Simple Content Operations Guide

Over two decades ago in an essay, Bill Gates wrote that content is king, which was true back then, and is still true now. Content is an essential element to the success of any business.

The partner to content is content operations. For instance, if a new business wants to create and publish a timely blog post by the end of a certain quarter but doesn’t have content operations, that post is going to remain unpublished.

That means the business hasn’t established concrete content operations for any of the content it wants to distribute, which means the blog post will be sitting in a folder with other documents.

Without content operations, there also won’t be any plan for who will upload the content, where that content will be hosted, and while the business might have a content writer, that doesn’t make content operations complete.

Blog posts aren’t the only type of content that are available to businesses. There are over a dozen different types of content, such as social media posts, emails, infographics, videos, and plenty of other visual-based content that can help companies increase brand awareness.

However, without content operations, all of that content is left without a plan for production, publication, and distribution.

There’s no point in any of a company content if no one’s going to be reading it. Content operations is a process that combines technology and people; a process that allows a company to efficiently and effectively maintain a content lifecycle from beginning to end.

A content operations framework includes the steps of strategizing, creation, publishing, distribution, and content management.

It focuses on three different elements: the people that are performing a task and their responsibilities, the functions that are needed to complete a successful project, and the technology and tools that can help businesses build their content operation system.

People

The foundation of content, as well as content operations, is people. While the customers are at the center of any content marketing efforts, the operations aspect of content is supposed to focus on a business and its internal team.

All the responsibilities of the team members should be defined to keep the entire system running smoothly and efficiently. That means the first step is to define the internal roles that people have regarding the content, its creation, publication, and distribution.

Process

Once a company has an internal content team in place, it’s time to think about getting a project completed from start to finish. This is what the process of content is all about, which starts with generating content ideas and ends with analyzing the published content for its performance.

The steps in between include setting a timeline for the content, creating it, editing and adding graphics, optimizing the content for SEO, and finally publishing the content. If any of the steps in this process aren’t successful, it’s going to impact the overall success of a business’ content marketing efforts.

That’s why companies need to have a strong process in place for their content; a process that will keep everyone on track.

Technology and Tools

The last component of a successful content operation is the tools and technology that are necessary for accomplishing every task in the process. Most internal teams related to content require various resources to successfully accomplish their tasks.

There are different types of tools that can help content teams, including tools for task management, project management, scheduling, and analytics.