10 ways to improve your content operations workflow

For smooth content operations workflow, teams must establish the right process to make content operations manageable. That includes every step from content idea and brainstorming, to content creation and publishing as the final statiton.

Improving content operation workflows involves implementing strategies and adopting tools that enhance efficiency, collaboration, and effectiveness throughout the content creation and management. To do so successfully, the first step is to understand workflows and choose the best type for your company, team, project, etc.

Content workflows are the systematic process of creation, from conception to publication. These workflows vary depending on the organization's structure, content types, and goals. However, they typically include stages such as ideation, creation, editing, review, approval, and publication.

Linear workflow:

In a linear workflow, content moves through each stage sequentially, with one task leading to the next. While straightforward, this model can sometimes cause bottlenecks if one stage takes longer than anticipated.

Parallel workflow:

Parallel workflows involve simultaneous work at different stages of content creation. This approach can speed up the process but requires effective coordination to avoid confusion.

Iterative workflow:

Iterative workflows allow continuous improvement through creation, review, and refinement cycles. This model is particularly suited for agile content teams focused on constant optimization.

Task-based content workflow:

Task-based content workflow defines each workflow stage as a task for your team. There are deadlines for every task, a responsible team member, and a detailed description of each step to ensure everyone knows what to expect.

Status-based workflow

Status-based workflow concentrates on statuses rather than tasks. It is suited to specialists with more experience and gives more freedom to content managers: they can balance their tasks across various stages. Although roles and responsibilities might not be as clear as in task-based workflows, you should still document the process and lay it out.

A solid content operations workflow begins with understanding where your team stands. To create an effective content development workflow, consider the following:

The most interesting fact is that you don't have to choose just one type and stick to it. You can customize any of these types to suit your team's needs and create a hybrid content operations process.

To develop a successful content workflow, it is important to think about two things. Content operations strategy and technology. Only through the synergy of the two can a successful workflow be achieved. Below are steps and tips that will help you improve your strategy with the support of tools and platforms.

Tools and platforms play a crucial role in resolving operational concerns and obstacles. Technology is there as a support, to do operations efficiently, you will need to have structured content concepts. Here’s how you can do it: 

A content framework serves as a quick reference guide for determining which projects are worth approving.

A well-structured content template is the initial phase that speeds up the entire process. In this phase, you should define content formats, where to publish content (major and secondary platforms), and notes (if necessary). For any content operation workflow types mentioned earlier, this approach is applicable and easy to implement. So with a filled content framework template, you'll get a fully ready-for-action content plan.

Start the list of necessary actions using this framework, mapping them as workflows and combining them into a single, cohesive process. For this phase, you don't have to use any specialized tools. Google Sheets will be just fine for making a customized content framework

Based on your content operations type, the next step is to make a task list. Every task would consist of:

The picture represents the task of writing this article. As you can see, all the data is grouped in one place, and just by clicking on the task anyone in the content team can see what it is about. In this step, slowly but surely, technology is coming to support and perfect content operations.

There are many project management tools (to be listed later) that are useful. For example, the content team in BCMS uses Active Collab.

It may sound banal and obvious, but a content calendar helps you stay organized, consistent, and strategic in your content creation and distribution efforts.

A content calendar should consist of the following:

If the order of tasks in your content production process is incorrect or broken, you will soon risk some people failing to complete their jobs promptly or in the right order.

Rather, you must run an understandable content process with steps that make sense. This guarantees that everyone involved in content development can make the most of their time and work effectively, which helps to reduce the lead times for content production as a whole.

The most common way to organize content lifecycle is into the:

In this step, technology plays a crucial role in content ops optimization. Content automation has an enormously positive impact on content governance. You should take advantage of the opportunity to stop doing the same monotonous, pointless duties.

Content automation aims to reduce manual effort, increase efficiency, and improve consistency in content creation workflows. It involves leveraging tools such as:

Using technology to transform content production, administration, and communication is essential for success. Here are ways to leverage technology to enhance content operations:

For all of the above to be carried out effectively, a headless approach.

A headless CMS serves as a content hub due to its ability to efficiently manage and distribute content across various channels and platforms. Using a headless CMS serves as a centralized content hub for content operations due to several key advantages it offers over traditional CMS platforms.

Unlike traditional CMS platforms, a headless CMS decouples the content management backend from the frontend presentation layer. This separation allows content to be stored, organized and edited independently of how it's displayed to users.

Thanks to the API-first approach, flexibility and easy integration with other tools are important not only for content operations but also for the entire content marketing.

As a result, a headless CMS acts as a centralized repository or hub for all content-related assets, including text, images, videos, and other media types. Content creators can easily create, edit, and manage content within the CMS, while developers can leverage APIs to pull this content into different frontend applications or interfaces.

Learn more: Content Operations and Headless CMS - hack you can't miss

As technology transforms content operations by automating routine tasks, offering data-driven insights, and fostering collaboration within content teams, it also introduces the capabilities of AI to content marketing. AI-driven tools offer various ways to aid content creation, including:

SEO and keyword research tools empower organizations to enhance their content for search engines, boosting online visibility. These tools offer valuable insights into:

Most keyword tools have the option to compare your content with the competition or with those who rank at the very top of Google Search results and deal with the same topic as your team. Besides the old-fashioned way to do keyword research, don't forget to use this content gap feature. Here are some of the content gap strategies to generate exciting new ideas for content:

For the best results in your content approach do the following:

If you are looking for the perfect technology stack for content operations, here's what that could look like: 

Setting up a good content marketing strategy is essential to streamlining your content efforts, but even more important is setting up a content workflow that serves as a checklist for all you need to do to create high-quality content that drives results.

BCMS is one of the best content management systems which unites all aspects of content operations, by putting all of them in one place.

With BCMS headless CMS you have solid ground foundations that allow you to consolidate your content production and plan and optimize content for performance.

So, sign up for BCMS and start implementing all 10 steps into your content operations for the best results.