Contented Manager

32 services

Content Operations

Somebody has to own it. That is the whole idea.

Illustrated character Nora Kerrigan“I know where every piece is.”

What is content operations?

Content operations is the work of getting content from an idea to a published, checked and reported page, on a schedule, by named people, without the owner having to chase any of it. A strategy says what should exist. Operations is the reason it does. Most small businesses have the first and not the second, which is why a good plan can produce nothing for six months.

In practice it covers a short list of unglamorous jobs. Who briefs the writer, and by when. Who puts the finished piece into the website, adds the title, the description and the image text, and checks it on a phone. Who chases the approval that has sat in someone's inbox for three weeks. Who fixes the broken links, notices the page that has started to slide, and writes the one-page report at the end of the month that says what happened.

The output for you is a pipeline that runs. Content goes in one end as a line on a schedule and comes out the other as a live page, and you find out about it in a monthly report rather than in a Friday-afternoon reminder that nothing has been published since March.

Sounds familiar?

  • “The plan was good. Nobody ran it.”
  • “It all sits with one person who is now too busy.”
  • “We are paying four freelancers and nobody is coordinating them.”

What I do in content operations

Everything here is about running the machine, not designing it. Some of it I do myself, some I brief out and manage, and some I teach your own person so that you stop needing me.

Publishing

CMS content entry is the finished piece put into WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace or whatever you run, formatted like the rest of the site. Website updates are the small changes that otherwise wait months for a developer. Page creation builds a new page properly: template, headings, images and links in both directions. Metadata entry fills in the title, the description and the alt text that most sites leave blank. Content scheduling queues work weeks ahead so a holiday does not stop the publishing, and blog publishing does the formatting, images and categories the same way every time. Content QA is the last step: somebody opens the page on a phone before it goes live.

Operations

Content production management is the whole pipeline run for you, from brief to published page to monthly report. Under it sit the pieces. Workflow design writes down a process that fits how your business actually approves things. A production schedule shows who is doing what by when, with the dependencies visible, so a late draft is noticed before the deadline. Contractor coordination briefs and chases the writers, editors, designers and video people, and you get one invoice. Approval management chases sign-off, which is where most content quietly dies. Revision management keeps one current version everyone can name. A content library puts every finished piece and brief where the next person can find it.

Maintenance

A content maintenance plan gives every page a review date before it goes stale, with the pages that quote prices or laws first. Link checking finds dead links before a customer does. Content migration moves the site to a new platform without losing what the old pages had earned. Content cleanup deals with the accumulated years: deleting, merging and redirecting so the good pages stop being buried.

Reporting

Monthly reporting is one page in plain language: what was published, what it did, and what changes next month. Performance dashboards are four or five live figures you will actually open. Content decay analysis catches pages on the way down while a refresh can still rescue them.

Specialists, brought in and managed

Some content needs specialists. Design and illustration, web development, photography, translation and localisation, and email and automation setup are each briefed, managed and reviewed by me, and you deal with one person. The photography is of your real premises and staff, art-directed and scheduled around the pieces that need it. The translation is adapted for its market, not run through a machine and shipped. The automation is built in the email platform you already use.

Coaching your own people

Many small businesses do this themselves, and in-house writer coaching is for them: a fortnightly session with your person on the piece they are actually writing. Content team coaching does the same for two to five people, and ends when they no longer need me. Writing workshops are a half day for a team, judged by what they publish afterwards. CMS training stops staff breaking the site, and being afraid of it. Editorial process training hands over the whole system, documented, so it runs without me. Executive writing coaching is one-to-one for the person whose writing represents the company.

How it is delivered

Fixed price, agreed in writing before anything starts. Publishing, maintenance and specialist work are quoted per job or per month after a half-hour call; the pricing page shows the published monthly bands for the Content Engine and the Content Coach. Most engagements settle into a monthly rhythm, and everything produced, from the process document to the content library, stays yours. If you do not yet have a plan for the machine to run, start with content strategy, the pillar this one most often follows.

What I do not sell here

Web hosting, server administration, security patching and plugin updates. Those belong to your hosting company or a developer on a maintenance contract, and I will tell you when a job needs one. I also do not sell social media community management, paid advertising management, or a retainer that publishes a fixed number of pieces a month regardless of whether there is anything worth saying.

Everything under Content Operations

32 services in 6 groups. Most people need three or four of them, not all 32 — part of the job is working out which.

On this page

  1. What it is
  2. What I do
  3. Publishing (7)
  4. Operations (7)
  5. Maintenance (4)
  6. Reporting (3)
  7. Specialists, brought in and managed (5)
  8. Coaching your own people (6)
  9. Vocabulary (25)
  10. Word game

Ask about content operations

Publishing

7 services

Operations

7 services

Maintenance

4 services

Reporting

3 services

Specialists, brought in and managed

5 services

Coaching your own people

6 services

Content Operations vocabulary

The 25 terms you will meet in a proposal, a report or a meeting about content operations, each in one or two plain sentences. Link to any of them.

Content operations also: content ops
The running of a content pipeline: briefs, drafts, approvals, publishing, checking and reporting, on a schedule, with a named owner for each step.
CMS
Content management system. The software a website is edited through, such as WordPress, Shopify or Squarespace. Most publishing work happens inside it.
Metadata
The fields a reader does not see on the page itself: the title shown in the browser tab, the description shown in listings, and the text describing each image.
Alt text also: image description
A short written description of an image, stored with it, read aloud to people who cannot see the picture and shown when the image fails to load.
Publishing queue also: scheduled posts
Finished pieces loaded into the website with a future date, so they go live on schedule whether or not anyone is at a desk that day.
Content QA also: pre-publish check
The check done on a page after it is built and before it is public: links, images, headings, spelling, and how it looks on a phone.
Staging site
A private copy of the website where a page is built and checked before it is copied to the live site that customers see.
Pipeline also: production pipeline
The fixed sequence a piece passes through, from an idea on the schedule to a published and reported page. If one stage has no owner, the pipeline stalls there.
Workflow
The written order of steps, hand-offs and time limits for producing one piece of content. A workflow that matches how the business really approves things is the one that gets followed.
Production schedule
A dated list of every piece in progress, who owns each step and what it is waiting on, so a late draft shows up days before the deadline instead of on it.
Brief also: creative brief
The one-page instruction a writer, designer or photographer works from: purpose, audience, length, deadline, what to include and what to avoid.
Contractor also: freelancer
A freelance writer, editor, designer, developer or photographer hired for a piece of work, briefed and paid through one coordinator rather than directly by you.
Sign-off also: approval
The written approval that lets a piece be published. Naming who gives it and how long they have is what stops drafts dying in an inbox.
Version control
Keeping one current copy of each piece, clearly labelled, with older drafts filed away, so nobody edits or publishes the wrong one.
Content library also: asset library
A shared, organised store of finished pieces, images, briefs and templates that anyone on the team can search without asking the owner where things are.
Maintenance plan
A schedule that gives every page a review date, with pages quoting prices, laws or staff names reviewed most often, so nothing goes stale unnoticed.
Redirect
An instruction on the website that sends visitors from an old address to a new one, so a moved or merged page keeps its visitors.
Content decay
The slow loss of visits and inquiries from a page that once earned them, usually because the facts have aged or a competitor has answered better.
Dashboard
A single screen of a few live figures, chosen in advance, that shows how the content is doing without anyone assembling a report by hand.
Art direction
Deciding what a photograph, illustration or layout needs to show and why, and briefing the specialist to produce it, before any money is spent on the shoot.
Localisation
Adapting content for a different market: language, spelling, currency, units, examples and law, rather than translating the words one for one.
Automation also: email sequence
Emails or messages set up once in a platform to send themselves when something happens, such as a form being filled in or a purchase being made.
Handover
The documented transfer of a running process to the people who will own it, so the work continues after the person who set it up has left.
Editorial process
The house rules and steps a team follows to take a piece from idea to published page consistently, whoever happens to be doing it that week.

Test yourself on content operations

Four short games built from the vocabulary above. Nothing is recorded, nobody is watching, and the glossary is right there if you get stuck.

The word games need JavaScript. The glossary above has every term they use.

How it actually runs

The same four steps whatever the work is.

  1. A conversation

    Half an hour. What you sell, who buys it, and what is not working. No charge and no deck.

  2. A fixed number

    Scope and price in writing before anything starts. It does not change without you agreeing first.

  3. The work

    I do it, or I coach your person through it, or I bring in and manage the specialist it needs.

  4. Something you keep

    Every engagement ends with a document, a system or a trained person — not a dependency on me.

What usually comes with this

Three things that sit next to content operations often enough to be worth a look.

Talk about content operations See what it costs