Content Observability: Building Effective Feedback and Decision-making Loops
Content is a strategic investment, and teams are under pressure to demonstrate ROI. Most organizations have lots of data, but a hazy view of their content and its purpose. We need more than just reporting: we need an ongoing view of what content is working and what’s not, with a feedback loop that gives us the ability to do something about it.
We call that content observability.
In this session, we outline a framework for how to think about content measurement that includes understanding its composition, health, quality, and effectiveness. We then show how organizations need actionable data, delivered in real-time with appropriate context, in order to develop a feedback loop. An example from a state government digital service illustrates the risks of relying on the wrong data — and how having more actionable data enables better decision-making.
Our approach hinges on understanding the intent behind each item of content. Beyond just who it’s for, what format it’s in, or who owns it, intent defines a concrete, measurable outcome for each web page, PDF, or document that gets created. We share examples from companies in retail, B2B manufacturing, and financial services to show how intentions can be defined, mapped to metrics, and used to inform decision-making.
