By Rob Mills, Head of Content at GatherContent
There is no shortage of labels, titles and nouns for the work that I do. I could be described as a strategist, UX writer, marketer, copywriter, generalist, specialist, editor, writer, reviewer, approver, subject matter expert. Truth is, I can be all of those things because my role in content is varied. It’s complex. Sometimes I do need to have the expertise, other times I’m copying and pasting into a CMS. Keeping it real.
There are a few reasons for this:
As Head of Content at GatherContent, I am the only full-time employee in a content role - so I have to muck in, do all levels of tasks and generally get on with it. Keeps me busy and the job interesting.
Content is much more than writing. It’s planning, research, project management, collaboration, meetings, testing, measuring, publishing, distributing, refining.
As content strategy as a practice evolves, subsets of that discipline have emerged allowing people to hone in on one area, open up their skills and forge their own path. The path can often detour, take you back where you started and lead you into unchartered territory.
Life as a content professional is so much more than writing. It’s moved way beyond the words.
Rob Mills in action at the Boye 19 Aarhus conference.
The words will always be a large part of what I do, whether that’s writing, editing, or reviewing. But increasingly, much more now needs to happen before the words are published, and again after.
There is no one beginning in content strategy
Content strategy is like choosing your own adventure. There are so many ways we could go, but every time we start the adventure, we follow a different route and it makes up hundreds of possible stories. No two projects, clients, or organisations will require the same tactics and tools to deliver their strategies.
Even if they do all require, for example, a content audit, how you prepare for, conduct and analyse that audit will vary.
The key point is once you know where you’re starting point needs to be, you then need to map out the journey with the required people, processes and technology to get you to your destination.
This is why, with content strategy being more complex than ever, it’s vital to have efficient content operations in place.
The three pillars of content operations
The three pillars of content operations are:
People
Process
Technology
It’s likely you can’t change your team for every project, your processes may be adapted but have you got time to start from scratch every time? With all the technology needed, it can be expensive and so you need to make sure you’re using the right tools that are fit for purpose.
Let’s dig a little deeper into each of these pillars, mindful of how complex content as a discipline has become.
The people
Whenever there are people involved there will be politics. A lot of what content professionals do involves convincing, persuading, educating, getting buy-in from and collaborating with other people. This in itself makes content strategy complex.
Before there can be any discussion around content style or distribution channels, people have to be brought along for the journey. This is a challenge, especially in the slow and lumbering organisations where ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’ is a mantra and any change is a long process.
People are busy and they have their own priorities and agendas. Whilst evidence-based discussions can sometimes win them over (who can argue with the black and white data after all), the challenge can even be getting to the point of having everyone you need around the same table.
There will be resistance and difficult conversations to get many content initiatives off the ground, or to get approval on content from the subject matter experts. Again, there are a myriad of tools and techniques that can assist this (pair writing, GatherContent, workshops etc), but where do you begin?
When there are so many people involved, you need to break it down. Assuming you are the content professional, these tips might help:
Take a roadshow around your organisation and find out who is involved in content. From those people, who are the champions? These will be your allies and can help share the load of getting others on board.
Find out what the stakeholders care about - money, customer numbers, efficiency, brand reputation, money! Once you know what they care about you can start to have conversations framed around that, hopefully with data to support your ideas and arguments for how content can make a difference.
Understand the skills of the team and where there are gaps too. The people can make or break the project and you need to have the right roles in place, and everyone needs clarity on what their roles and responsibilities are too.
Establishing a core team of content champions around an organisation can help to build a culture of seeing content as an asset. Make no mistake, there are no quick wins here. But whilst one person can lead the charge, they need help to achieve change and to make it stick.
When one person is solely responsible for maturing an organisations content operations, if they leave, the organisation can regress and all of the hard work can come undone. It has to be a team effort.
The processes
You’ve got everyone on side. Hurrah. How do they all fit together and what processes do they need to follow? Good question.
When people have their own way of working, it is challenging trying to align them around a new process or way of doing things. So here you are again, fighting against the status quo but in a different context. Some of the methods and techniques from convincing people will do you well here, but new arguments will emerge too.
Ultimately, you’re trying to make it easier for people to do what’s needed of them. Nobody likes feeling as if they don’t know what they’re doing and so having a clear process and guardrails to guide everyone should be seen as a good thing.
Where it can be increasingly complex is in distributed and remote teams. Some organisations have a decentralised publishing model, others have contributors in different locations across the globe. This is another layer of ‘argh’ but can still be overcome. Again, I break down the complexity and tackle it in stages, or else it will seem insurmountable. Perhaps this advice will help:
Map out a workflow collaboratively with all those who are needed at one or more of the workflow stages. People like to feel involved rather than being told - this is how we’re working. It also gives everyone a chance to input, ask questions and leaves them understanding what the workflow is and where they fit into it.
Don’t confuse movement with progress. I could walk for 3 hours but in the wrong direction from my desired destination. I’m moving, but not making progress. In terms of the process for content projects, do you have unnecessary workflow stages that content is passing through but aren’t needed? It could be going to twelve reviewers when one or two will do.
Once you have decided what your process will be, document it, disseminate it and have someone who is responsible for tracking and communicating progress. Deal with the bottlenecks when they arise and fill the gaps as soon as they’ve been identified.
One workflow may not be fit for purpose for every content project and requirement. You can adapt as needed, whether that be adding or removing stages and people. The goal is, have a process! It’s not just about workflow too, what is the process for providing feedback, what is the process for sharing data analysis. List what processes are needed and then you can start to make decisions about what they will be, who is involved and how they will be implemented.
With content strategy being so complex, it doesn’t pay to shoehorn everything into one way of working. Because at some point, the process will come undone.
The technology
There are a lot of tools we could include in our tech stacks. This is certainly true for content. There are tools available for:
Writing content
Team communication
Project management
Social media publishing
Analytics and measurement
Audits, etc
And of course, the CMS. I’ve heard it said many times before, a new CMS is not a content strategy. Nor though is adopting or adding any other technology, system, software or platform.
If your team is already using a multitude of tools, be cautious before adding to the list, but take that as an opportunity to make sure the technology being used is fit for purpose. Perhaps these suggestions can help when it comes to the technology part of your complex content landscape:
We often talk about auditing our content, well we should also be auditing our tools. List every tool used in your organisation and determine who uses it, what for, cost and analyse if it is what’s really needed. As with any audit, you may find gaps, overlaps and insights that help you refine your tech stack.
When new technology is being introduced, don’t just send someone to a login screen or an account creation page. Provide training. This means you can explain why the organisation is starting to use the technology and you can set them up for success rather than failure. It sounds obvious, but I’ve seen it happen many times where no training is given until something can’t be published or the only person who knows how to use the system is suddenly on leave, and panic ensues.
Don’t start with the technology. Create your strategy, understand your audience, get everything needed in place, don’t commit to an annual licence for something and work back from there trying to make everything fit around it. The technology you use should make your content operations more efficient through scalability, automation or just because it’s easy to use. When not fit for purpose, it can delay, derail, cause stress and waste money. The technology you use is one of the most important decisions you make when investing in content operations.
To lead from that final point, whatever technology you include in your stack, it should be a help and not a hindrance. Do your research, draw on the expertise of developers or whoever else necessary. Have demos, start trials, take your time and remember that the right decision isn’t always the quickest or easiest to make.
Delivering your content strategy with content operations
With lots of people, the need for bespoke processes, and an abundance of technology to choose from, it’s tough finding the right combination and piecing everything together. Made even harder when there is no one size fits all and we have to keep adapting and refining.
Involving the right people, defining clear processes and using the right tools is a way to get some consistent fundamentals in place, but also allows for individual requirements to be considered for each project. Break down each requirement rather than tackling everything at once.
Your next Content Operations move
Do leave a comment below to continue the conversation!
You can also join our growing ContentOps community, where we have a Content Operations peer group (GatherContent are members!) and we’ll also talk ContentOps at the Boye 20 Aarhus conference in November!
Finally, you can join our regular conference calls for members and continue our learning journey for less than the price of a Netflix subscription.