Content operations audits: why you need one and how to do it

What are content operations?

Before I dig into the details of auditing, let’s first define content operations. This is a detailed yet succinct definition from Kapost:

A content operation is the set of processes, people, and technologies for strategically planning, producing, distributing, and analyzing content. When properly implemented, it unifies the customer experience across all departments and channels.

There are lots of definitions offered but almost all include the three core components of content operations:

• people
• processes
• technology

The definitions also include a list of activities or stages linked to content as content operations are concerned with the entire content lifecycle. The Kapost definition makes an important point by mentioning customer experience being unified across departments and channels. This is key because content operations are an organisation-wide priority. Lots of people involved in content won’t have content in their job title. Content operations and customer experience aren’t something only relevant to marketing. They involve help centres and customer service, engineering teams, finance, legal and all other departments within an organisation.

For organisations at a certain size this means their content operations and content ecosystems can be complex. There may be hundreds of people involved, so many processes nobody really knows the true amount and an ever-growing list of technology and tools that may not even be used or needed. Unless the people, processes and technology for content is understood, managed and owned it will be hard to identify areas for improvement and optimisation. Enter the content operations audit.

What is a content operations audit?

An audit is an inspection. With that in mind, a content operations audit is an inspection and review of all the people, processes and technology involved in content at an organisation. You could call it an evaluation or assessment and it would still be the same process.

The purpose of a content operations audit is to:

• understand your organisation’s entire content offering
• determine problems, bottlenecks, gaps and overlaps
• identify any opportunities for improvements

A content audit commonly starts by compiling a content inventory. You need to know what you’re working with and where you’re starting from. The same is true for a content operations audit.

In its simplest form it is a case of listing lots of things. The detail is in the analysis. Back to the list though and I would recommend doing it in this order:

Step 1 – List all of the processes for content

Begin with processes to bring focus and a logical starting point. If you start with a tool you may not know what it’s for or who uses it. You could also start with a person but not fully understand the breadth of their role and involvement in content.

Having a process in mind will allow you to then think about the people and technology involved along the way. 

Some processes will be much quicker to discuss than others. A key consideration to make is how detailed you want to get. Publishing a blog article from idea to governance may be seen as one process or it may be considered several processes within that workflow.

There’s no right or wrong answer here, as with most content related things, it’s about context. 

Step 2 – For each of those processes list all of the people involved

To be truly meaningful I would recommend listing the people and their role too. The role is more important (and useful to know) than their job title as someone could be a Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry but their role in the workflow is to pair write with someone on the content team or to approve content.

It may become apparent that nobody knows who does something. Or perhaps there isn’t a specific individual responsible for a key stage of the process or workflow you’ve just outlined. Finding that out is itself a win and something that can be actioned.

You may also see the same name occurring over and over again and that should result in questions about bottlenecks, capacity and if more people are needed.

No matter how small someone’s involvement may be in a process, include them. This will be useful for the analysis at the end. When you have all the people listed, map them to the business structure chart. It can be revealing to see where the responsibility for content lies across the organisation.

Step 3 – For the same processes list all of the technology and tools those people use

Now you understand all of the content processes and who is involved you can ask, what tools and technology do they use to get the job done?

Where possible capture every single tool involved even if it is only used for something small. When you start doing this some tools will come to mind quickly and easily. If we stay with the blog article process then you may list the place where you write the article and the CMS.

As you start to dig into this part of the audit suddenly you recall tools that are used regularly but you don’t often stop to think about as it’s ‘just the way we do it.’ This can be a really insightful part of the audit but may need more time or input from more people.

When I used to manage a large library of content I used 15 tools every time I hosted one webinar. There were the more obvious tools such as a CMS for the registration page, the software used to host the event and a social media tool for writing, scheduling and publishing content to promote the event. But then when I started to document the process I was reminded of the tools for:

• creating promo graphics
• getting webinars transcribed
• sending newsletters to promote the event
• data capture and analysis for measurement

And that list steadily grew. This takes us back to the earlier consideration – what is a process? I looked at the end to end process from an idea for a webinar to post-event analysis and follow-up because I wanted to include everything involved for one event. Really that was several smaller processes connected at a key point such as a process for setting up an event, a process for promotion, a process for distribution etc.

Listing all of the tools will allow you to see where they are used and who uses them in your organisation.

Here’s an example from a recent client project where we asked them how they created and published social media content.

[Core Process] Publishing to social media

This has been anonymised and simplified for the purpose of this article but for publishing to social media we quickly learnt that several people across the organisation published to social media with no shared standards or guidelines. Different tools were used and the conversation revealed a few sub-processes we could look at too. None of the people involved in social media publishing has ‘content’ in their job title.

What the table above doesn’t show is what departments each of those people were from and who used which tools and what their role was in the overall process (creation, approval, publishing). As soon as the sub-processes were mentioned we had to ask who is involved in those and what tools do they use. 

All of that information was captured on a Miro board. It’s a great (and somewhat typical) example of where it starts off relatively simple but with further discussion it’s soon apparent there are more people involved and the process of publishing to social media is fragmented across the organisation. Not necessarily to any detriment of the content quality or the audience perception and experience. But potentially detrimental to efficiency.

What was also great here is that by sharing this information they also started to ask questions and make statements for further investigation such as:

• How much does that tool cost?
• Does that tool do the same as that one?
• The teams in the UK regions have their own processes. We think.
• Does that connect to our CRM?
• This is a really manual process that takes so long, is prone to human error and means we can’t scale
• I didn’t know [stakeholder] had to approve all of that content. Are they the final sign-off?

These insights are like gold dust for making recommendations, digging deeper and looking to make improvements across an organisation’s content operations.

How to capture all of the information

Your content operations audit will be a collaborative process and will involve speaking to lots of people. There are a few options for how you get all of the information you need as per the three steps we just covered.

Start yourself and then bring others in

You may want to get down as much as you know in the first instance and then share with others to fill in any blanks. This could be a good headstart for bringing people in or could result in very specific questions others need to answer, making it easier for them to contribute.

On the other hand, they may think you’ve gone off and done what you can and are only involving them when you’re stuck or unsure. People can be challenging and there’s a thin line between engagement and exclusion. 

One-to-one with a stakeholder

You may want to engage stakeholders individually and pair with them to list and understand all of the processes, people and tools they are involved with or aware of. This can be a good way to involve people and keep them focused. The downside here is that it is totally reliant on what the person is aware of and doesn’t leave room for discussion with others.

Collaborative workshops

A good way to capture the information is to get all the key stakeholders together and have a group discussion. This is perhaps the hardest to organise and facilitate but the method that yields the greatest insights and results.

This is a chance to engage people from the start and people like to feel involved. You can set expectations, share beforehand what the purpose of the meeting or workshop is and allow them to ask questions beforehand.

Side note: a workshop sounds far more practical and collaborative than a meeting so that is my preferred term when inviting stakeholders to a session.

I’ve had most success with the third option because it brings up so much more than just a list of processes, people and tools. By observing stakeholders talking through their current operations you get a true insight into the culture, hierarchy and challenges of an organisation.

Analysing your content operations

You’ve done the talking, gathering and tidying up of the information. Before you is the oversight of your organisation’s entire content operations as they currently stand. That in itself is an achievement. Now the hard work begins 😉

How you analyse the information will depend on what information you have. But in the spirit of being pragmatic, when you do sift through the output of your audit, here are some questions and key considerations to keep in mind.

Process focused questions:

• Are there processes missing or where nobody knows the process? (e.g. lots of creation but no distribution)
• Are our processes defined or ad-hoc?
• Are processes documented?
• Can we combine any processes?
• Are there too many stages in any processes?
• Are there any opportunities for automating processes?
• Are there overlaps and repetition in processes across departments?
• What can we determine about our publishing model?
• Are there opportunities to create repeatable processes?
• How scalable are our processes?
• Is effort being duplicated at any point?
• Can any processes be optimised?
• Are the processes understood by those involved?

Here you’re really looking for overlaps, gaps, processes that can be combined or streamlined, processes that could be automated or stopped altogether.

People focused questions:

• Is anybody responsible for too much?
• Are there tasks where nobody is responsible?
• Who are the content owners?
• Do we have the right skills on the team/in the organisation?
• Are people unable to deliver the required content?
• Are people unaware of what others in the organisation are doing with content?
• What permissions and access do people have (e.g. publishing rights)
• Are people creating content that’s inconsistent?
• Do those involved in content have clear roles?

Similar to processes, are people (unknowingly) repeating tasks, do you have the skills needed, are the right people in the right roles, who owns what etc.

Tool and technology focused questions:

• Can multiple tools be replaced with one?
• Do we have the right tools to support our operations?
• Can any tools be discontinued?
• Are there new tools we need?
• Are we using existing tools to their full capabilities?
• Are people using different tools for the same task?
• Is our technology stack allowing us to be optimal or is it a hindrance?
• Do our tools give us the data we need to measure performance and success?
• Can we integrate/connect our existing tools to reduce reporting/analysis time?

That’s a lot of questions to ask but nor do I claim it is a complete list. Often asking these questions will lead to further discussion and even more questions.

Completing and analysing the information could be a time-consuming task so you may want to break it down into smaller audits for departments but there will still need to be an organisation-wide analysis to be able to fully identify opportunities for improvements.

Potential outcomes of a content operations audit

The hard work will be worth it because there are lots of opportunities and benefits that can come from understanding the state of your content operations. Here are some of the outcomes that may present themselves:

Save time

There may have been overlaps in processes which can be removed so less time is wasted. It could be that there were too many people involved in one process (how many people really need to sign-off on the content?). Automating processes could save time too.

Spend time upfront assessing your content operations audit to save time long term.

Save money

This can be apparent for different reasons. You may save money by identifying tools you no longer need or by replacing multiple tools with one. You may save money by becoming more efficient with how you work. 

Better understanding and collaboration

Everyone involved in content will have a better understanding of their role, who else is involved and how it all fits together. There will be alignment around processes, goals, language and standards. From a recent client conversation these statements were said:

• I didn’t know you did that
• You have a weekly check-in meeting?
• There’s a working group for the campaign?
• You use a content planner too? – we should get together and compare

Having that complete understanding of content operations within your organisation will allow comments and questions like these to be addressed and the outcome is better collaboration. There may be some tangible outputs from the audit which can result in positive outcomes. Examples are RACI charts, workflows and style guides.

Better content quality

Content has to be an asset for the business and meet your audience’s needs. There are standards and regulations to meet around compliance, accuracy and accessibility. For some, consistency of content is important. However you define ‘quality’, improving your content operations can improve your content quality. 

A connected customer experience

If you make changes to your content operations as per some of the examples in this article then a positive outcome will be a unified customer experience, delivered through relevant, useful and usable content. All of your departments will be working together effectively, standards will be organisation-wide and there will be coherence in the content lifecycle regardless of who is involved, when and what tool they use.

Understanding your content operations is understanding your organisation

Every time I have a conversation with a client or team about content it very quickly becomes a conversation about organisational structure, culture, and conflicting priorities. Asking a simple question about how something is published to a social media channel can reveal there are multiple editorial calendars at play, that two people are working on the same thing and so much more.

Your content operations are a lens for your organisation’s wider issues. Why don’t people know what the other teams are doing? Is that due to a siloed organisation? Perhaps it reveals flaws in how the teams communicate with one another? Is it because of conflicts over ownership and control? It’s never just about the content.

If you look to do a content operations audit at your organisation it can be unsettling for people. They may worry about job losses, big structural changes, having to learn new things. The key point to remember is that this is about identifying opportunities for improvement. The team should be empowered by the changes made following the audit. Things should be much clearer in terms of communication, roles, responsibilities, expectations, processes and standards. There are big wins to be had for your business and your audience.