5 best practices in content operations for your business in 2024

In today’s digital environment, how your business communicates with your customers online should be a crucial part of any marketing strategy. Online content is a pivotal part of this – think about how effective a well-edited video, a readable article, or an engaging social media post can be in growing brand awareness. 

However, often companies will fail to give their content strategy the attention that it deserves. This means that content is seen as the sole responsibility of your marketing team and isn’t considered strategically, with the risk that your content will be of low quality and that there is no overall direction to your content over time. 

That’s why creating a clear and consistent approach to content operations is so important. By using our five best practices in content operations in your business, you’ll make sure that your content workflow can handle an increasingly complex content landscape. You’ll also be able to optimize your content strategy and improve brand awareness. Read on to find out more. 

What are content operations?

In 2024, starting a business is impossible without a strong online presence: you’ll need to get domain names, create social media accounts, and put your brand in front of potential customers’ eyes through digital marketing. Once you’re up and running, content operations are a pivotal part of cultivating this online presence. 

Whether you use the phrase or not, you’ll already have content operations in your organization. That’s because content operations simply refer to everything that is related to the online content that you produce, including governance, content production, and content management. 

However, most companies have seen their content operations develop organically over time. This means that it can often be difficult to have a clear image of the content operations that are at play in your business. Instead, things seem to be working through a mixture of improvisation and experience. 

This is still content operations – however, it’s nowhere near the most effective approach to content management. If you want your company to use the best practices in content operations, you’ll need to think about it differently: as a core strategy that will drive the success or failure of your overall business. 

Why is improving your content operations so important?

Every successful business needs content – and there are a lot of different moving parts in that content production and management process. But why should you be bothered about improving your content operations?

Well, you wouldn’t dream of treating any other crucial part of your business without an overall strategic vision, whether that’s project management or customer relations. A clear approach to content operations will produce a content strategy that aligns with your business goals, while also ensuring that it is delivered effectively and efficiently. 

By improving your content operations, you’ll improve every aspect of your business’s approach to digital content. Here are some of the benefits of enhancing your content operations: 

1. Better content quality

If you’ve not got a clear vision for your content – or no way of ensuring that this vision is being implemented effectively – there’s no way that all your different pieces of content are consistent in tone or style. After all, think about how many channels you use to publish your digital content and how many individuals are responsible for creating this content!

Content operations are a great way to make sure that your content is consistent – with a shared message and purpose – and is of a consistently high quality. This includes creating compelling blog posts, engaging videos, informative infographics, and creative social media post ideas. Any strong content operations system will have a process of accountability, as well as a clear approach to collaborative work. 

In addition to your regular content creation efforts, it is also important to dedicate resources to creating high-quality PR content, as it plays a crucial role in building and maintaining your brand's reputation and public image.

2. A more efficient workflow 

Without a clear content operations strategy, your content production and management workflow can easily become disjointed and inefficient, with no defined roles or responsibilities for team members. If you implement an enhanced content operations approach, you’ll set out these responsibilities more clearly. 

As well as this, you’ll create systems for collaboration, assisting communication between teams responsible for content production and content management, for instance. You’ll also streamline workflows by cutting out inefficient tech and processes.
 

3. Stronger conversion rates

You’ll have lots of different aims when it comes to creating content, from spreading brand awareness to publicizing a product launch. However, every piece of content is ultimately designed to increase conversions – this is what will keep your business ticking over, after all!

As you improve your content operations, you’ll find that the quality of your content improves – it will be more engaging and better tailored to your audience. This will inevitably boost your conversions as customers find your content more relevant to their needs.  

5 best practices in content operations

Now, it’s time to start enhancing your business’s content operations – but how can you practically achieve this? Here are our five best practices in content operations: 

1. Set your aims and goals 

Content operations is more than just a content operations strategy, as it also entails the implementation of that strategy. However, it’s absolutely vital that you start with a clear strategic vision. Consider your business goals for the short, medium, and long term – you should use these to craft content aims that are aligned with the needs of your business. 

These aims could be as specific as you want, perhaps by using data analytics to create a particular metric that you want to reach. However, it’s also important that you have a general strategic vision that runs through all of these aims – and that you’ve effectively communicated this vision with everyone involved in content operations.

2. Create a content operations team

 If you want to put this vision into action, you’ll need a team of people who have responsibility for that vision. Even though you’ll likely already have a team of marketers or content creators, it is often worthwhile redefining individual roles and responsibilities so that your content operations approach is unified and clearly defined. 

Consider creating small departments for different types of content and empower your team members to ensure that they create the highest-quality content possible. Within this, you’ll also want to have a clear system of line management to improve accountability across all of your content operations. 

3. Establish a system for monitoring quality and success

Few things can ruin a piece of content like finding a spelling mistake or a broken link, for instance. Regardless of anything else, you’ll need to have quality content if you want your content operations to be a success. 

Performance calibration processes can play a vital role in ensuring the consistent quality of your content. Consider implementing regular checks and evaluations to fine-tune your content production and management methods. 

This could include using a quality checklist – such as checking for grammar before publishing – or assign team members the role of checking content quality. This focus on quality should examine all of your digital content operations, so it might even entail changing your brand styles or redesigning your website. 

Similarly, you’ll want to know what makes a successful piece of content. Define some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as increases in website traffic, conversion rates, or social media engagement. 

These KPIs will let your team keep analyzing their work and adapt their practices to focus on what works, using the insights from the data to produce more effective and engaging content. 

4. Focus on the workflow and tech stack 

When it comes to content creation, your workflow is one of the most important things that you can improve. By creating a simple workflow that is used to produce most of your content, you’ll find that the general quality of your content will be much more consistent: everyone will know their roles, leaders will have a clear overview, and the content will be more uniform.

Additionally, consider integrating project management tools or software into your workflow management system to enhance task tracking and improve project efficiency.

In order to have an effective workflow, you’ll need to have an effective tech stack. That’s because your team members will need the right tools if they want to create high-quality content. You should evaluate your software, while also considering using content management templates to improve collaboration and consistency in your content operations.

5. Train up your workforce

If you’re making any big changes to your content operations, you’ll need to invest time into training your workforce so that they can effectively work within your content operations structure. When redefining roles, you should make sure that each individual knows the details of their roles and that they know who they’re working with. 

You’ll also want to make sure that your new recruits have a clear understanding of your content operations processes. Create readable and digestible versions of your content policies and incorporate these into your onboarding process.

Boosting your content operations 

Content operations are a core part of any modern business, which can involve a range of different processes and departments. It’s therefore crucial that you create a clear system for your content operations, enabling you to produce high-quality content that drives conversions and customer engagement. 

By following our five best practices in content operations, from producing a clear strategy to defining success with KPIs, you can be confident of improving your content operations. Start to overhaul your content operations for the better today!