The Short-and-Sweet Definition of Content Operations

2 minute read

Upland Admin

You’ve almost definitely heard of content marketing by now. You’ve maybe heard of a content marketing operation.

Increasingly, as content is rightly seen as the center of the marketing strategy, establishing an internal operation for content has become a pressing topic.

And you’re thinking, “Great. Another term to add to my marketing dictionary.”

Don’t worry. We’re going to give you a short and sweet definition of a content marketing operation—just like we did for content marketing.

What Is a Content Marketing Operation?

A content operation is a process of producing, distributing, and analyzing content across the entire organization with clear alignment of processes, people, and technology to support integrated marketing teams.

Simple, right?

The Short-and-Sweet Definition of a Content Marketing Operation by @noyesjesse

Yes. But the difference between a fully functional, efficient content operation and an ad hoc approach is night and day.

The attributes of a solid content marketing operation lie in it’s ability to bring visibility, accountability, and insight across the organization. Lots of companies struggle with this, mainly because marketers have divided themselves by regions, product lines, and channels. As a result, the marketing team (or, more often, teams) invest heavily into technologies and channels to reach buyers, structuring their whole strategy around those investments, and then haphazardly produce content to fill those channels.

This results in content carrying the hallmarks of being produced in a silo: mismatched messaging, mountains of unused content, stalled campaigns, and unidentified content gaps. And the buyer has to travel through a bumpy journey no matter what their entry point.

A content marketing operation deals with these issues head on by bringing together disparate teams to align goals and desired outcomes, analyze existing content to identify true (rather than perceived) gaps in content for key buyer personas and sales stages, set out clear workflows for creating, distributing, and approving content, as well as optimizing and analyzing performance.

That might sound like a tall order, but it’s easier than many marketers think. It starts with the realization that content is what drives a buyer’s interest, and ultimately engagement.

Reliable products. Real results.

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