Content production management

What content production management is

Content production management is one person taking responsibility for every step between "we should publish that" and a live, checked page that has been reported on. I brief the writer, chase the draft, get it approved, put it into the website, check it on a phone, schedule it, and tell you at the end of the month what happened. On the pricing page this is called the Content Engine.

It is not a strategy, and it is not the writing itself. The strategy is decided first, in a content strategy plan, and the writing is done by me or by writers I brief. This service is the management that makes both of those turn into published pages on the dates they were promised.

Who this is for

An owner or manager who has a plan, or at least a list, and has watched it not happen. The usual signs: the last blog post is dated eight months ago, three drafts are waiting for someone's approval, the new service page has been "nearly ready" since spring, and nobody on staff has publishing in their job description. You do not want to learn the process. You want it to run.

It is not for a business with an in-house person who has the time but not the confidence. That person needs in-house writer coaching, which costs less and leaves you with the capability. It is also not the right first purchase if you do not yet know what to publish; start with a content audit and come back.

What goes in it

Each month runs the same loop, and every step has a name against it, usually mine.

• The schedule. A dated production schedule for the next six to eight weeks, drawn from your plan or calendar, showing every piece, its owner, its due date and what it is waiting on.
• The briefs. A one-page brief for every piece: purpose, reader, length, what it must include, what it must avoid, and the deadline. Writers, designers and photographers all work from one.
• The chasing. Drafts chased before they are late, not after. Approvals chased with a stated time limit, because sign-off is where most content quietly dies.
• The publishing. Each finished piece entered into your website, formatted to match the rest of the site, with title, description and image text filled in, then checked on a phone before it goes live.
• The maintenance. A monthly link check, and a look at any page that has started to slip, so a refresh goes on the schedule before the page stops earning.
• The report. One page, plain language, on the first working day of the month.

What is not in it, unless we agree otherwise: writing the strategy, paid advertising, social media posting, and anything that needs a developer to change the site's code. Where a piece needs a designer, a photographer or a developer, I bring one in and manage them under contractor coordination, and the cost is quoted separately before it is spent.

What you get

A running schedule. One shared document, one row per piece, updated weekly. You can open it at any time and see what is in progress and what it is waiting on.

Published pages. The number is agreed at the start and depends on the band you are in: typically three to five pieces a month at the lower end, eight to twelve at the upper end, counting website pages, blog posts and email newsletters together.

A written process. By the end of the second month you have a two-to-four-page document describing how your pipeline works, who approves what, and where everything is kept. If you ever take the work in-house, that document is the handover.

A monthly report. One page: what was published, what it did, what is planned, and one thing to change. It is written for you, not for a marketing department.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A twelve-person heating and plumbing company has a good 90-day plan on paper: twelve service pages to rewrite, two blog posts a month answering the questions their office staff hear on the phone, and a monthly email to past customers. Four months in, two service pages are done, one blog post is published, and the email has never gone out. The owner approves everything personally and is on site most days.

Under production management the first change is the approval step: the owner gets a fifteen-minute call every second Thursday and approves that fortnight's pieces on the call, from a printed page. A freelance writer is briefed on the ten remaining service pages, two a fortnight. I enter and check each page, schedule the two blog posts a month, and build the email from the month's published pieces. By month three the twelve pages are live, six posts are up, three emails have gone out, and the report shows which pages the inquiry form is being reached from. The owner has spent thirty minutes a fortnight on it.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What you sell, what you have planned, what has been stopping it. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. The monthly band, the number of pieces, and what is outside it, agreed before anything starts.
3. Set-up. Two weeks. I get access to the website and your existing material, build the schedule, write the first briefs, and agree the approval routine with whoever signs off.
4. The monthly loop. Briefs out, drafts in, approvals chased, pages published and checked, links checked, report delivered.
5. The quarterly look. Every three months we compare the numbers against the plan and adjust the schedule, the cadence or the band.

There is no minimum term beyond the first three months, and a month's notice ends it.

What it costs

The pricing page shows the published band for the Content Engine: $1,500 to $4,000 CAD per month, fixed, agreed in writing. Where you sit in the band depends on the number of pieces a month, how many of them I write myself, and how many contractors are being managed. Contractor fees, photography and any development are quoted separately and approved by you before they are spent.

What happens next

Most businesses stay on the Engine while it is producing, and step down when they have a person who can take it over, at which point the written process and a few months of editorial process training hand it across. Some step down to monthly reporting alone once they are publishing steadily themselves. If you do not yet have a plan for the machine to run, the content strategy plan comes first.