The Hallmarks of Content Quality Why they matter and how to achieve them March 29, 2014

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What we mean by quality

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“What is quality content? Ultimately, the consumer decides.”

– Joe Chernov VP of Content, Hubspot

Quality guiding principles

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The definition of quality varies across brands and audiences — but some basic guiding principles govern content quality.

Relevance

Structure

Credibility

Accuracy & Timeliness

Clarity, Readability & Focus

Findability & Organization

Tone & Style

Overall Experience & Effectiveness

Why invest in quality?

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Quality supports your brand image. It showcases your commitment to professionalism and excellence. It helps you communicate your brand pillars and your brand personality. Quality helps you communicate clearly. Upholding quality standards ensures you get your message across and your customers hear you loud and clear. Quality supports your goals. More engagement with your marketing tactics, better search engine results, more efficiency in service — quality communications are more effective communications, making everything you do in your branding and marketing more successful.

Defining & enforcing quality

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CONTENT

The 8 Hallmarks of Content Quality

Defining & enforcing quality

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RELEVANCE

Relevance What it means •  Delivering the right content to the right

audience at the right place and time •  Helping users find the content that best

matches their needs

How to achieve it •  Get to know your audiences. •  Understand how to interpret your data. •  Put things in context with how audiences

think. •  Be as original as you can. •  Segment and personalize content as

much as possible.

More  on  relevance:  h-p://hub.am/1jCc5GW  

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STRUCTURE

Structure What it means •  How you organize your information to

meet your communication goals •  How to model content for efficiency and

usability

How to achieve it •  Don’t bury the lead. •  Focus on one topic per paragraph. •  Let your thesis drive everything. •  Build relationships/transitions between

paragraphs. •  Keep citations in a supporting role. •  Think of content’s essential parts.

More  on  structure:  h-p://hub.am/1ihDgUB    

Defining & enforcing quality

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CREDIBLITY

Credibility What it means •  Earning consumers’ trust •  Communicating unique expertise

How to achieve it •  Be as objective as possible. •  Make content useful and usable. •  Make it easy to verify facts. •  Be consistent.

More  on  credibility:  h-p://hub.am/1gOrVNY  

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ACCURACY

Accuracy & Timeliness What it means •  Angling your content to be relevant to

audiences right now •  Checking details and citing sources to

ensure correctness of information

How to achieve it •  Stay nimble and provide information in

context of news or trends. •  Avoid riding coat-tails or blatant

newsjacking. •  Cite sources and attribute statistics and

any potentially questionable facts. •  Avoid sloppiness: check names, dates,

places.

More  on  accuracy  &  Hmeliness:  h-p://hub.am/NbOdw6    

Defining & enforcing quality

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CLARITY

Clarity, Readability & Focus What it means •  Hook and keep your audience by making

your point quickly •  Clearly communicate your message to

achieve your goals

How to achieve it •  Make it easy to understand. •  Don’t use 10 words if you can use five. •  Use a proven structure. •  Make content scannable. •  Stay on topic.

More  on  clarity,  readability  &  focus:  h-p://hub.am/NxvWcS  

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FINDABILITY

Findability & Organization What it means •  Structuring your content to help users

meet their goals and find what they need •  Guiding readers to where you want them

to go and find How to achieve it •  Understand what users are looking for

and what words they use to search for it. •  Use highlighted content and cross-linking

to guide users on their “adventure.” •  Treat every page as page one. •  Support effective search with keywords,

meta data and a hierarchical URL structure.

More  on  findability:  h-p://hub.am/1chKxiP    

Defining & enforcing quality

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TONE & STYLE

Tone & Style What it means •  Defining the personality of your brand •  Telling your story consistently across

channels

How to achieve it •  Define your tone of voice. •  Choose words based on your audience. •  Vary your sentence structure, but be

consistent overall in length and flow. •  Be consistent in your style and grammar. •  Focus on your goals for each piece of

content.

More  on  tone  &  style:  h-p://hub.am/P4Ykob  

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EFFECTIVENESS

Overall Experience & Effectiveness What it means •  How your content makes people feel •  How effectively your content achieves its

goals (and helps consumers achieve theirs)

How to achieve it •  Use clear, benefits-oriented language. •  Match compelling visuals with written

content. •  Use clear calls-to-action. •  Be forthright and open in your messaging

(avoid wishy-washy).

More  on  experience  &  effecHveness:  h-p://hub.am/PkpS97    

Defining & enforcing quality

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What does quality look like for your brand?

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Define your quality pillars.

What should your content always be? Fun? Provocative? Original?

Determine your style.

Set guidelines for your tone of voice, style and usage

Set baseline expectations.

Decide the minimum requirements for an acceptable piece of content.

Measure where you are today.

•  Audit your content. •  Use content assessment tools

to quantifiably assess how current content measures up to your standards.

•  Set goals for improvement and put processes and tools in place to achieve those goals.

•  Use measurement to communicate the importance of quality internally. Download  our  sample  content  

assessment  tool.    

Get your team on board.

Explain the need for quality in business terms.

Get buy-in from senior managers and leaders.

Incentivize quality content (contests, recognition) and encourage participation. Launch committee to steer

strategy and enforce standards. Communicate improvement and correlate it to marketing success.

Train teams and evangelize guidelines and tools.

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Let us help you with your content quality! Get in touch to learn how Suite Seven can help you develop a content strategy for focus, standards and sustainability. Stacey King Gordon, President 510.292.4469 stacey@suiteseven.com

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