Manage Your Documents
By now, your content schedule and workflow are bringing you ever closer to your objectives.
You and your other resources—if you've got them—know what needs doing and when.
Everything is streamlined and automated, so all you need do is sit back and let the profits roll in.
Right?
Wrong.
First, you'd better figure out a system for storing and managing all those documents you're producing.
Fail that, and all your hard work and planning will drown in a deluge of data.
What Is Document Management?
For web writing and content production, "document management" refers to the process and technology you use to create, revise, share and publish documents.
Document management systems can range from a shoebox (not so efficient) to a fully integrated, web-based collaborative application like Google Docs (very, very efficient—more on Google Docs later).
Why Do You Need Document Management?
A document management system saves you time and aggravation by making your workflow as efficient as possible.
Using one means you won't waste time on piddly administrivia like appending version numbers to Word files.
Instead, you get to focus on what you should be doing—namely, producing excellent content.
How Do You Effectively Manage Documents?
Finding and using the right document management system can be easier than you think—especially if you look outside the confines of Microsoft Office.
Step One: Determine Your Needs
The process and system you use to manage documents will depend on a few variables.
These include:
- Workflow: Who needs your documents and in what order? What's your procedure for passing documents between collaborators? How easy is it to do?
- File types: What documents do you need to manage? (If you're focused on writing, your files will mainly be text-based and small in size. But if you're managing graphics or video files, your needs will be very different.)
- Storage: Where will you store your documents? Who needs to access them? How do you back up your documents to prevent data loss?
- Retrieval: How will you find your documents once you store them?
- Organization: How will you file your documents? What conventions might you need to enforce?
- Creation and collaboration: How do you create and share documents? How do you track changes and edits?
- Security: Who will and won't have access to your documents? How do you control and enforce this?
Step Two: Choose Your Technology
By addressing these variables, you can find the right document management system for your needs. Wikipedia offers a list of document management providers to help.
If you're writing for the web and producing online content, we highly recommend Google Docs, to which we are complete and utter converts.
Why?
For one thing, it's free.
But more importantly, it can address all of your document-management needs as outlined above and save you oodles of time.
For example, Google Docs provides:
- Centralized storage. Instead of sending around multiple attachments of a document, you get online storage in a central repository. This makes finding, editing and sharing documents easy, since documents are available to all collaborators, all at once. (Plus, you don't have to hunt down a collaborator whose edits are languishing on their hard drive.) Google also backs up your documents automatically.
- Versioning. In Word, five collaborators have to work on five different copies of a document—and then you have to struggle to smoosh several different edits together. With Google Docs, everyone works on a single copy, with edits saved along the way. You can even collaborate on a document simultaneously.
- Revision history. Google Docs saves documents automatically, and enters each version into a revision history. You can compare any versions to see what's changed. And if you don't like someone's edits, you can simply revert to an earlier version. No more searching through draft after draft after draft after draft after draft....
- Searchability. Searching for documents by keywords means you don't have to spend time creating elaborate folder systems. (Although you can do that, too.)
How Do You Know if Your Document Management System Is Working?
Are you madly zigzagging between writers, copy editors, supervisors and clients?
Are you juggling multiple copies of the same document?
No?
Do you have more time to focus on creating quality content, rather than acting as a document traffic cop?
Yes?
Good. Your system is working.
What's Next?
Now that you've got your document management system together, it's time to start measuring the results of the content you create.
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