It’s a luxury to focus only on content marketing. You may find yourself in charge of creating the support systems for the whole organization's content. Start here.
If you’re not already expected to construct, implement, and administer a framework for content operations throughout your organization, you probably will be soon.
By Cathy McKnight
More and more marketers of all ilk – inbound, outbound, social, digital, content – are being asked to add content operations to their list of responsibilities. These marketers must get their arms around:
These evolving expectations mean content marketers can no longer focus only on the output of their content marketing efforts. They must now also consider and construct, implement, and administer the framework for content operations within their organizations.
The phrase 'content operations' describes the big-picture view of everything content-related within your organization, from strategy to creation, governance to measurement, and content management. All too frequently, I see large and small companies letting content operations evolve organically.
Many content teams say formal content operations aren’t necessary because “things are working just fine.”
Translation: Nobody wants to take on the task of getting everyone aligned. No one wants to deal with multiple teams’ rationale for why the way they do things is the right/best/only way to do it.
So, content teams just say everything is fine. Newsflash – it’s not.
Done right, content operations supports efficient processes, people, technologies, and cost. Content ops are essential to plan, create, manage, and analyze strategically from ideation to archiving for all content types across all channels (paid, earned, owned) and across the enterprise. A formal, documented, enforced content operation framework powers and empowers a brand’s ability to deliver the best possible customer experiences throughout the audiences’ journeys.
It doesn’t have to be as daunting as it sounds.
What holds many content and marketing teams back from embracing a formal content operations framework is one of the biggest, most challenging questions for anything new: “Where do we start?”
Here’s some help in easy-to-follow steps.
Purpose is the “why” behind everything a team does. It’s the raison d’etre and inspiration for everything that follows. In terms of content, it's the driver for all content efforts and never really fulfilled. In Start With Why, author Simon Sinek says it succinctly: “All organizations start with WHY, but only the great ones keep their WHY clear year after year.”
Once the purpose of the teams’ content efforts is clear (and approved), it’s time to define your content mission. Is your content’s mission to:
Do you have buy-in from the organization, particularly the C-suite? Can you talk about your mission with clarity? Have you created a unique voice or value proposition? Answering all those questions will solidify your content mission.
Once your content mission is in place, it is time to outline how you'll gauge success. Content assets are called assets for a reason; they possess real value and contribute to the profitability of your business. Accordingly, you need to measure their efficacy.
One of the best ways to do this is to set OKRs – objectives and key results. OKRs are an effective goal-setting and leadership tool for communicating objectives and milestones to achieve them.
OKRs typically identify the objective – an overall business goal to achieve – and three to five key quantifiable, objective, measurable outcomes. Finally, checkpoints are established to ensure the ultimate objective is reached.
Let’s say you set an objective to implement an enterprise content calendar and collaboration tool. Key results to track might include:
You would keep tabs on element such as securing budget and approvals, defining requirements, working through procurement, and so on.
One more thing: Make sure OKRs are verifiable by defining the source and metric that will provide the quantifiable, measurable result.
With the OKRs set, you need people to get the work done. What will the structure look like? Who will report to whom?
Will you use a centralized command-and-control approach, a decentralized-but-supported structure, or something in between? The team structure and organization must work within the construct and culture of the larger organization.
Here’s a sample organizational chart we at TCA developed for a Fortune 50 firm. At the top is the content function before it diverges into two paths – one for brand communications and one for a content center of excellence:
Click to enlarge.
A governance model ensures your content follows agreed-on goals, objectives, and standards. Get a senior-management advocate to preside over setting up your governance structure. That’s the only way to get recognition and budget. To stay connected to the organization and its content needs, you should create an editorial advisory group (also called an editorial board, content committee, or keeper of the content keys). This group provides input and oversight and takes charge of informing their teams about decisions made.
Include representatives from all the functional groups in the business that use the content as well as those intricately involved in delivering the content.
Adherence to the governance model requires a line of sight into all content processes.
How is content generated? You may find 27 ways of doing it today. Ideally, your goal would be to have the majority (70% or more) of your content – infographic, advertisement, speech for the CEO, etc. – created the same way.
You may need to do some leg work to understand how many ways content is being created and published 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 after it’s completed.
Once documented, you can streamline and align these processes into a core workflow, with allowances for outlier and ad-hoc content needs and requests.
The chart on this page shows an example of a simple approval process for social content (developed for a global, multi-brand CPG company). You can see that it includes three tiers:
How many tools are you using? Organizations that grow through acquisition inherit duplicate components within their content stacks. Many have two or three content management systems and several marketing automation platforms. Do an audit, eliminate redundancies, and simplify where possible. Use the inherent capabilities of your content stack to automate where you can. For example, if you run a campaign on the first Monday of every month, use technology to automate the process.
The technology to support your content operations framework doesn’t have to be fancy. An Excel spreadsheet can be one of your most important tools. The goal is to simplify how content happens. What that looks like can vary greatly between organizations or even between teams within an organization.
Adopting a robust content operations framework requires cultural, technological, and organizational changes. It takes sponsorship from the very top of the organization and adherence to corporate goals at all levels of the organization. None of it is easy – but the payoff is worth it. CCO
Cathy McKnight is the chief problem solver and vice president of consulting with The Content Advisory, the education and consulting group for the Content Marketing Institute. With 20 years of global experience and expertise in content strategy, content management, intranets, marketing technologies and customer experience, Cathy has led both strategic business transformation initiatives as well as the detailed execution of enterprise technology implementations. Follow her on Twitter @cathymcknight or connect on LinkedIn.
