Content Marketing Quality Control

Let’s face it, mistakes in business happen. You can affectionately call them the bloopers of business.  

Of course we didn’t mean to mess up, but for some reason we stumbled, tripped or didn’t see that very large brick wall immediately in front of… ooomph!

So before you go too far into life’s mishaps and beat yourself up over the reality of business, let’s chat about quality control in the world of content marketing.

Making Mistakes

We are all human, which means none of us are perfect. As a global community, it is inspiring to see us starting to support one another as the imperfect-beings we cannot deny we are. In the digital marketing world, though, some of these minor mistakes show up more and more often. There are more typos in pieces of written content, more grammatical errors, more public speaking faux pauxs, and incorrect information being used. And that’s not even getting into the topic of Social Media blunders.

Mistakes, whether they are as small as a typo or as large as forgetting to cite a source can easily be and very well should be avoided. As we continue to grow in our business the more often they are avoided, the more reliable and professional you appear to your clients and consumers.

Take the time to assign responsibility of catching and correcting silly mistakes to a single person or persons within your workforce. Have them utilize the following to ensure good quality is being put out to the world on behalf of your business.

Using Checklists

Each content marketing “product” will most likely require a separate checklist. The checklist should be detailed and thorough- listing more than the standards that should be achieved by each. The checklists should call out mistakes that need to be eliminated, such as those mentioned above. The value of these lists is that it can help every team member check their own work, or different curators cross-check work even outside of their familiarity.  

The Checklist Checklist

Your checklists should have the following:

1 – Definition of valuable content

This means that you should outline some indicators of up-to-standard content. Some ideas include keyword count, formatting specifications, and more. Use this part of the checklist to define what makes each type of content valuable and viral.

2 – Fair use guidelines

Fair use guidelines are imperative if you are summarizing any content.  Here is the four-part test used by the copyright office:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

3 – Mistakes to Avoid

In this part of the checklist, call out common mistakes that need to fixed before content is published. This can be technical, such as duplicate content, broken links or typos, or could include things such as “saying ‘um’ too many times in a video or podcast”. If there is anything taking  away from your content effectively being consumed by readers, viewers and listeners as professional, reliable, and quality, it should be part of the checklist.

These checklists are life-saving since they make it easy to review the many aspects of quality control while saving one’s sanity. Yet it goes without saying, the most important thing about making mistakes is learning from them. Keep track of your own mistakes so that you can identify weaknesses and abolish them!