Decentralized Authoring - Is it just a pipe dream?
Written April 2nd, 2008 by Aaron HolbrookThe role I currently am in consists of one person running the entire website: me. While this works for smaller institutions or websites that doesn’t have constantly changing content - I’m finding it difficult, if not impossible to not just keep things up to date, but initiate and ensure that all content is correct and as accurate as possible. I’ve been seriously toying with the idea of setting up a decentralized system of authoring that would have each specific service line (or at the very least, the large, important ones) make a person that’s actually within the service line in charge of handling that department’s web content. While this all makes sense in my head, I’ve definitely found that reality and what I theorize are not always one and the same. A couple of roadblocks I’ve considered (and tell me if these have been an issue for you, and if so - how you’ve dealt with them):
- First and foremost - uncooperative service lines, no one wanting the added responsibility of taking on web content on top of their normal roles
- Inconsistent styles of writing/authoring - I think this can be somewhat controlled in the sense of only allowing certain styles to be used, but the writing style could definitely prove to be a huge problem
- Clinicians aren’t marketers, they’re clinicians - I think the biggest fear I have is that while for example, I can get my way through any technical spot, I’m not the strongest writer - why would a clinician be any different? How can I expect someone like that to be able to write good, solid content?
Those are the big issues that I can envision at this point - I’m very interested to hear what some of you who have many authors across their hospitals/health systems deal with these issues (and possibly others that I haven’t even thought of/come across).
What’s been your experience? How have you dealt with the issues that came up?
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:56 am
Your concerns are absolutely on point. Solutions exist and will likely be a combination of process and software. Your tasks are (a) to motivate people to keep their content updated and (b) to verify that the updates look good and are in style and brand.
a) You need to be able to review the entire site at a glance, see what pages need updating and notify those people (all software issues) and then you need them to be able to respond appropriately (process).
b) You need copy to be generated in brand and a system that decentralizes both content generation and review (all software). A key point here is that for a large system, you need multiple layers of review… otherwise the one admin (you) will get overwhelmed with all of the content that comes your way (combination of software and process). We’ve found the most helpful general breakdown is Writer, Editor, and Publisher with (of course) decreasing numbers at each stage.
Keep in mind that these recommendations are more for keeping content up to date, a challenge in and of itself. I’d agree that clinicians are not marketers and our clients have found that the initial generation of the website content is best done by marketers and other specialized content generators.
We also recently ran a webinar on how to choose a good CMS: http://blog.medtouch.com/content-management-software/2008/03/19/ . It’s not a sales pitch but helps to de-mystify the process for anyone who realizes that their software won’t help them to do what they need to. I’ll put the sales pitch right here: we’re working with a one-man show who runs 17 hospital websites on our platform: http://medtouch.com/results/news/medtouch-announces-agreement-with-iasis/ .
April 4th, 2008 at 9:36 am
We have “authors” for some sections of the site, and all of the problems you outlined are occurring. We have to review every entry, even those made by our PR folks who can’t seem to remember that we spell “health care” in two words.
I’d advise caution, but for short-handed staffs, there may be no other way.
Neal
April 4th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
You need at least one extremely pedantic person (me, in our organization) if you want anything resembling consistency in your original content. There’s no other way to ensure tight grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and uniform tone and style. And that’s leaving aside branding and marketing concerns. Without one careful set of eyes, your content will be all over the place.
If you have some budget for it, a freelance editor could filter contributions from your clinical partners, and get material in shape for the site.
Regarding buy-in from overburdened or uncooperative clinic folks, that’s tough. Generally, you have to get the physicians on board, to motivate their staffs. Also, you have to keep evangelizing about how great your web site can be with their help.
April 8th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I wish that I could get content authors, but while our clinical people are very intelligent and talented in taking care of patients and saving people’s lives, they’re not talented in the area of writing for the web, designing for the web, and etc. I have a few people within my organization who are responsible for maintaining particular areas of the site ie. my PR person for the Press Room and our physician coordinator for the physician finder. If anyone wants to put items on the events calendar they have to do it themselves. With the work flow built into the site, I can review these items before they’re posted live and make any necessary changes. Other than that, it’s all me. I think it’s safer that way when it comes to branding and sending out a consistent message; however, from a time standpoint, I’d love to be able to delegate more responsibility. Just having a copywriter and/or graphic designer dedicated to the web site would be nice. Unfortunately, I don’t have that luxury either.
@Jonathan - What you posted is great in theory, but when you get into the real experience where budget and time are an issue, things just don’t work that way.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
[...] a great post at Webiscope about decentralized authoring - allowing many individuals within the hospital to create and edit [...]
April 11th, 2008 at 7:16 am
I agree with all the above. For the public website, we used to be primarily decentrailized, and the site was very inconsistent. However you can only centralize if you have a reasonably sized web content staff. Our current content staff is 6 people that work on various projects. The content team also has a good mix of skills above and beyond writing including design, graphics, CSS, javascript etc.
While the web content staff may be seen as incremental expense, it does mean that clinicians and other staff can focus on their core competencies and accomplish more in those areas vs. consuming time maintaining a website with varying degrees of success. A core team of editors, with web information and design skills, can produce better websites, more cost-effectively that people who do not produce web content for a living.
This doesn’t mean that other staff cannot post content. In some cases you may have a person with reasonable skills that can maintain there department’s public website, and you can allow this, (with or without central approval, again this gets into how much oversight would you need for this person).
We currently do not have web content staff for our Intranet. I could see benefits for some level of central content group staffing here also, but we don’t have the staff to do this at this time.