This is one of the 52 terms in The Language of Content Strategy published by XML Press in 2014 and the contributor for this term is PG Bartlett.
What is it?
The process of refining language to improve its readability, accuracy, clarity, consistency, translatability, findability, extensibility, linguistic correctness, and tone and voice.
Why is it important?
Ultimately, optimized content benefits content consumers; good quality content allows readers to focus on the message without editorial distractions.
Why does a content strategist need to know this?
Content quality assurance is a key component of content quality management. Quality assurance focuses on the processes you use to develop content, ensuring that your content creation processes produce quality deliverables. Content quality assurance comprises:
- Content creation processes: For example, authoring and page building processes.
- Quality standards and stakeholder expectations: For example, tone and voice compliance, style guide compliance, link standards, and content accuracy.
- Quality assurance activities that monitor content creation: For example, quality audits, reviews against authoring guidelines, peer reviews, subject matter expert reviews, page load time tests, link tests, and usability tests.
- Quality assurance scheduling: For example, schedules for how often and when quality assurance activities will be performed.
Quality targets depend on the project, and you need to identify targets for each content deliverable. You can create a content quality scorecard, which could indicate fail/pass or a way to rank the issues. This will help you prioritize and identify improvement opportunities.
