Working in the open
We are committed to working in the open and sharing what we are doing and learning. Feedback has been good. This week we are sharing some of our internal processes around style guides and content production.
https://twitter.com/CodingComms/status/1495834777982799872
https://twitter.com/EdwinaOHart/status/1495760858819006468
Switching on the content production line
As the CDPS website develops and we produce more content, we need to make sure it goes through all the content design stages of commissioning, editing, sign-off and ‘2i’ (when another person gives the content a ‘second eye’ for style, user needs fulfilment and so on). Trello is ready-made for this process, so we’ve created a board where all these publishing stages feature as columns – allowing us to move a content card (representing a blog post, web page and so on) from one column, and stage, to another.
Colour coding of cards lets us see at a glance how much of each kind of content the team is currently dealing with. You can also assign and unassign each card to a member when it’s their turn to do something, so they can easily gauge their workload. Goodbye to confusing emails flying around asking for sign-off, social media copy and so. Production-line king Henry Ford would have been proud of us!
Staying CDPS ‘stylish’
Simon gave a presentation to CDPS staff on our new content production checklist. It’s a one-page document for CDPS people to use when planning or drafting content. The checklist has two purposes: to make our content more user-centred and to maintain CDPS’s reputation for publishing exemplary content. The list suggests that, before you even begin drafting any content, you ask, for example:
If you do go ahead with drafting, the checklist asks whether, among a series of criteria, you’ve:
You don’t need to physically check off items on the list (although it wouldn’t hurt) but we do urge all staff to use the document when preparing content – it’s based on tried and true content design principles (many of which promise to improve any piece on writing)!
Recruitment - Welsh speaking comms pro
We’ve failed to recruit into this post on previous occasions, so we’re trying something different. We’re holding 30 mins chats with people who might be interested, but who aren’t sure about who we are, what we do or what the role involved. Two great chats this week. If you, or anyone you know is interested, drop Edwina a line - [email protected] to arrange.