{"id":4259,"date":"2013-03-26T08:38:29","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T12:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meetcontent.com\/?p=4259"},"modified":"2017-04-20T00:23:15","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T04:23:15","slug":"training-the-missing-element-of-content-governance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meetcontent.com\/blog\/training-the-missing-element-of-content-governance\/","title":{"rendered":"Training: The Missing Element of Content Governance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Francis
Building a content governance culture means we all need to be teachers \u2014 and students.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When people think about content governance, they often think roles, responsibilities, workflow and documentation. But there’s an element to content governance that is equally important and often overlooked: training.<\/p>\n

Content governance means understanding existing expertise and knowledge gaps and training content contributors on policies, guidelines, workflow and best practices. To make sure your staff has the necessary expertise and the ability to do great work, training needs to be part of your governance plan.<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, content governance requires educating everyone involved in the publishing process. But even more so, successful content relies on a cultural support for governance with active sharing and learning.<\/p>\n

Building a content governance culture means we all need to be teachers \u2014 and students.<\/p>\n

Who’s In Charge of Training?<\/h2>\n

You.<\/p>\n

Content training can’t exist in a vacuum. It has to be part of the governance process. This means training happens at every level within your institution. <\/p>\n

An inspiring moment early in my career was hearing a website owner say, "Our website sucks because content owners don’t take responsibility for their content." This person was referring to department heads who ignored their content by not regularly publishing new content or maintaining existing content. They also didn’t know it was their job to do so \u2014 and even if they had known, they weren’t trained on how to do the work well.<\/p>\n

If you’ve ever blamed content contributors for bad content when you haven\u2019t provided them with the tools and training to do their work effectively, I’ve got some tough love for you: It’s not their fault the content is bad \u2014 it’s yours.<\/p>\n

Of course, training can’t happen haphazardly. We need to get organized. <\/p>\n

While your editor-in-chief<\/a> should set the stage for content training, it takes a team to make training work. Consider identifying a small set of content professionals \u2014 content publishing experts and other people in leading content roles \u2014 to become trained experts on your content strategy, including related documentation, tasks and workflows.<\/p>\n

Like all elements of content governance, training needs ownership to ensure that it happens \u2014 that proper training guides and lesson plans are created and that necessary training tools are made available.<\/p>\n

Planning for Content Training<\/h2>\n

In order to create an appropriate content training plan, you need to understand available staff expertise, knowledge gaps<\/a> and your audience. <\/p>\n

Identify knowledge gaps<\/h3>\n

Because digital publishing requires such varied proficiencies, there will always be knowledge gaps for content contributors, regardless of their role. That\u2019s to be expected. What\u2019s important is that you\u2019re aware of the gaps so that you can organize training sessions or acquire outside expertise as needed.<\/p>\n

Here is a list of some common web content publishing areas of expertise that you should account for:<\/p>\n