?

Content review is a time-intensive process as reviewers go through every page, blog, and link included in a website. They identify and track pages that they can and cannot review. For example, a reviewer may not have the authority to edit 'About the company' or 'Vision and mission' pages but can edit 'About the team' pages if a new executive has joined the company. The primary responsibility of a reviewer is to periodically identify pages that may require daily or frequent updates. Some pages on a website that may be of interest to a content reviewer include:

homepage
product description pages
online marketing pages
email marketing campaigns
social media campaigns
call-to-action pages

When professionals review webpages, they list useful items that a company can include in their pages. A reviewer verifies if the content team has linked a new product to the website or removed a discontinued product. They periodically assess whether the content team adds the latest official information on the webpage. A content reviewer also tracks pages that are no longer relevant. They make note of this information and send feedback to management. Once they have approval, a reviewer may remove or archive irrelevant information.

How Can I Improve Content Assessment Process?

Content creates the first impression on a user and determines whether they stay on a website for a longer duration. Reviewing content identifies inaccurate, outdated, and irrelevant content. It also tracks user responses and feedback and helps refine content accordingly. Some methods that can help improve a review process are:

proofreading thoroughly to identify grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors
preparing checklists and guidelines for the content team to create a uniform and consistent content
using catchy headings and phrases to attract and retain user attention
using online tools to see webpage performance and improve content accordingly
including SEO-compliant keywords
aligning content with marketing strategies
following up with other team members to ensure that they fix issues after each review

What Are The Benefits Of Content Review?

The primary motive of a content assessment process is to streamline, strengthen and update the content of a company's website. The content on a website conveys a company's vision and mission to its clients and users. Good content is indispensable for marketing, attracting traffic to a website, and creating interest in a company. Content assessment is a process that helps with this objective. Some additional benefits of content review include:

Helps manage old and irrelevant content

A reviewer can delete content that they cannot update or if the content is too short or too long. If your content no longer appears on online searches and it fails to bring in traffic, you can delete it. Reviewers then can recommend content strategies that can increase visitor traffic. Since search engines may remember out-of-date content, removing them and adding fresh content can help improve traffic.

Creates high-quality and engaging content consistently

Badly presented, uninspiring content can result in reduced user traffic on a webpage. This could lead to a lack of clarity, confuse users and dissuade them from visiting a website again. The content team can experiment by updating formats, themes, colors, and fonts, and changing content to see the impact the changes have on traffic. A periodic review and approval process helps the content team create and maintain high-quality and engaging content.

Helps tailor content to meet the needs of a target audience

Users typically have short attention spans. This can be a challenge for content creators who try to create headlines and content that can attract and retain a reader's attention. The review process helps identify how long a user stays on a webpage, and creators can tailor content according to target user profiles, to tweak these metrics.