Higher Ed’s Guide to Web Governance

One of the bigger challenges that higher ed institutions face with their websites is content governance, or the structure of policies, processes, and guidelines that manage an online presence. It’s a constant struggle between maintaining brand standards, empowering department stakeholders, and finding team bandwidth. Whether you’re working with 150 content managers or four, a strong but flexible governance plan is critical to your site’s long-term success.

Before we break down the three main types of governance plans, think through the following questions. Knowing your answers will make it easier to weigh your options.

• How much content does your site have?
• How many types of content does your site have? (news and blogs, events, programs and degrees, people directories, departments, etc.)
• How big is your internal marketing team? How much capacity do they have for maintaining website content?
• How many content managers do you currently have? How many departments do they represent?

Types of Governance

At a high level, there are three models for site governance: centralized, decentralized, and hybrid. As you evaluate your options, keep in mind how much control you need, how much content you have, how frequently your content is updated, and what capacity your team has to make these updates. Rest assured that there’s no single right answer for everyone — it comes down to which is best for your team in your current situation. Getting this right can seem daunting, so let’s break down the options and talk about when each is most effective.

Centralized

A centralized governance plan is the most straightforward, and if you’re not already too decentralized, it’s the easiest to implement. With a centralized approach, all content production, maintenance, and publishing are managed by one team (typically the marketing and communications team).

This system gives you the most control over your content, allowing you to ensure that it’s on brand, on voice, and well written, and that it’s visually appealing, with the appropriate formatting and layout. If you have a smaller team, this model works best if your site is on the smaller side, or it doesn’t require frequent and broad updates, or it focuses specifically on external marketing.

PROS

• Control over messages and cadence
• Control over styling, layout, and target audiences
• Consistency of voice and brand guidelines

CONS

• Potential bottlenecks for smaller teams with active sites
• Stakeholders who have low investment and no ownership of content
• Difficulty in reeling in control if your site already has a broad, decentralized system of governance

Decentralized

As the name suggests, a decentralized system is the opposite of a centralized system. This model has many content managers, each responsible for a specific content type or section of the site. This means that several teams throughout your organization are charged with creating, editing, and publishing their own content. To be successful, a decentralized approach needs a strong workflow process that’s managed by content leaders within each team. These content leaders must be well versed in your brand and voice, and must have a good working relationship with your marketing team.

Decentralized governance is best for larger sites with small marketing teams and frequent updates, or sites with a broad content reach from many separate stakeholder groups, or organizations with multiple sites that each speak to a separate audience (like department sites or sub-brand sites).

PROS

• Marketing and communications can focus on higher-priority initiatives
• Empowered and invested stakeholders

CONS

• Risk of brand inconsistency
• Risk of content redundancy
• Difficulty in managing content effectiveness
• Difficulty in reining in content spread and messaging

Hybrid

A hybrid system gives you the best of both camps: tight control of the brand, with less need for marketing bandwidth to manage your content. But be careful. A hybrid model opens the door to a decentralized system, which can quickly get out of control. And once that door is open, it can prove difficult to get control back.

This model functions by giving certain groups permission to manage content in controlled areas, while allowing you to maintain overall control of content publication. For example, each department might create and publish department-specific content, but a central team is responsible for content that specifically impacts marketing.

This approach works best for smaller teams who have minimal bandwidth, but are tasked with managing sites that are larger or frequently updated. However, to be effective, you must establish strong and clear rules about the types of content each group can publish and how that content is reviewed prior to publication.

PROS

• Content that’s driven by subject matter experts
• Branding and design consistency
• Content efficiencies

CONS

• Difficulty in getting things off the ground
• Need for ample cross-department collaboration
• Need for constant vigilance to make sure content doesn’t get out of control

One final word on selecting your approach: it’s always going to be easier to broaden your plan than to shrink it. Whenever possible, we recommend starting with a centralized model and trying it for a while. Then, if needed, you can begin opening up your approach. It’s just human nature: taking power away from people is much more difficult than granting it.