How to create high quality content with multiple writers and editors

Creating high-quality content becomes more complex as more people are involved. When multiple writers and editors contribute to your content, each person brings their own understanding of style, tone, and quality standards. Without proper systems in place, these differences can lead to confusing or poor user experiences and diminished content effectiveness.

This challenge is familiar to content leaders in organisations of all sizes. A small team might struggle with maintaining consistency between just two or three writers. Large organisations often face even greater complexity, with content being created across different departments, regions, and specialities. Each additional contributor increases the potential for quality variations and the more people there are in your workflow, the more vulnerable you are to bottlenecks, delays and conflicting priorities and opinions.

This complexity doesn't mean you have to sacrifice quality for scale. By understanding the core challenges and implementing the right combination of standards, processes, and tools, organisations can maintain high content quality even with large, distributed teams of contributors. This article explores how to achieve this balance, offering practical strategies that work across different team sizes and content types.

Let's explore some of the challenges that arise when multiple people contribute to your organisation's content.

Imagine a conversation where everyone speaks at the same time in different accents and styles. That's what uncoordinated content can feel like to your audience. When various writers and editors contribute content, each brings their unique voice, perspective and approach. While this diversity can be necessary for your content in some instances, it can also lead to a fragmented user experience.

This challenge will also be influenced by how different teams operate. Marketing might prioritise persuasive language, while technical writers focus on clarity and precision. Customer service teams might emphasise empathy and solution-focused content. Without coordination, these different approaches can create content that doesn’t speak to anyone in a meaningful, useful and usable way. There may be someone in a role that can oversee all of this involvement and be the gatekeeper for maintaining the necessary standards – but that can become a very tricky job when the volume of content being published is too large for the time available to manage it.

There are times when you want an individual's voice to be heard. An example of this is in articles for your company blog. But that doesn’t mean quality in other areas like style, grammar and brand messaging needs to be compromised.

As well as multiple voices, people will bring with them varying priorities, perspectives and needs. That means when they edit, review or approve content they may do so with their own preferences in mind and not with the needs of the user or with organisational guidelines and standards.

When multiple contributors work without proper version control it can be confusing and chaotic. Nobody is clear what changes have happened and what the rationale is for them. There is also no consensus on what the actual current version is. All of this makes for a frustrating process that impacts negatively on the people involved and the content itself. It sounds dramatic, but this is a common scenario for many teams and organisations.

Imagine a scenario where one editor might be updating an outdated draft while another has already made significant changes to a newer version.

Contensis addresses this challenge by creating a single source of truth. Every change is tracked and every contributor knows exactly when and where they should contribute. This systematic approach prevents the confusion that often arises when multiple versions circulate through email chains or shared drives.

When multiple contributors work on content, maintaining accessibility and inclusivity standards becomes particularly challenging because each person brings different levels of knowledge and awareness about accessibility requirements.

Writers who haven't received proper training might inadvertently create barriers for users. For instance, they might write image descriptions that fail to convey important information to screen reader users, or create headings that don't follow a logical structure. Some contributors might use complex language patterns or technical terminology without providing clear explanations, making content difficult for people with cognitive disabilities or non-native speakers to understand.

Cultural inclusivity presents another layer of complexity. Contributors might unconsciously use idioms, cultural references, or examples that make sense in their own context but exclude or confuse others. They might also overlook the importance of using gender-neutral language or fail to consider how certain terms might affect different cultural groups.

The impact of these inconsistencies extends beyond compliance – it affects real people trying to access and understand your content. When some pages are fully accessible while others aren't, users can't rely on having a consistent experience across your content. This unpredictability can erode trust and make your content less effective for significant portions of your audience.

There are several approaches that can help organisations maintain high content quality across multiple contributors.

Content standards provide the essential foundation for quality when working with multiple contributors. These standards need to be comprehensive enough to guide content creation across different contexts and channels, yet clear enough that all team members can understand and apply them effectively. There also needs to be some flexibility for valid exceptions to the rules and not to discount situations where content may need to be different in some way.

A robust content standards document should begin with fundamental principles that explain your organisation's approach to content. This includes your purpose in creating content, your target audiences, and how you define quality. These principles help contributors understand the 'why' behind specific guidelines and make better decisions when faced with situations not explicitly covered in the standards.

The voice and tone section requires particular attention in multi-contributor environments. Rather than simply stating "use a professional but approachable tone," your guidelines should define what this means in practice. Provide specific examples showing how to adjust tone across different content types and situations. For instance, demonstrate how the same information might be presented differently in a technical document versus a marketing email, or how tone should shift when delivering positive versus negative information.

Accessibility requirements need to be detailed and practical. Each guideline should explain both the technical implementation and its importance for users. For instance, when discussing heading structure, explain how proper hierarchy helps screen reader users navigate content efficiently. Include examples of correct and incorrect heading structures, showing how they appear both visually and in code. You could also link to external resources too as an exemplar and for additional context and guidance.

Formatting conventions should cover everything from paragraph length to link text, image usage, and document structure. These guidelines need to be specific enough that contributors can apply them consistently, yet flexible enough to work across different content types. Include examples of how to handle common scenarios, such as when to use numbered lists versus bullet points, or how to format quotations and citations.

Contensis can help embed these standards directly into the content creation workflow. Configure the system to surface relevant guidelines based on the type of content being created. Set up content type templates that incorporate your formatting conventions and include placeholder text that guides writers on structure and style. Use the platform's validation features to flag potential issues before content moves to the next stage.

Effective content workflows define clear stages of development, establish accountability and make sure there are appropriate reviews at each step. These workflows need to balance thoroughness with efficiency to maintain both quality and productivity.

Start by mapping out all the stages your content needs to go through, from initial concept to publication. Consider what needs to happen at each stage and who needs to be involved. For each stage, define specific criteria that content must meet before moving forward. For instance, the editorial review stage might require checking for voice and tone consistency, clarity of messaging, and adherence to style guidelines. The accessibility review stage would focus on elements like heading structure, alternative text, and reading level.

Establish clear roles and responsibilities for each stage of the workflow. Contributors need to understand not just what they're supposed to do, but also the scope of their authority and when to escalate issues. Someone reviewing for technical accuracy needs to know whether they should also be checking for grammar and style, or if that happens at a different stage.

Consider creating different workflow templates for different content types. A blog post might need a simpler workflow than a technical document or legal content. However, ensure that all workflows maintain your core quality standards while adapting to specific requirements.

Contensis supports this structured approach through its workflow management features. You can configure different workflow templates for different content types, set up automatic notifications when content moves between stages, and ensure that content can't skip essential review steps. The system can also track how long content spends at each stage, helping you identify bottlenecks and optimise your processes.

Read our article about how your content workflow can help increase efficiency

Effective training programmes should cover multiple aspects of content creation. Technical skills training might focus on accessibility requirements, teaching contributors not just what alt text is, but how to write it effectively for different types of images. SEO training should go beyond keywords to help writers understand user intent and how to structure content for both human readers and search engines.

But perhaps most importantly, training should include plenty of practical examples of high-quality content and break down why they work well. Look at less successful pieces and discuss how they could be improved. This hands-on approach helps contributors develop a deeper understanding of what good content looks like in practice.

Regular workshops and feedback sessions serve as valuable opportunities for team members to share their experiences and learn from each other. These sessions can be particularly effective when examining real content from your organisation, discussing specific challenges, and collaboratively developing solutions.

Successful collaboration in content creation requires regular communication. This helps everyone involved understand not just what they're doing, but why and how it connects to the larger content strategy.

Contensis's commenting features facilitate this dialogue, allowing team members to discuss changes and improvements within the context of the content itself. This immediate feedback loop helps maintain quality while speeding up the revision process.

Modern content management systems provide essential features that help maintain quality when multiple people contribute to content creation. Here’s how the right technology can help with creating high quality content no matter how many people are involved.

Effective version control in content management goes beyond tracking changes. A robust version control system needs to maintain a complete history of content evolution while facilitating collaboration and preventing conflicts between multiple editors.

Each version of content should capture several key elements: the actual content changes, who made them, when they were made, and why they were made. This comprehensive tracking enables content teams to understand how and why content has evolved over time. When implementing version control, organisations should establish clear policies about what constitutes a significant version change versus a minor revision.

Version control becomes particularly crucial during complex content updates involving multiple stakeholders. For instance, when updating technical documentation, you might have subject matter experts revising technical details while editors refine the language. Without proper version control, these parallel edits can lead to content conflicts or lost updates.

Every time a piece of content is saved or published in Contensis, it is recorded in the version history, along with details of who made the change and when. The split editor allows you to compare two versions of a piece of content side-by-side, highlighting any changes between the versions to make it easier to spot where they are different. If you need to, you can easily restore an older version at the press of a button.

Content standards require consistent enforcement to be effective. Automated checking systems can significantly improve compliance by identifying issues during content creation rather than during review.

A comprehensive standards enforcement system should check multiple aspects of content including technical, editorial and accessibility requirements and standards.

When implementing automated checks, consider setting appropriate severity levels for different types of issues, providing links to relevant documentation within error messages and monitoring compliance patterns to identify training needs.

Contensis helps organisations enforce consistent content standards by providing detailed controls and automated checks throughout the content creation process. Administrators can configure content guidelines at the tab and field level, offering in-context guidance to authors, including links to style guides and best practice resources. Validation settings can be applied to fields to enforce rules such as required inputs, character limits, or specific data formats, ensuring consistency and helping to reduce errors. Custom validation messages can guide users by providing clear instructions or even links to further information on correcting issues. Contensis also integrates with Insytful, our powerful quality assurance tool that scans websites for accessibility, SEO, and content quality issues. This integration provides actionable insights inside Contensis, allowing content authors to quickly address problems and maintain compliance.

Effective collaboration in content creation requires more than just enabling multiple people to edit content. It needs structured support for communication, review processes, and team coordination.

Successful document-level collaboration requires several capabilities. Contributors need to be able to edit simultaneously while seeing who else is working on the content. The system should track all changes with clear attribution and allow editors to selectively accept or reject modifications. Critical content elements must be protected from unauthorised changes to maintain content integrity.

Review and feedback systems form another crucial component of collaborative editing. These should support contextual commenting directly within content, allowing threaded discussions about specific elements. Teams need the ability to assign and track review tasks while monitoring their status, all while integrating smoothly with existing communication tools.

Workflow integration ensures smooth content progression through the editorial process. This includes clear status indicators for content, automated notifications for required reviews, and comprehensive task management with due date tracking. These features help teams coordinate effectively while maintaining content quality standards.

Contensis enhances collaborative editing through advanced features that support structured teamwork and good content governance. Granular permissions allow administrators to control access at the tab, field, and component level, preventing unauthorised edits to critical content elements. For example, tabs containing social media metadata or sensitive pricing fields can be restricted so that only authors belonging to specific roles can make changes, while composer permissions control how authors can update or reorder landing page components.

Contensis also supports threaded, context-specific discussions directly within content entries, encouraging feedback and collaboration before content is sent for approval. Once content is sent for approval, custom workflows guide content through tailored review and approval processes, ensuring that appropriate stakeholders are involved at each stage. Automated notifications inform users when their input is required, including new comments, pending reviews, and status changes.

Establishing clear metrics and feedback loops helps organisations track content quality and make data-driven improvements over time.

Effective content quality measurement requires a comprehensive framework of metrics that evaluate both technical and editorial aspects of content performance. These metrics should align with organisational goals while providing actionable insights for improvement.

Quantitative engagement metrics help understand how users interact with your content, including time spent engaging with pages, how users navigate through content, and how effectively content drives desired actions. These measurements provide valuable insight into content performance and user behaviour patterns.

Technical quality metrics focus on the structural integrity and accessibility of content. This includes measuring compliance with accessibility standards, assessing content readability, evaluating mobile responsiveness, and monitoring overall technical performance. These metrics ensure content meets essential technical requirements.

Editorial quality metrics evaluate how well content maintains brand standards and achieves its intended purpose. This encompasses measuring consistency in brand voice, technical accuracy, content freshness, and error rates. Regular assessment of these metrics helps maintain editorial standards across all content.

Content audits should systematically evaluate both existing content and creation processes. Technical audits examine the structural elements of content, including HTML structure, metadata, linking patterns, and accessibility compliance. Editorial audits assess content effectiveness, brand alignment, and accuracy. Process audits evaluate workflow efficiency and resource utilisation.

Continuous improvement requires systematic collection and application of feedback from multiple sources. Internal feedback from content creators, editors, and technical teams provides valuable insights into process challenges and potential improvements. External feedback from users, customer service interactions, and analytics helps understand content effectiveness from the audience perspective.

The success of quality content creation with multiple contributors requires three key elements working together: clear standards that everyone understands, well-designed workflows that guide the process, and technology that supports both.

By implementing the strategies we've discussed and using the right technology, organisations can create an environment where multiple voices come together to create content that's greater than the sum of its parts.