Integrity is the Midwestern United States’s leading privately-owned web development agency. Founded in 2001, Integrity have a holacratic structure that shifts the focus from a traditional hierarchy to personal responsibility and passion, the Integrity team have become national leaders in interactive design, website development and all of the support that a successful business might require. Their clients include MillerCoors, Siteman Cancer Center, Drury Hotels, American Optometric Association, Emdeon, Worldwide Express, United Soybean Board and Missouri Baptist University. We spoke to Integrity's content strategist, Evan Young, to find out how they've been using GatherContent for their client projects. Evan identified these main areas of success with GatherContent:

• Agency using GatherContent for client website redesigns and internal ongoing content production
• GatherContent setup to outline content messaging and architecture
• GatherContent key part of content focused process to keep projects on track and budget

A version control nightmare and painful content process

Evan describes their content process prior to using GatherContent as a dark and dreary time. The old way involved Word documents being sent via email. They did try to soothe the pains by creating a content outline in Word, a template of sort for their clients, that included the content architecture and character limits. But that was still a version control nightmare and the team identified a need to find something that would help refine the process, soothe the pains and keep projects on time and budget. So they signed up to GatherContent 12 months ago and haven’t looked back.

Using GatherContent for in-house and client projects

Around 75% of all Integrity’s client projects use GatherContent and it is also used daily for their own in-house content production. Each client project has different leads for design, development and content. They are all responsible for the high standard expected when sites and products are shipped from Integrity. It is mainly the content team who use GatherContent with frequency, though all project leads are included in the entire project cycle from kick-off to launch, so they can avoid any nasty surprises and roadblocks.

Content is what makes or breaks a project so we take it seriously to ensure our projects stay on track and on budget. Using GatherContent helps us achieve this.

Evan Young, Content Strategist

Defining bespoke workflows in GatherContent to keep projects moving

Once the goals of the project have been defined, along with the personas, a GatherContent project is started and introduced to the client in the discovery phase. Evan and the content team create a page where they can outline the messaging that the content needs to convey. Here they work with the client to figure out the big idea and capturing the information in GatherContent allows them to easily refer all content and related decisions back to the project objectives. This section of the project becomes a content strategy for the clients and this also starts the conversation about the structure of the site, the pages and the content buckets needed. The content team at Integrity make full use of the workflow within GatherContent in order to move the project along, set deadlines and keep on top of where each project is, who needs to do what, and by when. The goal on every project is to have content finalised by the time they start wireframing. As a minimum they have a sitemap and within each page the buckets and word and character limits approved.

Using GatherContent for ongoing content production

Integrity also use GatherContent for their own ongoing content production in the News section of their website. They use GatherContent most days to draft their articles and then pass them through an internal editorial workflow until approved for publishing. This has been their process for the last 6 months as they continue to develop their own content strategy and create original content to share their expertise as an organisation.

The best thing about using GatherContent for our internal content is that it keeps everything in one place and we can collaborate easily.

Evan Young, Content Strategist

Embedding GatherContent into a process with other tools

GatherContent is just one product in Integrity’s toolbox. It’s used in conjunction with tools like UXPin, Lovely Charts, Basecamp, HipChat and Google Docs. WordPress is also a key tool for the team and they use it almost exclusively on every website project. Each tool serves a purpose for their projects and also work together for the overall management and delivery of projects. Since becoming a customer a year ago, Integrity have embedded GatherContent into their process and into their client workflow too, making full use of the functions and features and ensuring all content is given the care and attention it deserves.