“Build Your Own Content Operations Framework”
More and more marketers of all stripes, including inbound, outbound, social, digital, and content marketers, are being expected to take on the role of content operations.
These marketers need to comprehend:
- Who is engaged in the creation of content?
- how material is produced
- Who is the creator of what content?
- where content is envisioned, produced, and kept
- How long does it take for material to appear?
- Why is content made
- How to create a structure that will put all of this into order and structure
Content marketers can no longer solely concentrate on the results of their content marketing activities due to growing expectations. Now they must also think about, create, put into practice, and manage the framework for content operations within their enterprises.
What precisely do content operations entail?
The overarching perspective of everything content-related in your business, from strategy to creation, governance to effectiveness assessment and content management, is called content operations. The Content Advisory consults with both large and small businesses, and all too often, content operations are left to develop naturally.
Teams claim that because “things are operating just fine,” formal content operations are not required. Nobody wants to be responsible for bringing everyone into line. Nobody likes to deal with the arguments put forward by various teams as to why their methods are the only/best/correct methods. Therefore, content teams continue to insist that everything is good.
Breaking news: it’s not.
Who produces what material when is not the only consideration.
When done correctly, content operations promote efficacy and efficiency in terms of procedures, personnel, tools, and financial resources. From conception to archive, content operations are crucial to the strategic planning, creation, management, and analysis of all sorts of content across all channels (paid, earned, and owned) and throughout the whole company.
The finest possible customer experiences for audiences are enabled and powered by a brand’s formal, documented, and enforced content operation architecture.
It needn’t be as difficult as it seems.
One of the greatest and most difficult concerns for anything new is “Where do we start?” and it is what prevents many content, administrative, and marketing teams from adopting a formal content operations strategy and methodology.
Here is some guidance presented in simple, high-level phases.
1.Clearly state the content’s goal.
The “why” behind the team’s actions is its purpose. It serves as both the impetus and inspiration for everything that comes after. It is the motivation behind all content-related endeavours, yet it is never fully realised. Consider it the direction of all content initiatives.
2.Describe the goal of the content
It’s time to outline your content mission after the team’s content activities have a defined (and approved) mission. Is the goal of your material to draw in new employees? create brand loyalty? strengthen connections with customers? Does the C-suite and the rest of the corporation support you?
3.Define and keep track of a few primary goals and outcomes.
Once your content’s purpose is established, it’s time to outline how success will be measured.
Because they have true worth and boost your company’s profitability, content assets are called assets for a reason. Therefore, you must evaluate their effectiveness. Setting OKRs, or objectives and key results, is one of the greatest ways to accomplish this. OKRs are a powerful goal-setting and leadership tool for articulating goals and the steps needed to achieve them.
Three to five important quantitative, objective, measurable results are often listed along with the target, which is typically a broad business goal to be fulfilled. In order to ensure that the ultimate goal is accomplished, checkpoints are last developed.
Consider that you’ve given yourself the goal of putting in place an enterprise content calendar and collaboration platform. Key outcomes to monitor could include:
- user and technical requirements documentation
- finding, displaying, and choosing a tool
- putting the instrument into use and rolling it out
You would monitor things like obtaining funding and approvals, specifying requirements, managing procurement, and so forth.
4.Assemble your team for content operations.
You need personnel to do the work using the OKRs set. What shape will the building take? Who will submit reports to whom?
Are you going to use a centralised command-and-control strategy, a decentralised but supported structure, or a hybrid approach? The organization and team structure must fit into the framework and culture of the broader business.
5.Make a governance scheme official
You need a governance model regardless of how the operational framework is constructed. Your content operations are governed to make sure they adhere to established standards, goals, and objectives.
Get a senior-management advocate to oversee the creation of your governance framework; ideally, this person should come from the C-suite. The only method to receive funding is in this manner.
You should have an editorial advisory group, also known as an editorial board, content committee, or keeper of the content keys, to stay in touch with the organization and its content requirements. Representatives from all the business functional groups that use the material, as well as those who are closely involved in its delivery, should be included in this committee. The team should oversee the project, offer comments, and serve as a liaison with the rest of the company.
Again quoting Simon Sinek, he says, “Passion alone can’t cut it. Passion needs structure to survive. A why without a how has a low chance of working.
6.Design effective workflows and processes
A line of sight into every content process is necessary for compliance with the governance paradigm.
How is a material created from beginning to end? 27 different approaches might be found today. Your ideal outcome would be to develop the bulk (70%) or more of your content in this manner, including infographics, advertisements, CEO speeches, and other types of content.
Understanding the various processes used to generate and publish content today, including who is involved (internal and external resources), how progress is tracked, who the doers and approvers are, and what happens to the content once it is finished, may require some research on your part. Once these processes have been established, you can optimise and It integrates them into a core workflow while making provisions for unusual and sporadic content requirements.
7.Use the most appropriate technological stack.
What number of tools do you use? Due to the fact that many businesses expand through acquisition, their content stacks sometimes contain duplicate elements. They may use two or three content management systems (CMS) in addition to numerous marketing automation tools.
Conduct an audit, get rid of duplications, and simplify as much as you can. Where possible, automate using the built-in features of the content stack. Use technology to automate, for instance, running a campaign on the first Monday of each month.
Your content operations framework doesn’t need to be supported by sophisticated technology. A spreadsheet made in Excel may be one of your most crucial tools.
The aim is to streamline the production of content. Organisations and even teams within an organisation can have quite different perspectives on what that looks like.
Adopting a strong content operations framework necessitates changes in organizational, technological, and cultural aspects. It needs support from the top of the organization and a commitment to business objectives at all organizational levels.
Nothing about it is simple, but the reward is well worth it.
