We were messy. Content was everywhere but owned by no one. Blogs live in Notion. Product docs live in Git. Sales decks live on someone’s desktop. And enablement material? I still have no idea where they were.
The result: duplicated work, stale messaging, and a lot of “didn’t we already write this?”
Content operations isn’t just about writing. It’s about flow. And a kanban system—properly set up—can be the fix.
Here’s what I discovered that works.
Start with swimlanes, not categories. Don’t split by content type. Split by purpose: Awareness, Education, Conversion, Internal. A blog post can be enablement. A product doc can drive SEO. Tag it by what it’s for, not what it is.
Define your stages. Draft → Review → Approval → Design → Publish. No “misc” column. No “review” that lasts three weeks. If it sits too long, flag it.
Assign ownership. Every card needs a DRI (directly responsible individual). Doesn’t matter if it’s marketing, PMM, or tech writing. One name. One deadline.
Track usage, not just output. A beautiful datasheet no one uses isn’t a win. Tag cards that get reused in sales decks, cited in support tickets, or linked by customers. That’s your signal.
Automate handoffs. Use tools like Trello, Linear, or Jira. Set up notifications when a card moves stage. Bonus points if your publishing pipeline (Git, CMS, Notion) connects directly.
Why bother?
Because good content isn’t just what you write. It’s what gets seen, used, and shipped without slowing the team down.
A content ops kanban makes the mess visible. Once it’s visible, you can clean it. And once it’s clean, your messaging finally starts to scale.
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