Publishing content consistently is harder than many people assume. As any marketing and communications leader can attest, content creation is more than putting words on a page. There’s a ton of invisible work behind it: brainstorming topics, aligning stakeholders, managing edits, securing approvals, pushing projects forward.
More often than not, when content programs stall, it’s because the operational structure required to manage all that invisible work isn’t strong enough.
We spent years establishing efficient, scalable content operations that enable us to produce consistent, high-quality content for organizations with complex ideas and discerning audiences. Here’s what we’ve learned about what it takes to keep content moving.
Yes, You Need a Real Content Function
Nine times out of ten, when companies think they need “a content writer,” what they actually need is a content function. A combination of strategy, project management, and—of course—stellar writing.
If you’re lucky, you might come across a unicorn: one person who can do it all. Develop a cohesive content strategy, create the systems and workflows to keep content moving, and write the content itself. But since unicorns are hard to come by, it’s likely you’ll need a team, either internal or via an external partner, to build and manage reliable structure for your content function.
So, just to be clear: the solution to your content challenges probably isn’t hiring more junior writers or outsourcing your writing to a content farm. It’s building a content function that removes as much friction as possible from the content process, from initial concepting and strategy to the moment you hit publish. You can get started with these best practices.
1. Keep an Up-to-Date Editorial Calendar
An editorial calendar is the backbone of any good content function. The ability to visualize what you’ll publish in the next few weeks or months allows you to plan resources, anticipate bottlenecks, and align the entire team around shared priorities.
We recommend scheduling regular strategy sessions (quarterly works well) to map out upcoming content around business goals, major initiatives, and key messaging pillars. After each session, transfer important information over to the editorial calendar. This asset isn’t useful unless it’s up to date!
We use Google Sheets to build and manage editorial calendars for our clients—they don’t have to be fancy! And we typically include proposed topics and deadlines for the next few months of content assets to keep us on track.
Extra Credit: Use your editorial calendar as a hub for managing approvals to minimize the number of documents you have in circulation. Link to the content asset that’s ready for review, and add checkboxes so reviewers can provide approval directly within the editorial calendar. Choose one consistent highlight color to draw attention to anything requiring immediate action. (We use a bright yellow to make it unmissable for clients.)
2. Standardize Your Editorial Process
Your content function should have a repeatable editorial process that ensures content moves smoothly from idea to execution. At Every Little Word, we treat every asset as a multi-step project rather than a single task. Content progresses through core phases, each with a distinct purpose and dedicated owner.
- Content Strategy: Preparing a detailed brief for the writer.
- Writing: Synthesizing experts’ insights into a polished draft.
- Editing: Sharpening the language, tightening the flow, and ensuring precision and clarity throughout.
- Quality Assurance: Verifying alignment with strategy and messaging and providing a final proofread for grammar, spelling, and formatting.
Extra Credit: Use a project management platform (we use Asana) to build out workflows in advance, assigning owners and due dates to each task. Assigning owners and dates is really the secret sauce here: it gives each team member complete visibility into their upcoming assignments and provides a comprehensive picture of what’s on tap, what’s on track, and what’s at risk of falling behind.
3. Create Templates and SOPs
One of the best ways to reduce operational friction is to create templates and standard operating procedures (SOPs), and content creation is no exception. With these documents to rely on, team members can focus on the most high-value aspects of content development without spending time tracking down information or reinventing the wheel.
Some of our most frequently used templates include:
- Project brief templates for providing writers with all the context they need to write a piece of content.
- Client brief templates for consolidating key client information in a centralized location.
- Interview prep templates for helping content strategists capture expert insights efficiently.
- Newsletter templates for enabling plug-and-play content development.
Regarding SOPs, our philosophy is simple: If we do something more than twice, we document the process. That way, if the person who owns a particular responsibility is unavailable, another team member can step in, and progress never gets derailed.
Extra Credit: Think in terms of “kitting” when developing templates. Kitting is a time-saving technique we’ve learned from manufacturing clients. In their world, it refers to “picking and delivering all of the required components required for the assembly of a given product,” and the goal is to streamline assembly. Believe it or not, this logic can be applied to client and project brief templates. For example, group together every bit of information a writer might require—background materials, strategic guidance, links to include, CTA requirements—so they can open a single document and immediately get to work.
4. Make It Easy to Participate
Experts within your organization are fountains of the kind of knowledge and insights that earn attention and build trust with sophisticated audiences. But as you know, getting these folks—often busy executives—to participate in content creation can be an uphill battle. That’s why your goal as a marketing and communications leader is to make participation feel effortless.
Instead of tasking your CEO with writing a thought leadership piece, develop a process that allows your team to extract information from them, then handle the writing and publishing on their behalf.
- Set expectations upfront about how much of the expert’s time will be required and how their input will be used.
- Do your homework before interviewing an expert to keep the conversation tightly focused.
- Lead a structured interview with the expert (30-60 minutes should be sufficient), and aim to get material for several content assets.
- Simplify feedback by delivering a polished draft ready for review and clearly calling out any areas that need special attention from the reviewer.
Extra Credit: Share interview questions with the expert in advance, but—and this is the key—frame them as preparation, not as homework. Experts may review your questions closely or not all depending on their personality and schedule, but no matter what, you’ll have a resource that helps anchor the conversation.
5. Reuse and Repurpose Existing Assets
Most organizations underestimate the value of existing assets, but repurposing existing assets is one of the fastest ways to fill your content pipeline without sacrificing quality,
Presentations, sales decks, speeches, webinars, case studies—even internal documentation and client emails—often contain some of the best insights. Look for opportunities to update older pieces to reflect new perspectives, mine thought leadership from keynote speeches, or turn a strong internal narrative into external-facing content optimized for your audience.
Extra Credit: Start building a repository of these “source data” assets. You need visibility into the materials that already exist: what’s being presented at conferences, which internal training documents include strong messaging, and which proposals articulate compelling stories. This initiative may involve building stronger relationships with other departments, which, frankly, is beneficial in its own right.
If You Want to Publish Consistently, You Need Solid Content Operations
When you invest in the operations to support content creation, you create an environment where content can progress in a predictable and streamlined manner, and people can focus on the work that matters most.
That’s how you go from scattered efforts and stalled programs to producing consistent content at scale. You can build your content function in-house by following the advice laid out in this article. Or, if that sounds like too heavy a lift, you can partner with a team like Every Little Word that brings a proven content operations framework to every engagement.
Book a discovery call, and let’s discuss how we can support you.
