Every marketing team needs content operations. Here's why.

If you’re a manager of a team of editors, or an editor yourself, it won’t come as a surprise that research shows editors spend over half of their time on content operations. That’s a lot of time that could be spent creating high quality content which drives the business forward.

Content operations is a term to describe the set of processes, people and technologies for strategically planning, distributing and analyzing content. These operations are increasingly becoming a core requirement for content teams.

As an editor or manager, you’ll recognize content operations in your daily work as uploading content, updating, editing, distribution and governance. This was a very reasonable set of tasks in the early days of content marketing; posting one or two blog posts a week wasn’t a big drain on your time. Now, with huge amounts of content being created to engage keen audiences, these tasks have taken over.

Aside from filling up daily to-do lists, the problem with leaning on editors to do content operations alongside their other work is that it’s often not done well. And that’s nobody’s fault! To take an example from manufacturing: We don’t expect people working hard on the factory floor creating a product to also manage the shipping operations. You should be able to focus on excelling at your tasks, and leave what sits outside of your wheelhouse to a designated expert.