Content can get left in limbo at any stage of a content production process. Perpetual feedback loops are tricky to get out of and a lack of accountability can mean nothing gets approved!You can wave goodbye to this content chaos and confusion. Use GatherContent to:

• Define a clear workflow from draft to published (and beyond for governance projects)
• Assign people to specific content Projects and Items
• Set due dates for individual workflow statuses to keep things moving
• Notify people when they need to complete their task
• Collaborate effectively, with all your content and comments in one place

Let’s take a look at some of these benefits to using GatherContent in more detail, all of which help you create an efficient approval process for your website content.

Make it clear who is responsible for what (and by when)

Roles, responsibility, assignments and deadline functionality in GatherContent functionality make accountability and workflow clearly visible for your team and clients. You can filter what project pages members are able to view so that reviewers only see what they need to approve. To push content through your production workflow, you can use email notifications to let people know when content is ready for their review or approval.The benefits to this are:

• Surfaces the current status/progress of all your content
• Identifies any bottlenecks
• Allows people to focus on what is relevant to them

Accountability is key to pushing content through the production stage of a project. A process is one thing but it needs people to be onboard with it and to understand their role within it in order for it to succeed.

Eliminate the time you waste chasing late content

Working without a defined and easy to understand workflow will encourage your authors to unknowingly miss deadlines, especially when the workflow is locked away in a spreadsheet. A clearly defined workflow can help to increase the efficiency of your content operations.

Have you experienced these content pains before:

• Time wasted manually chasing late content
• Late content pushing back publish dates
• No visible production timelines or delivery  schedules
• Worse quality content produced
• Bad quality content being published with mistake
• Setting expectations across how many people, and how much time is required from zero to published
• Unorganised teams
• Don’t know when work ready for me

Clear workflows makes it easy for people to understand their responsibilities which prevents content from being delivered late.In GatherContent you can:

• Define unique workflows to suit the structure of your organisation
• Assign due dates to individual workflow statuses
• Assign people to specific workflow stages
• Save time not having to chase content
• Get the content you need (in the format you need it) on time
• Control your content production schedule

And all of this results in a more organised team who are working better together.

Better collaboration with your team

Have you experienced Word docs with comments all over them and confusion as to what version is final and what needs to be actioned? It’s all too common and makes approving content next to impossible.

GatherContent will allow you to collaborate better with your in-house project teamor clients so it is clear when content needs approval:

• You can discuss your content using comments in a clear view
• Every Item has its own general discussion thread
• You can comment directly on text using ‘in-line’ comments
• Notification emails will be sent to people that are assigned to the Item when you make a new comment
• You can reply directly to comments from your inbox

Facilitating feedback in this way using GatherContent:

• Saves time on back and forth between edits and revisions
• Makes it easy for people to give feedback
• Keeps all feedback in one place
• Surfaces what stage content is at in your workflow
• Notifies the relevant people when the content has been approved and is ready for publishing

If content has to be approved against certain criteria (legal, finance) or in reference to any visuals, you can use the Notes to add extra guidelines or supporting information. You can format Notes to include tables and bullet points, and you can also embed images and wireframes in the Notes section. This is really handy as a means to provide a visual cross-reference for reviewers.Aligning your people and processes is essential to avoid the content pitfalls and making it clear who needs to approve what, and when, will certainly help you dodge the approval limbo pitfall.If you want to start centralising your content production you can get started today by signing up to a free trial. You can also read our free guide "Content Strategy for Website Projects" to learn more about using GatherContent for website redesign projects.