So, What Exactly Are Content Policies?
As important as they are to maintaining and optimizing a healthy website, it is completely understandable if content policies and what they are used for remain something of a mystery to you. Simply put, content policies are just rules that guide the day-to-day work of your web team.
Having consistent content policies in place is an effective way to optimize your online presence and ensure you are adhering to any laws governing your website. Policies allow you to take control of your content and stay alert to potential issues like guideline violations or outdated content that may harm your website.
How Do Content Policies Work?
Policies can be selected from our preset library or created to meet with your organization's particular needs and then applied to the domain/s of your choosing. Once a policy has been applied to a domain, future scans will search the entire site for matches so that you never overlook content that could damage your reputation and digital presence.
Policies can be used to manage brand guides, style guides, regulatory guides, and much more.
Use Policies to:
Ensure Consistent Branding - E.g. Create a policy to ensure your organization's name is always written the same away and always in capital letters.
Ensure Style Guide Rules Are Adhered To - E.g. Create a policy to ensure that the term ‘total’ is always used instead of ‘aggregated’, or the term ‘about’ is always used instead of ‘approximately’ in order to ensure that the language used on your site is consistently simple and understandable.
Ensure Compliance with Industry Regulations - E.g. Create a policy to ensure the terms used across your domains are consistent or to keep track of where all of your important documents lie.
Keep Track of Current and Former Employees - E.g. Create a policy to identify mentions of staff members who are no longer with your organization.
Identify Potentially Problematic Terminology - E.g. Create a policy to identify particular words or expressions, such as unfamiliar acronyms, slang, and jargon that could potentially cause confusion and visitor frustration.
What Type of Organizations Can Benefit from Content Policies?
Content Policies are extremely useful for many different organization types, including:
Financial Organizations - Financial organizations can use policies to ensure compliance with industry regulations. E.g. A policy might be created to ensure that a banking license number appears at the bottom of the site and on every page.
Schools/Universities - Schools and universities can create policies to keep track of their online materials and information, including maintaining an accurate record of both current and former staff members.
Legal Firms - Legal firms can create policies to check that they are meeting with industry standards, such as ensuring that legal disclaimers feature in key areas across their domains.
Government Organizations - Local, state or federal government departments and agencies can create policies to ensure compliance with government-specific style guides.
Local Governments - Local governments and cities can create policies to find old content, such as previous mayors and councilors, and well as other information that is subject to change.
Whatever your organization type, policies can help you enforce specific rules, meet with industry standards, and to locate specific online content for review at the click of a button.
Learn more about Monsido’s Policies module.
