What is it?
A systematic process to ensure that content meets specified requirements before publishing.
Why is it important?
To measure the quality of the content creation process and ensure that content deliverables are completed with an acceptable level of quality.
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:
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Content creation processes: For example, authoring and page building processes.
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Quality standards and stakeholder expectations: For example, tone and voice compliance, style guide compliance, link standards, and content accuracy.
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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.
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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.
About Laurence Dansokho
Laurence Dansokho is Tools and Process Manager at eBay, responsible for global content process optimization and quality control. She graduated in journalism at the University of Leipzig, has quality management experience, including a Six Sigma Yellow Belt and certification in ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management, and is also a certified Usability Practitioner.
Email: mailto:fazut@web.de
Twitter: @LaurenceFD