Content Strategy and Governance
A content strategy decides what your website should say, to whom, and why. Governance keeps it accurate once it is live. I write both as working documents: owners, standards, workflows and review rules your team can actually run.
Content strategy and governance is the layer between business goals and the pages a team publishes. The strategy defines the audiences, the messages each audience needs, the content types that carry those messages and the measures that tell you whether it worked. The governance decides who owns each part of the site, what standards content must meet, how it gets reviewed and approved, and when it gets retired. Without both, a website drifts toward whoever asked loudest last.
I treat it as an operating model rather than a document that sits in a shared drive. In my consulting practice I set the KPIs a content strategy is measured against and turn business goals into governance, technical briefs and prioritized backlogs. Before that, at UnitedHealth Group, I was responsible for healthcare content meeting strict regulatory, risk and security standards. That taught me governance only works when the review path is explicit and the people in it have time to do it.
I work inside your existing process rather than handing over a binder. Standards get written with the people who will apply them: writers, designers, developers and the reviewers who sign off. Workflows are mapped to the CMS you already run, so approvals happen where publishing happens. I have led process re-engineering across cross-functional teams and managed delivery across design, content and development. The governance model I leave behind is one your team can keep running without me.
What strategy and governance work includes
Content Strategy Document
A written strategy covering audiences, core messages by audience and stage, content types and their purpose, success measures, and the principles that settle disagreements about what to publish.
Content Model
Definitions for each content type the site uses, with required fields, relationships, metadata and templates, written so CMS authors and developers build from the same specification.
Voice and Standards Guide
Editorial standards for voice, tone, terminology, readability, legal language and metadata, with examples of pages that meet them and pages that do not, so every reviewer applies one bar.
Ownership and Roles
A RACI for every section of the site naming the business owner, content owner, reviewers and publisher, so a question about a page has a name attached rather than a committee.
Review and Approval Workflow
Documented workflows for creating, reviewing, approving, publishing and retiring content, including regulatory and legal review steps, service levels for each stage and how each step maps to your CMS.
Content KPI Framework
The measures that tell you whether content is doing its job, defined per content type, with the analytics configuration and reporting cadence needed to track them over time.
How I approach strategy and governance
Find the goals and gaps
I start with your business goals, the audiences you serve and how content gets published today, including where it stalls, who decides and what tends to break.
Write the strategy
I draft the strategy, content model and standards with your stakeholders in the room, testing each principle against real pages until it is specific enough to settle an argument.
Design the governance model
With your stakeholders I assign owners, define the review and approval workflow, set the standards each stage checks, and decide how retirement, exceptions and escalations are handled.
Put it into operation
I help configure the workflows in your CMS, run the first review cycles with your team, adjust whatever is too heavy or too loose, and hand over documentation they can maintain.
Where this comes from
Content strategy and governance sits first on my list of expertise, and it runs through my consulting practice and my in-house role at UnitedHealth Group. As a consultant I define and execute persona-based web and omnichannel content strategies and translate business goals into content governance, technical briefs and prioritized backlogs. At UnitedHealth Group I owned the website roadmap and ensured healthcare content met strict regulatory, risk and security standards. Earlier I ran subscription-based instructional web communities at TN Marketing, overseeing CMS publishing, UX and video production.
See my experienceWorking with Brittany is a pleasure. She's detail-oriented and works well in a collaborative environment. She helped implement our digital strategy and assisted in the creation of a cutting-edge e-commerce and subscription-based system. I look forward to working with her again.
Marketing Leader, Behavior Designer, Neuromarketer
Worked together at different companies
Frequently asked
What is the difference between content strategy and content governance?
Content strategy decides what content should exist and why, while governance decides who maintains it and how. Strategy covers audiences, messages, content types and measures, while governance covers ownership, standards, review workflows and retirement rules. I deliver them together because a strategy without governance decays, and governance without strategy enforces rules nobody understands.
Do we need a content audit first?
Usually a light one, yes. I need to know what content exists, who owns it and how it performs before I write a strategy for it. For large sites I scope a full content audit and inventory as its own piece of work. For smaller sites a sample of key pages is often enough to start.
Can governance work in a regulated industry like healthcare?
Yes, and it is where governance matters most. My UnitedHealth Group role made me responsible for healthcare content meeting regulatory, risk and security standards. The workflow has to show who reviewed what and when. Each review step needs a realistic service level, so compliance is built into publishing rather than added at the end.
Which CMS platforms do you work with?
I have worked in Adobe Experience Manager, WordPress and Drupal, and governance workflows map onto all three. The model I design is platform independent: roles, standards and approval stages are defined first, then configured in whatever CMS you run. If your platform cannot support a step, I document it as a manual control.
Related services
Content Audits and Inventories
Before you can plan new content, you need to know what you already have and how it performs. I inventory every page, score it against your goals and audience, and tell you what to keep, fix, merge or retire.
Learn moreEditorial Planning and Calendars
An editorial calendar is a set of decisions about what to publish, for whom, when and why. I build the plan behind the calendar, so each piece has an owner, a deadline and a reason to exist.
Learn moreCMS Publishing and Operations
A CMS is only as good as the way your team uses it. I set up the publishing workflows, templates, checklists and release schedules that move pages from draft to live reliably, then hand them to the people who run the site.
Learn moreLet's talk about who owns your content
Tell me how content gets published today, who approves it and where it breaks down. I will tell you whether the problem is strategy, governance or both, and what it would take to fix it.