Content audits and categorisation.

Do you know what content you produce across the organisation?

Is that content categorised into Sales & Marketing, Regulatory and Reporting, Product, Legal, HR content?

Do you know which and how many languages each content type is localised?

Have you centrally recorded the source file formats, content creation platforms, distribution formats, content owners, complied/non complied content types?

Quite often the answer to these questions is “umm”, or yes, but the reality is that at best it is only for marketing content. A content audit is critical starting point if you want to have structured content operating models and be able to start analysing the effectiveness of your localized assets.

A content audit will often unearth content components being manually repurposed, resulting in content variations and ultimately arisk to the business. With variations in source components, understandable challenges are faced in the management of your translation memories. This adds to the risk of how you are communicating content to customers.

Content audits will allow you to categorise your content, prioritise key materials for high level localisation compasred to content that can be produced more cost effectively. For example, marketing materials are likely to require transcreation or high-level translation compared to certain regulatory materials that could be produced through translation memories and machine translations.

Once you follow your content through the lifecycle, it is critical that you have the ability to measure its effectiveness to maximise high value content and retire low value content. Many firms translate the content over and over without really understanding if it has any value, and whether you are getting a return on investment.

Content audits and categorisation are critical exercises, for which you will be able to show a quick ROI to the business and uncover where content risks and inefficiencies exist.