Adding content operations to companies’ content strategy can save money and time. Rahel Anne Bailie has been working with content since 1989, performing as a content consultant for organizations of different sizes and writing for numerous industry publications. On October 22, 2024, she presented a webinar to explain content operations’ huge impact. Bailie is currently the Content Solutions Director at Technically Write IT.
The content operations expert discussed how the origin of content operations dates to the 1940s with a US engineer, Vannevar Bush, seeking efficiency and focus on the delivery methods and has evolved to today where content operations is recognized as its own practice area.
She defined content operations as “a set of principles used to optimize the production of content to allow content to be leveraged as business assets to meet intended goals.”
Rahel also mentioned the advantages of having content operations in place and the importance of introducing efficiencies; “we want to have a single source of truth and add semantics we will be able to reuse in multiple contexts.”
She listed the challenges companies face when not including content operation in their content management strategy:
- Finding where content is stored to update it is hard
- Determining which version to update is hard
- Tagging content for reuse is challenging because word processing isn’t meant for that
- Using spreadsheets to track where content gets used and reused is inefficient
- Matching the content to the correct audience is hard
- A style guide can be clunky to use
- Management always prioritizes software development over content
Rahel then mentioned how companies benefit from incorporating content operations into their content strategy:
- Content is kept in a central repository with a good taxonomy
- The repository has robust version control
- The repository makes it easy to reuse content from a single source
- The authoring system tracks content reuse in an “at-a-glance” dashboard
- Content can be tagged, which is automated and can be personalized
- The style guide is enforced as you write
- Management has allocated a budget to include content resources for each team
Content Operations Benefits for Business
Rahel explained how you can explain to company leaders what is being wasted during the content creation process when not having content operations in place or how much (time and money) they could save by implementing it instead. “You must do this cost/benefit analysis to convince companies and show them this system is worthwhile.”
When selling content operations benefits to management, Baillie recommends using business terms and descriptors that are tactical (e.g. reduce inefficiencies, automate whenever possible, and standardize repeatable processes) and strategic (e.g. manage reputational, compliance risk, activating strategy to drive value and scale, and respond to demand).
To those interested in diving deeper into the subject, Rahel mentioned a book on content operations, edited by Carlos Evia, to which she contributed. The book Content Operations from Start to Scale: Perspectives from Industry Experts was published in 2024 by Virginia Tech Publishing and is available for free download.
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Ernesto Campo is a freelance writer with a background in journalism, marketing, and public relations living in Calgary, Alberta. He recently got his Technical Writing Extension Certificate at Mount Royal University. He is also an author of children’s literature and short stories.