Content Governance in Xperience by Kentico

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In today’s digital experiences, content is everywhere. Websites, emails, landing pages, product descriptions, and seasonal updates all share the same challenge: they must stay consistent, accurate, and easily managed over time. Without the right structure and curation policies in place, content can quickly become messy, duplicated, or outdated without the right structure.

That’s where content governance comes in. It’s the set of policies, processes, standards, and rules that help you manage content consistently and reliably. Think of it as the guardrails that keep your website or digital experience running smoothly.

It’s easy to confuse governance with content strategy, but they serve different purposes. Content strategy defines what content you create and why. Content governance ensures the strategy is implemented correctly and consistently across your digital marketing activities.

On the other hand, broader terms like digital governance or website governance cover more than just content – they extend into areas such as IT, security, or design policies. However, we will not focus on those in this material.

Key benefits of content governance

Let’s return to content governance and why it should be one of the key tools in any marketer’s toolkit. Here are some benefits to consider:

  • Content quality and reusability – ensuring that your content can be trusted and reused across multiple projects.
  • Discoverability through efficient organization – so teams and audiences can find what they need, when they need it.
  • Content compliance – meeting brand guidelines and regulatory requirements, including accessiblity.
  • Collaboration and editorial processes – keeping everyone aligned through clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
  • Efficiency – smoothing out the content creation cycle so work flows from one phase to another without running into bottlenecks.

Every organization approaches governance differently. What works for a small marketing team may not be the same as governance for a large global company. That’s why many teams set up a content governance framework that defines practical rules and processes tailored to fit the teams’ daily work.

For example, every campaign page requires approval from different editorial and marketing teams, while others promote their products on a page using smart folders, which makes seasonal updates easier to manage. The approach adapts to each organization’s needs, but the goal is the same: keeping content operations smooth and sustainable over time.

Connecting governance with content strategy

If content strategy is the “what” and “why,” governance is the “how.” Governance turns strategy into everyday practice by setting clear rules for the different stages of content creation, from planning to creation, review, publishing, and later updates. Governance also ensures the big-picture goals don’t stay on paper but shape the work teams do daily. Without governance, even the best content strategy can lose its impact, as content may become inconsistent, outdated, or difficult to locate.

This is where content lifecycle management plays a key role. As part of a governance framework, it ensures that content is properly managed at every stage of its lifecycle, such as:

  • Creating new content with clear standards in mind.
  • Running approval workflows to ensure accuracy and brand alignment.
  • Publishing content across different channels with confidence.
  • Archiving, re-editing, and re-publishing existing content to keep it fresh and relevant.

Another key aspect of content governance is content planning, which is achieved by setting shared expectations and keeping editorial processes consistent. For example, a content workflow ensures that every new email blast or landing page follows the same checks – from voice and tone to accessibility. Over time, this consistency becomes part of your editorial governance, strengthening the overall trustworthiness of your digital experience.

In short, your governance policies ensure that your strategic goals aren’t just written down but actively practiced by everyone involved in creating and managing content.

Discover governance tools in Xperience by Kentico

Xperience offers several tools that bring governance to life. Each tool solves a specific challenge in keeping content consistent, compliant, and manageable. Together, they form a practical toolkit supporting marketers and admins in their day-to-day work.

Workflows

The Workflows application lets you set up content approval workflows so no content goes live without the right checks. For instance, a content editor can move a blog post through drafting and editing, but has to ask for approval in the approval stage, so the article does not get published without the marketing team checking its contents. Workflows also make responsibilities transparent – everyone knows what’s expected of them at each step, and approvals don’t get lost in email threads.

We recommend using workflows even if your content doesn’t require review by a compliance or legal department, especially for items that will be seen by visitors or customers, such as website pages, emails, or headless app screens. At a minimum, enable notifications to alert the responsible reviewers.

Workspaces

The Workspaces define content ownership by grouping related items and assigning permissions to specific user roles. An administrator determines which role can access which workspace and the actions they’re permitted to take in that workspace. This means that teams know which area is theirs to work on, and their responsibilities are clear. Such clarity makes collaboration smoother and reduces the risk of conflicting edits or content getting published prematurely. Workspaces are particularly helpful for large teams where different departments own different areas of the site.

We recommend organizing your Content hub into workspaces. Apply permissions to ensure editors can access and manage only the content relevant to their role. You’ll prevent unauthorized changes and enable collaboration between different editor roles. If you manage a large volume of media assets, consider creating a dedicated workspace for media assets.

Validation rules

Validation rules act like automatic checks that help editors meet digital content standards. Instead of relying on memory, the system gently reminds people of what is required, such as filling in an SEO title and description, or keeping titles short enough for search results. A set of rules is predefined for every Xperience installation, but you can work with your developers to create custom validation that fits your team’s needs and scenarios.

We recommend applying validation to all essential fields, especially those whose absence could disrupt the customer experience or break website functionality. Additionally, use ARIA to ensure image ALT tags and taxonomy tags are properly populated when users upload images, to improve accessibility and SEO.

Smart folders

Smart folders let you dynamically sort content and create grouped assets based on applied filters, like taxonomy tags, asset status, or modification date.

This simple automation helps editors effectively reuse and track their content, reducing the chance of making an error. Editors don’t need to search across their digital channels for all the places where they have to update content to match the latest marketing goals. Instead, Xperience helps them stay consistent with their marketing messaging everywhere.

Use smart folders when you need to update content dynamically based on filters such as taxonomy tags, asset status, or modification date. Keep in mind that smart folders do not support manual ordering. They sort items automatically, so avoid using them in scenarios where you need to customize the order of displayed items.

Versioning

Versioning helps you track changes over time, roll back if needed, and prove compliance. This is especially useful when working with regulatory compliance content, where being able to show who changed what and when is essential. Versioning also gives editors the confidence to experiment. They can revert to a previous version if something doesn’t work out.

We recommend using versioning to track content changes. However, avoid storing more versions than necessary, as this can impact system performance. The ideal number depends on your project and environment.

Please note that versioning does not apply to assets in Content hub, page URLs, or page permissions. Check details in Versioning coverage.

Permissions

Permissions let you decide who can see or edit certain content. Marketers can focus on their content while administrators ensure the right access controls are in place. Admins can define which user roles get to access which spaces and what actions the users can take. This protects sensitive assets while ensuring people only work on the areas they’re responsible for, which is a practical way to support information governance.

We recommend using detailed permission configuration to ensure editors can see, access, and manage only the content relevant to their role. You’ll prevent unauthorized changes, improve focus, reduce clutter, and support efficient cross-team collaboration.

For complex website environments where different teams manage different sections, consider creating a robust system of page permissions. Xperience allows you to limit the editor’s access to specific sections of a website’s content tree. You can even hide parts of the content tree that are irrelevant for this role. This helps maintain content integrity and simplifies the editing experience.

Real-life governance in action

Let’s look at how these tools play out in practice.

  • Featured products on Kbank
    The marketing team regularly updates featured products on the homepage. They have a workflow in place that ensures that any update passes through an editor and compliance check before publishing. This is editorial governance in action – content is timely and accurate, without risk of errors going live. Smart folders help group related products in the Content hub, so editors always know where to find the latest items.

  • Seasonal content updates
    A team prepares content for an upcoming seasonal promotion, such as a holiday sale or back-to-school period. They use smart folders to group all related assets (emails, banners, landing pages) into one workspace, making it easy to see which content is ready to go and what still needs approval. Workflows help them manage the review and approval process, while versioning assists in tracking last-minute edits. Their editorial processes ensure that the seasonal updates stay on track. Instead of juggling several versions of files or text documents each containing different content versions, in different stages of completion and approval, everything is organized, reviewed, and published in time for the season, without confusion or overlap.

These examples scale up easily. Whether you’re managing a single site or practicing enterprise content management across multiple regions, the principles of web content governance remain the same: give your content structure in how it flows from one step to another through different teams, ensure that everyone on the team always knows where to look for the latest version of content changes, and reduce risks of publishing content that is off-brand, or worse, doesn’t comply with regulations.

Best content governance practices for business users

Governing content doesn’t have to feel heavy-handed. The most effective practices are those that guide teams without slowing them down.

  • Keep governance lightweight but effective. Avoid overcomplicating workflows. A three-step review process (draft – ready for review – ready for publishing) is often more efficient than a complex, twelve-step-long compliance workflow.

  • Align governance with editorial processes. Tools should support how your team already works, not block it. For example, smart folders can automatically group together content based on tags or status instead of editors manually collecting files into a shared folder. This practice keeps everyone working from the same up-to-date list, making collaboration between editors smoother and reducing missed updates.

  • Define clear roles and responsibilities. Everyone should know who owns what. Permissions can help manage who can see and do what. This reduces confusion and prevents accidental changes.

  • Build in accessibility governance. Make accessibility part of the process, not an afterthought. You can put this into practice by asking your developers to custom-build automated accessibility checks and make them a project requirement. Furthermore, validation rules on editing fields can enforce standards like alt text and heading structure, making it easier to stay compliant.

  • See governance as an enabler, not a blocker. With the right rules and tools, teams spend less time fixing mistakes or hunting for the correct version, and more time focusing on creative work and strategy.

By putting these practices in place, governance becomes a natural part of everyday content operations, not a separate layer of bureaucracy.

Takeaway and next steps

Setting up content governance processes is about finding balance: giving teams the freedom to create while ensuring content stays consistent, high-quality, and compliant.

In Xperience by Kentico, tools like workflows, workspaces, validation, and smart folders help structure and control everyday content operations and make governance practical and sustainable. Think of governance as the backbone of effective digital operations. Once in place, it helps you confidently move forward with your content strategy.