Growth & Marketing Infrastructure
Content operations: every piece with a state, an owner and a result
The plan is a spreadsheet; the status is a guess
Ask where a piece is and the answer is “I think it's with the editor.” Ask whether last Tuesday's post went out and someone has to check four tools. Ask what worked last quarter and nobody knows, so next quarter is planned from scratch.
Content operations gives every piece a state and an owner, records every publish against its channel, makes failures visible to the person who fixes them, and brings the results back to planning. The writing can be done by people, with AI, or both; the system works the same way.
Today, and with content operations
Today
- 01A spreadsheet plan that's out of date by week two.
- 02Drafts and approvals spread across documents and messages.
- 03Each channel published by hand, in its own tool.
- 04Results checked once a quarter, if at all.
Work is duplicated, failures go unnoticed, and nothing learned reaches the next plan.
With content operations
- 01A seasonal plan, with each piece's state visible to everyone.
- 02Briefs, drafts and approvals in one place, with owners.
- 03Every publish recorded per channel; failures flagged to their owner.
- 04Results attached to each piece and brought to the next planning session.
One programme, visible end to end.
One piece, every channel
Events
Piece · C-130 Spring AC checklist
- State
- brief approved
- Owner
- marketing lead
- Destinations
- —
- Failures
- —
- Results
- —
Event 1 of 9: brief.approved
Where people stay in charge
Brief approval
What gets made
An owner agrees the reader, purpose and sources before anyone writes.
Editorial review
Before it's approved
An editor checks facts, voice and usefulness, and returns what isn't ready.
Channel approval
Each version
Posts and emails are approved as written for their channel.
Failed deliveries
Owned, not hidden
A post that didn't go out is flagged to the person who can fix it.
The parts it's built from
Produce
Content Operations · Controlled Generation Pipelines
- approved brief
- sources
- writing rules
not ready → back to the writer with the editor's note
What changes from one business to the next
A common starting point is your existing CMS, n8n for publishing and failure alerts, a shared content board in Supabase or a tool you already use, and PostHog for results. These are starting candidates, not requirements.
Is content operations the right system?
Good fit
- You publish across several channels every week.
- More than one person plans, writes or approves.
- You want to know what worked, not just what went out.
Avoid when
- One person publishes occasionally to one channel.
- Nobody can own the plan.
How we'd approach it
01
Understand
As much as the problem needs
We map how the work runs today: who does what, which systems hold the records, and where it breaks.
02
Design
Decided before it's built
Ownership, rules, integrations and exceptions, agreed with you and written down with acceptance criteria.
03
Build
Connected to what you use
We build the scoped system, connect it to the tools you already run, and test it on the cases that matter.
Questions about content operations
Do we have to use AI?
No. The states, owners and records work the same whether people write everything or AI drafts within your rules.
Will it replace our CMS?
Rarely. It sits around the tools you publish with and records what each one did.
What happens when a post fails?
It's flagged to the channel's owner with the reason, and stays open until it's published or deliberately cancelled.
How do results reach planning?
Each piece carries its results, and the next planning session starts from a list of what did and didn't work.
Run content like the rest of the business
Tell us how content is planned and published today. We'll show you where pieces get stuck and what we'd build first.