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How Illinois State University use GatherContent to consistently deliver high-quality website content

How Illinois State University use GatherContent to consistently deliver high-quality website content

3 minute read

How Illinois State University use GatherContent to consistently deliver high-quality website content

3 minute read

How Illinois State University use GatherContent to consistently deliver high-quality website content

Robert Mills

Founder, Fourth Wall Content

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Illinois State University was founded in 1857 and is one of the top 100 best public national universities in the US. It is also the oldest public university in Illinois. They have almost 21,000 students and 3700 staff. We recently spoke to Zach Parcell, Content Strategy and User Experience Manager, and Becky Gropp, Content Strategist, about how they use GatherContent to manage ongoing content creation for departmental websites. Zach highlighted these areas of success with GatherContent:

  • Templates in GatherContent mapping to the CMS for consistent structure and format of content
  • Broken down barriers between content, design and development in the Web Office
  • Faster turnaround for a series of website redesigns
  • Higher quality website content‍

Connecting the silos

Before using GatherContent, silos were prevalent within the Web and Interactive Communications Team. This resulted in a culture where collaboration between design and content teams didn't happen. Design focused on design, content focused on content and so there was a lot of push and pull during website work.

That meant Zach and the Web and Interactive Communications team would be told things such as 'I can't design/build what you want until I get the content.' So Zach set out to find a way to ensure content was planned, produced and delivered to other teams when they needed it, to facilitate better collaboration and content operations around a shared goal for each website.

The subject matter experts from around campus know their subjects inside and out, but aren't as familiar with writing for the web and user experience. Changing the tools and processes as part of their content operations allows them to help the subject matter experts deliver the content required. A bespoke workflow was created in GatherContent to facilitate successful collaboration with departments.

The bespoke workflow in GatherContent for one of the website redesign projects.
Custom content workflow in GatherContent

It allows designers to see the content be developed and offer a way to lend feedback or propose layouts before all the text is final. It also identifies areas that might need more development resources than expected and plans can be made proactively rather than reactively.

A platform to put content first

Zach wanted to find a tool to help them put content first. Google Docs and Office 365 were considered, but ultimately rejected because they weren't designed for high stakes content creation.

There was a business-wide goal to give content the attention it deserves as the University considered the words to be the most important thing. Zach noted, you can make bad content look good, but it is still bad content. They wanted to ensure all of the content they published was high quality and met the needs of their audience and the institution. GatherContent has enabled the University to manage their ongoing content production in one place. It also ensures that the three key elements of Content Operations, people, process and technology, were all unified.

The Illinois State University GatherContent account showing a list of all the content items and the folders they are structured by.
Departmental website content hub in GatherContent
I wasn’t looking forward to the content gathering process. Not only do I detest versions of Word documents being sent around, I am a visual person and I need to see where the content is going before I can approve it. GatherContent provided me with a visual representation on the status of each individual page in development. Edits are done in place, access control and versioning are built-in, eliminating the need for Word documents entirely. It helped me identify where resources were needed in order to keep the project moving forward, something that I would not have been able to do otherwise.

Charles Edamala, Chief Technology Officer

Keeping people focused on the right things

Using GatherContent ensures all those involved in the production, reviewing and approval of content are focused on the words. The people that need to use GatherContent vary widely across departments, and included department Chairs, faculty members, admin staff, marketing people and many others. Often they have little technical expertise and website development knowledge, and varying experience of writing for the web too.

Each department within the University is referred to as a client. By keeping the client focused on the content, it results in fewer revisions and faster approvals. A lot of the reviewers and approvers are academics who have busy teaching schedules and student issues to deal with. GatherContent enables them to easily see the content they need to review and approve, with a clear content workflow to facilitate this process. That then means the Web and Interactive Communications team can provide the design and developers with all of the approved content for the entire website they are working on. Truly content first.

GatherContent has been a huge success for website creation and continual maintenance at Illinois State University. It has given us the chance to strictly focus on the content on the page which has led to a stronger end product produced in a faster timeframe than in the past.

Zach Parcell, Content Strategy and User Experience Manager

Structuring and scaling content

To ensure continuity and consistency across departmental websites, there is an approved structure and template within GatherContent to unify all of the individual sites the University has. The template also matches the page structure in the CMS. This ensures content is provided in the correct format, consistently.

Illinois State University's GatherContent account showing one of their structured page templates with fields and guidelines.
Content template in GatherContent

Content templates are quickly built using the drag and drop function in GatherContent and the pages are reordered easily in the same way too. Zach and his team also make full use of the tabs within an item as this allows them to include metadata and SEO content all in one place.

Previous to using GatherContent the process would be to sit down with the stakeholders and subject matter experts within each department and start to create pages one-by-one directly in the CMS. There was also a process of Word Docs being sent back and forth with content. Together, this made for inefficient Content Operations and Zach himself has noted that content is better since using GatherContent because people started to care about it. It is no longer a case of anyone being able to publish anything. Rather, there is now emphasis on ensuring content is purposeful and useful.

Illinois State University was founded in 1857 and is one of the top 100 best public national universities in the US. It is also the oldest public university in Illinois. They have almost 21,000 students and 3700 staff. We recently spoke to Zach Parcell, Content Strategy and User Experience Manager, and Becky Gropp, Content Strategist, about how they use GatherContent to manage ongoing content creation for departmental websites. Zach highlighted these areas of success with GatherContent:

  • Templates in GatherContent mapping to the CMS for consistent structure and format of content
  • Broken down barriers between content, design and development in the Web Office
  • Faster turnaround for a series of website redesigns
  • Higher quality website content‍

Connecting the silos

Before using GatherContent, silos were prevalent within the Web and Interactive Communications Team. This resulted in a culture where collaboration between design and content teams didn't happen. Design focused on design, content focused on content and so there was a lot of push and pull during website work.

That meant Zach and the Web and Interactive Communications team would be told things such as 'I can't design/build what you want until I get the content.' So Zach set out to find a way to ensure content was planned, produced and delivered to other teams when they needed it, to facilitate better collaboration and content operations around a shared goal for each website.

The subject matter experts from around campus know their subjects inside and out, but aren't as familiar with writing for the web and user experience. Changing the tools and processes as part of their content operations allows them to help the subject matter experts deliver the content required. A bespoke workflow was created in GatherContent to facilitate successful collaboration with departments.

The bespoke workflow in GatherContent for one of the website redesign projects.
Custom content workflow in GatherContent

It allows designers to see the content be developed and offer a way to lend feedback or propose layouts before all the text is final. It also identifies areas that might need more development resources than expected and plans can be made proactively rather than reactively.

A platform to put content first

Zach wanted to find a tool to help them put content first. Google Docs and Office 365 were considered, but ultimately rejected because they weren't designed for high stakes content creation.

There was a business-wide goal to give content the attention it deserves as the University considered the words to be the most important thing. Zach noted, you can make bad content look good, but it is still bad content. They wanted to ensure all of the content they published was high quality and met the needs of their audience and the institution. GatherContent has enabled the University to manage their ongoing content production in one place. It also ensures that the three key elements of Content Operations, people, process and technology, were all unified.

The Illinois State University GatherContent account showing a list of all the content items and the folders they are structured by.
Departmental website content hub in GatherContent
I wasn’t looking forward to the content gathering process. Not only do I detest versions of Word documents being sent around, I am a visual person and I need to see where the content is going before I can approve it. GatherContent provided me with a visual representation on the status of each individual page in development. Edits are done in place, access control and versioning are built-in, eliminating the need for Word documents entirely. It helped me identify where resources were needed in order to keep the project moving forward, something that I would not have been able to do otherwise.

Charles Edamala, Chief Technology Officer

Keeping people focused on the right things

Using GatherContent ensures all those involved in the production, reviewing and approval of content are focused on the words. The people that need to use GatherContent vary widely across departments, and included department Chairs, faculty members, admin staff, marketing people and many others. Often they have little technical expertise and website development knowledge, and varying experience of writing for the web too.

Each department within the University is referred to as a client. By keeping the client focused on the content, it results in fewer revisions and faster approvals. A lot of the reviewers and approvers are academics who have busy teaching schedules and student issues to deal with. GatherContent enables them to easily see the content they need to review and approve, with a clear content workflow to facilitate this process. That then means the Web and Interactive Communications team can provide the design and developers with all of the approved content for the entire website they are working on. Truly content first.

GatherContent has been a huge success for website creation and continual maintenance at Illinois State University. It has given us the chance to strictly focus on the content on the page which has led to a stronger end product produced in a faster timeframe than in the past.

Zach Parcell, Content Strategy and User Experience Manager

Structuring and scaling content

To ensure continuity and consistency across departmental websites, there is an approved structure and template within GatherContent to unify all of the individual sites the University has. The template also matches the page structure in the CMS. This ensures content is provided in the correct format, consistently.

Illinois State University's GatherContent account showing one of their structured page templates with fields and guidelines.
Content template in GatherContent

Content templates are quickly built using the drag and drop function in GatherContent and the pages are reordered easily in the same way too. Zach and his team also make full use of the tabs within an item as this allows them to include metadata and SEO content all in one place.

Previous to using GatherContent the process would be to sit down with the stakeholders and subject matter experts within each department and start to create pages one-by-one directly in the CMS. There was also a process of Word Docs being sent back and forth with content. Together, this made for inefficient Content Operations and Zach himself has noted that content is better since using GatherContent because people started to care about it. It is no longer a case of anyone being able to publish anything. Rather, there is now emphasis on ensuring content is purposeful and useful.


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About the author

Robert Mills

Rob is Founder of Fourth Wall Content working with clients on content strategy, creation and marketing. Previously, in his role as Head of Content at GatherContent he managed all of the organisation's content output and content operations.

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