Sometimes you have to play a bit of good cop, bad cop with your content owners if you want great content

This post looks at ways to change your relationship with under-performing content owners and devolved editors to end the days of outdated, poor quality web content that does more harm than good.

Shifting the balance of power back to the web team

Web teams are commonly seen as little more than publishing teams, a role many web teams regrettably play up to. Such an unhealthy deference to the rest of the organisation is what allows 200 page PDFs to be chucked on the site without anyone saying “boo”.

This is crazy. We are web professionals, brought in and paid for our expertise on web content and communication.

Look at it another way: what would the Finance dept do if you didn’t follow their process for claiming expenses? They’d tell you to do it again, properly. And you would because you know you won’t get your money until you do it their way.

So what’s the difference? You run the website. You are the web expert. You could switch it all off right now if you wanted to. You have control. So use it.

Sounds like fighting talk. Yes, but threatening to switch off content doesn’t actually fix the problem. You [the web team] need to build a positive and relatively equal working relationship with content owners to ensure your site has good quality content at all times.

Good cop, bad cop

In my experience of working with content owners and devolved editors I’ve found a combination of these techniques can win round the most distant devolved editors:

Show them your face – you must, must, must build a strong working relationship with all your devolved editors. Email does not count. You need to get out your chair and go and meet them – I always try to go to their office to show willing and to see what their world is like.

Commitment – show them you want to dedicate your time, skill and expertise to helping them get the most from their content – let them see you believe it’s a valuable use of your time. You need to make them feel a bit grateful to have you on board and interested in them.

Understand what drives them – ask them what they are trying to achieve? What issues do they face? Who are their key audiences? What messages are they trying to get out? How much resource do they have for the web? Do their bosses value the web? Be empathetic.

Credible – don’t be shy to ‘present your credentials’ – they need to be impressed enough that you really know what you are doing to take you seriously. Shamelessly refer to previous experience and successes to leave them in no doubt that they are in good hands.

Inspire – the web can make the dullest things exciting. You need to get this across to the devolved editors. Take examples (always visual) of how others are doing great things with the web and make the connection to their needs. Be enthusiastic and optimistic.

Shame – find the worst bit of content they have, the really out of date, inaccurate, misleading bit. Take a screen shot. Find out how many visitors it’s had in recent months. Spell out that connection: this content is being read by real people, and you must see this is not good enough. But show them the light out!

Jealous – play them off against your star devolved editors. Wave some screen shots in front of them and explain how you’ve already helped others in their position do some great stuff which is showing real benefit. Tell them you are prepared to do the same with them. Make them feel thankful for that.

Way forward – before you meet the devolved editor/s breakdown what needs to be done and then tell them how it is going to be – you have to take the lead or it won’t happen. My previous post Improving your devolved editors – where to begin? has some advice on how to identify and prioritise problems.

Tough talk – you have shown them what’s wrong, you have shown them how good it could/should be, you have offered your expertise and resource, and most importantly you have offered them a way forward. You now need to be clear what will be happen if things don’t start to improve. Now that will vary but you need to be consistent. At a minimum you should make it clear you will switch off their content if it is out of date or inaccurate. That’s hardly unreasonable.

I bet you are thinking: “easier said than done”. Well no actually, I’ve done it, I really have… and you know what happened… they came to our office within the hour and asked what it would take to get their pages back up. We, the little old web team, were now calling the shots.

Now your turn

Pick a particularly switched-off content owner and arrange to meet them to start applying some of the techniques above. I’d suggest doing it with the Devolved editor tracker I featured in Improving your devolved editors – where to begin?.

Let me know how you get on.

Liam