Powering Content

Chapter 12. Managing a Content Team

As you are probably beginning to notice, work quickly starts to pile up on a content manager’s desk. Leave for a two-day vacation, and we return to find chaos, fire…the end of the world. It is the story of our lives, and although there is no way to escape many of these responsibilities, there are many ways in which you can become incredibly efficient at them. This chapter is all about management: providing resources and removing barriers so that your team can succeed at ongoing content production.

This is when a content manager also needs to wear the project manager hat. It takes a certain mindset to think of projects as divisible units that different team members can tackle separately.

The Common Habits of Successful Project Managers

People who manage teams successfully share a few characteristics from which we can all learn.

Habit 1: They Build Out Templates of Routine Tasks

Do you find yourself doing something over and over again? This could be writing a certain type of copy, working with the same design elements, and repeating emails, among many other tasks. You need to begin thinking about your time as a valuable asset and spend it only wherever it is best invested. When you do, you will feel the urge to come up with templates to facilitate creating items like these:

• Email copy

• Project tasks

• Design layouts

• Article copy

Habit 2: They Ask, “Is This Scalable?” and Act Accordingly

Efficient content managers wonder if what they are ...