How do I make a repository of marketing/UX copy?
May 5, 2022 6:51 AM Subscribe
My job involves presenting consistent messaging to users, with those messages often appearing in a variety of channels. What app/solution should I use to keep track of those different chunks of copy/messaging?
The copy ranges from marketing-y messages to UX writing/user instruction, none longer than, say, 3 sentences or a short paragraph. They would need to be accessed, added, and edited pretty frequently. My main goal is for consistency across several teams, as I'll often hear something like, "Didn't Nancy write some really good instructions for how to enter your billing address a few weeks ago? I want to reuse that," or "The instructions for how to enter your billing address are a little different on Website A vs Website B, can we make them match?" I'd like to head off inconsistencies by having a reliable repository of these commonly-used copy bits that people can easily browse and use.
Multiple people would need to access and use this resource. I don't just want to toss all of them in a Word doc, and I would like to either apply tags or sort the copy pieces into categories to make individual ones easy to locate. i.e. 'I need to find the copy for telling users about our support options'.... 'ah, I can search for 'support' tag'.
Is there any particular solution that comes to mind when managing this? I feel like others must run into this, and maybe I'm missing something very obvious!
The copy ranges from marketing-y messages to UX writing/user instruction, none longer than, say, 3 sentences or a short paragraph. They would need to be accessed, added, and edited pretty frequently. My main goal is for consistency across several teams, as I'll often hear something like, "Didn't Nancy write some really good instructions for how to enter your billing address a few weeks ago? I want to reuse that," or "The instructions for how to enter your billing address are a little different on Website A vs Website B, can we make them match?" I'd like to head off inconsistencies by having a reliable repository of these commonly-used copy bits that people can easily browse and use.
Multiple people would need to access and use this resource. I don't just want to toss all of them in a Word doc, and I would like to either apply tags or sort the copy pieces into categories to make individual ones easy to locate. i.e. 'I need to find the copy for telling users about our support options'.... 'ah, I can search for 'support' tag'.
Is there any particular solution that comes to mind when managing this? I feel like others must run into this, and maybe I'm missing something very obvious!
Best answer: Are you an Office 365 shop for email? This is a perfect thing for either Teams and its wiki function or OneNote with a shared notebook.
posted by deezil at 7:23 AM on May 5, 2022
posted by deezil at 7:23 AM on May 5, 2022
Best answer: Confluence Is the most common solution for this. Allows you to set sections/pages and rich format. All searchable and tagable with structure. Allows for collaborative editing with permissions and date/tracks changes.
As mentioned though if you have something in your larger corporate system like Microsoft that might be better as it’s integrated.
posted by artificialard at 7:36 AM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
As mentioned though if you have something in your larger corporate system like Microsoft that might be better as it’s integrated.
posted by artificialard at 7:36 AM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Sorry, should've mentioned the tech suite I have existing access to: Microsoft anything (Teams, OneNote, etc.), JIRA/Confluence (not sure if I have permissions set up to create/edit but can easily check into), Asana, Airtable.
posted by rachaelfaith at 7:50 AM on May 5, 2022
posted by rachaelfaith at 7:50 AM on May 5, 2022
Given your tools update, I would set up the actual content repository in Airtable, and then put the descriptions, taxonomy, and governance (rules, roles, workflows etc) described in Confluence.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 8:20 AM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 8:20 AM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Are you using Figma for any of your design work? There's a plug in called Ditto that keeps UX copy as strings which is pretty great.
Otherwise I am a basic person and use a Google sheet with the exact phrase and a screen grab.
posted by socky_puppy at 8:22 AM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Otherwise I am a basic person and use a Google sheet with the exact phrase and a screen grab.
posted by socky_puppy at 8:22 AM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Best answer: If Notion is an option you can use the web clipper extension to quickly copy examples from the web to Notion.
Notion has the same capabilities as Airtable for categorising, sorting, and filtering.
posted by snarfois at 8:30 AM on May 5, 2022
Notion has the same capabilities as Airtable for categorising, sorting, and filtering.
posted by snarfois at 8:30 AM on May 5, 2022
Best answer: We use Confluence for this - it makes it easy for Marketing to keep it current and we eventually got everybody trained to go get their copy fresh from Confluence and not copy-paste out of the last thing they sent out.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:39 AM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Lyn Never at 8:39 AM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by PardonMyFrench at 7:21 AM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]