Content organization creates a roadmap to ensure your content is accessible and valuable to your target audience. This article will explore why content organization matters and offer six tips to optimize your content organization process.

What is content organization?

Content organization is how companies manage and use content to achieve their marketing goals. It includes developing a content strategy, content calendar, and distribution plan. Content organization also influences how companies design their websites to make content accessible.

Why is content organization important?

It can be tempting for content teams to focus only on creating content—especially if they are a lean team with limited resources. But investing in content organization offers significant benefits, such as:

• Strengthening content strategy: Content organization is the foundation of an effective content strategy. Without a robust content management system, it is difficult to determine what type of content will best meet the audience’s needs. Content organization also makes it easier to promote, repurpose, and update published assets.
  
  
• Boosting collaboration: Content organization also improves team efficiency and collaboration. With content organization, content teams can better plan and execute tasks. As a result, teams produce higher-quality content faster.
  
  
• Enhancing the audience’s experience: Content organization provides a better user experience. Organizing content allows your audience to navigate your website and find content relevant to their needs. By doing so, organizations boost customer engagement and conversions.

6 tips for effective content organization

Want to develop a content organization system but need help figuring out where to begin? Here are six tips to get started.

1. Invest in a content management platform

First, determine where you will store all your content. Tracking different content assets can quickly become overwhelming. A content management platform—such as GatherContent—makes it easy to organize, search, and share content.

Content management platforms allow you to group content in ways that make sense for your organization, including:

• Length of content
• Type of content (e.g., blog posts, case studies, templates, podcasts, and webinars)
• Topics
• Content targeting different stages of the buyer’s journey
• Content tailored to buyer personas
• Distribution channels
• Status of the content (e.g., “in progress,” “published”)
• Date published

2. Create an editorial calendar

An editorial calendar is a tool for planning content and serves as an overview of your content strategy. With an editorial calendar, content teams plan, schedule, and publish content consistently.

An editorial calendar also helps manage your team’s capacity and keep everyone informed. And teams can use content calendars to ensure they promote published content assets.

3. Develop a strong workflow

Content organization requires a well-defined workflow. Workflows allow you to communicate assignments to your team, track deadlines, streamline approvals, and automate routine tasks. As a result, your team can focus on what matters most—creating quality content.

4. Rethink the content library

Optimizing content on your website to meet your audiences’ needs is essential. A well-organized content library will increase discoverability, build trust, and drive conversions.

Think about your target audience and buyer personas when organizing your content library. How will they look for content? You can group your assets by:

• Topics and themes
• Industries
• Pain points
• Content types

Here are three examples of how brands organize their content libraries.

Grammarly

Grammarly is a writing assistant that identifies and corrects grammatical and punctuation errors. The company divides its blog into articles about writing, product information, and company news. Next, they categorize articles by writing tips, grammar lessons, advice for students, tips for professionals, and lifestyle articles.

Visme

Visme is an all-in-one platform that enables marketers and business owners to create interactive presentations, infographics, and ebooks. The company divides its resources into two sections. Customers can search by content type or types of media that users may create.

AdDaptive

AdDaptive—an ad management and intelligence tool—organizes its library by content type and topics. The company also includes a search bar to make content easy to find.

5. Schedule a regular content audit

Even the most effective processes need regular reviews. As your organization scales, a content audit is an opportunity to evaluate your content assets and improve workflows.

Start by taking inventory of existing content. Identify outdated content or content that needs to be optimized for SEO. A content audit also allows you to determine which topics are most effective or where gaps exist.

6. Document, document, document

Documenting your content organization process ensures that your team knows where and how to locate content assets. Your documentation should include the following:

• Objectives
• Buyer personas
• Type of content
• Distribution channels
• Style guide

Take control of your content organization with GatherContent

Marketers often neglect content organization when implementing their content strategy. Although you may feel pressured to start creating content right away, content organization is the backbone of your content plan.

GatherContent is a content operations platform designed to help marketers create and scale quality content. Our Content Hub makes it easy to organize and search your content assets. With Workflow, users can create custom workflows and communicate with team members. And our Editor tool enables marketers to share content requirements and guidelines to everyone on their team.

Start a free trial today to see how thousands of organizations use GatherContent to streamline their content organization.