Spring has sprung!
The sun is out, flowers are blooming, an excessive amount of chocolate is being consumed in egg form, and it’s time for the annual spring clean.
Wardrobes get sorted into keep, bin or donate. Inboxes reach zero (very, very briefly!). Your computer desktop is finally visible again.
Less junk, less clutter, more space to focus on what matters.
Content needs the same thing.
Spring cleaning tends to stop at what you can see. With content it is harder to spot: it lives in shared drives, inboxes, folders that nobody’s opened in two years and web pages nobody remembers publishing. Most organisations have significantly more of it than they think, in significantly worse shape than they’d like.
Which matters, because content that’s inaccurate erodes trust. Content that’s inconsistent creates confusion. Content that nobody reads, no matter how well it’s written or how nice it looks, isn’t doing anything at all.
Here’s what it looks like to clean it up.
Step 1: Find everything
This might sound obvious. It isn’t.
Sometimes the content causing the most damage is the piece you have completely forgotten about.
The website is the visible bit of your content. Underneath that there are dusty unopened PDFs, onboarding docs that (if you’re completely honest) do not reflect current processes, and at least one document that’s been forwarded so many times nobody’s quite sure which version is the right one.
Different teams have written different things at different times without knowing what the others produced. Some of it overlaps. Some of it contradicts. Almost none of it has ever been looked at as a whole.
Taking stock of all existing content is the first step that makes everything else possible.
Yes, it takes time – but it’s also the only way to know what you’re dealing with.
Step 2: Spot what’s gone wrong
Look for the same message in different places with slightly different wording, because slightly different wording creates slightly different meaning.
Look for unintended contradictions.
Look for content that was accurate when it was written but has since been overtaken by a rebrand, a change in direction or just the passage of time.
Then look for the subtler stuff:
- The tone that no longer sounds like you.
- The key messages from a strategy that changed two years ago.
- The process explained in six steps when three would do.
- The places where readers are being asked to work harder than they should.
Ask, for each piece: is this pulling its weight? Is there a simpler, cleaner version? Does this make it easy for the reader, or easy for us?
A lot of content doesn’t have obvious errors. It’s just not quite doing what it was supposed to. That’s harder to spot – and just as worth fixing.
Step 3: Read it like a stranger would
When you’re close to content, it’s almost impossible to read it as an outsider would. You know what it means before you’ve finished the sentence. The jargon makes sense, the structure feels logical, because it does to you.
Your readers don’t have any of that. They arrive cold, with no context and plenty of other things they could be doing instead. If it doesn’t land quickly, it doesn’t land.
So try reading your content as someone who’s never heard of the organisation.
- Is the important message clear and easy to identify?
- Is there language that assumes knowledge the reader probably doesn’t have?
- Does it tell them what to do next or leave them to figure that out?
If people have to work to understand it, most of them won’t.
Step 4: Cut what’s past its best
When content isn’t working, the instinct is to edit it. Sometimes that’s right. Sometimes the more honest call is to get rid of it entirely.
Redundant content doesn’t get less redundant with better prose. And some content has simply done what it was there to do. It served a purpose at a particular moment, and that moment has passed.
Cutting things is allowed. It’s often the most useful thing you can do.
Step 5: Make sure it works as a whole
Think about a wardrobe that’s been properly sorted. Each piece works with the others. It belongs to one person with one sense of style, not three people with competing opinions and access to the same closet.
Content works the same way.
Tone drifts between teams, terminology shifts between documents, and after a while things stop sounding like they come from the same place. Each piece seems fine in isolation. Together, they don’t quite add up.
This matters more than it used to, because content rarely gets consumed in order anymore. It gets surfaced by search, summarised by AI, shared out of context.
A single paragraph from five years ago might be the only contact a reader ever has with your organisation. Is it accurate? Does it represent the organisation you are now?
So, where do you start?
You start by understanding what you’ve got, whether it’s doing what it should, and whether it’s representing your organisation clearly to the people who matter.
That’s the actual job. And it’s a big one alongside everything else. Most teams know their content needs attention. Finding the time to look at it properly, without the assumptions that build up when you’re too close to it, is a different matter.
That’s where having someone with an outsider’s perspective helps. Not because internal teams don’t know their organisation, but because they know it too well to see what a reader sees.
That’s exactly where Accuracy Matters comes in. Our editorial audits are completely bespoke to your organisation’s needs: a structured, outside-in look at what you’ve got, what’s working, what isn’t and what needs to change. So you get content that’s accurate, consistent and does its job.
If that sounds like something your organisation needs, get in touch.
