On one hand, content should come with the website, so my responsibility. On the other hand, only the client knows their values and vision, so they should be able to provide content for the website.
I learned that the wrong thing to do was to just ask the client for 'content' for this page or that page. Trying to distill their company's essence into something web-ready for particular pages of their site wasn't easy.
However, clients can talk out loud about their company. I learned if we had meetings, I could understand the company by asking the right questions. At that point, I could create the content for their site myself.
The result was that I stopped giving my clients extra work, and website projects stopped getting stuck at the content stage.
What I learned was that very frequently, the questions I needed to ask were in 2 major categories: style (colors, fonts, etc), and culture (mission, vision, values, voice). All those items are covered in a good brand guide.
So I got to thinking, does it make sense to walk a client through a brand guide prior to making a site for them?
Has anyone else tried this?
I've recently launched a web app that guides clients through the process. But I'm wondering if anyone else is doing something similar?