Content Analysis Database > Dispositions > Brand New
Opportunity for improvement: high

Brand New

How to use dispositions

Definition

Create brand new content, not based on any existing content

This is the holy grail for many content strategists, with the often-quixotic desire to completely throw out all the content that exists and start from scratch. Even if there are dragons of bad content that need to be slain, it's rare that you can delete all the content and start totally from scratch. This is because usually there are large swaths of reference content (perhaps for specialist audiences) that need to remain and would not be worth rewriting regardless (product details, reference research, older product support materials, etc).

Putting aside the emotional impulse to rewrite everything, writing brand new content does often make sense. But virtually always the best approach is a blend of dispositions. Common dispositions that combine with brand new content are: delete (if you are going to start new content with completely new eyes without referencing existing content), variants of rewriting content, variants of automatically moving/transforming content, and integrating with existing source systems.

When to assign this disposition to content:
  • Serving a user need that is not even partially supported by any existing content (for instance, content for a new product, or content for an audience that is not currently being served). This is the only "slam dunk" reason to write brand new content.
  • -OR- For content that is a high priority for the business but is not performing well. Be careful with this rationale: it needs to be both high priority and not performing well! Not performing well alone could be a reason to delete. Just being a high priority is not reason enough either.
Related:
  • Rewrite, One for One
  • Rewrite, and Regroup Pages
  • Active Delete and Redirect
  • Drop and Redirect
  • Rewrite, by Subject Matter Expert
System-wide startup effort
medium

Since this is a heavyweight disposition per content item, make sure you have clearly defined the user needs and approach for the brand new content before you start writing it.

Average per-item manual effort
5 hours
Effort per (potential) handling step:
Step Effort What is this?
Sort skipped Decide what to do with content item
Place high Place in IA
Edit high Edit text/content (NOT technical)
Move / Transform skipped Physically move/enter/transform content (NOT the words)
Enhance / Tag high Prepare the metadata, especially tagging/retagging
QA high Review content for quality
More on estimating effort: article | webinar | slideshare | mini-report.