Free 41 page guide

A Guide to Content Production Planning

How to develop a process that ensures content is high quality and delivered on time.

About this guide

Content production planning helps you to establish a fluid workflow around the creation and management of your project content. Everyday we work with agencies and their clients, or in house teams, who are trying to produce content for their new websites. We know just how hard it can be to get good quality content produced and published on time.

Of course, every project is different, but we’ve been around long enough to see the same basic challenges crop up again and again. We’ve put our heads together and rolled all the best stuff into this guide to share with you.

So before you take another step forward in your project, have a read. It’s going to save you from a few headaches.

Learning outcomes

This guide is full of practical advice based on many years of experience.

You’ll learn:

  • What happens when you don’t give content the attention it needs.
  • How to work with others to achieve content harmony.
  • What a content workflow is and the stages it consists of.
  • How to design a content production process.
  • How to run a content production process workshop.
  • How to define the roles and responsibilities in your team.
  • How to engage subject experts.
  • How to implement your content production process.

Who is the guide for?

This guide is for nice agency folks and in-house teams who work on web projects and want to produce quality content.

You’ll get the most value from this guide if you typically build sites with hundreds of pages, rather than thousands.

Tagged as :

Table of Contents

1 Put content at the heart of your project

Find out what bad things happen when content production isn’t treated with the respect it deserves. Then, learn what to do about it.

2 The content production process

Get familiar with the typical stages in the content assembly line. What happens when? How long does it take? Who is responsible?

3 How to design a content production process

Learn how to collaborate with your team to develop content processes that produce good quality content, on time.

4 Define your content ‘hats’

What roles and skills does a great website project content team need? We’ll tell you.

5 Implement your content production process

Lessons learned and proven techniques for helping you achieve a smooth content production experience.

Here’s a peek at what some industry experts think about the topic:

Michael Metts

As you plan your production process, be sure to build in a way to establish goals for each piece of content. If you set goals before the research and writing start, the rest of the process will be much faster.

Michael Metts
Designer and Writer
Meghan Casey

One of the most important things you can do for your content producers is to help them understand your strategy. Then, give them tools to help them create the kind of content you’re looking for.

Meghan Casey
Content Strategy Consultant
Devin Asaro

Content strategists that don’t spend a significant portion of their time accounting for how things will operate during production and maintenance are likely to underestimate or misunderstand the challenges of enacting their strategies.

Devin Asaro
Senior Content Strategist, Shopify
Sally Bagshaw

It’s tempting to complete easier sections of content first so things get ‘ticked off the list’. But be realistic—more complex sections of content will take longer to produce. Make sure the sections you focus on are important to the success of the site.

Sally Bagshaw
Content Strategist, Snappy Sentences

Download your free guide

Get your copy sent to your inbox straight away

About the author

Liam King

Liam is Founder of Lagom Strategy, a UK consultancy specialising in digital user research and sustainable content strategy.

With over 15 years of content production and strategy experience in the UK and Australia, Liam has built up a wealth of practical knowledge on how to put content back at the heart of web projects.

He has led content strategy work for many organisations including the Royal Air Force, Health Education England, University of New South Wales, University of Technology Sydney, UK Department of Health and Social Care, UK Parliament, and the UK Foreign Office.

Liam also has a Master's degree in Web Journalism.