The four primary roles in content

Published 14 days ago • 5 min read

Issue 13

I realized that some of you may not be familiar with the framework I often use to explain content roles. It has resonated with many, so it’s worth sharing again.

I first wrote an article in June 2021 in response to a debate about content job titles. The article got a lot of engagement, led to several podcast appearances, was cited in a founder keynote at a CMS vendor conference, was syndicated in Japanese, and is cited in a book (and another book coming soon). Read more about the specifics and back story here.

Here’s a condensed version of the article.

The four primary roles in content

I see four primary roles in content, and I believe that understanding each and how the four relate to each other is a powerful framing for the work we do.

The roles are the following:

Content strategy
Content design
Content operations
Content engineering

Let’s look at each.

Content strategy

The software and web content world first started talking about content strategy in the late 2000s thanks to Kristina Halvorson.

Content strategy has many definitions. Perhaps as a result, it’s been this slightly mystical, ethereal thing. Forgive me for skipping all the definitions and indulge me in talking about what content strategy does.

Content strategy addresses why we need content. It must address both a user need and a business goal to drive meaningful, successful, and scalable content. The strategy is deficient if it’s only about a user need or only about a business goal.

My favorite book to introduce the field is Content Everywhere: Strategy and Structure for Future-Ready Content (Kindle/paperback) by Sara Wachter-Boettcher.

A circle labeled content strategy sits in the upper left of a slide. On the right of the slide are icons representing people groups, individuals, and robots as users. — Content strategy is the first part of a diagram.
Without other disciplines, no content reaches users.

Content design

About 10 years after everyone started talking about content strategy, Sarah Winters brought content design into the popular conversation from her work at the UK Government Digital Service.

In essence, content design is about what content meets the users’ needs. It really focuses on the user, but if the strategy is also about content to meet a business goal, content design addresses that what too.

Content could be words (print or online), images, infographics, video, code, or even audio.

If you haven’t seen Winters’s book, grab a printed copy and give it a read. It’s Content Design, second edition: Research, Plan, and Deliver the Content Your Audience Wants and Needs (paperback) by Sarah Winters and Rachel Edwards.

A circle labeled content strategy sits in the upper left of a slide, partially overlapped by a circle labeled content design in the lower left. On the right of the slide are icons representing people groups, individuals, and robots as users. — Content design joins the diagram. Still, no content reaches users.

Content operations

In the late 20-teens, GatherContent (acquired in 2022 by Bynder, a digital asset management platform) was focused on the content operations space and published an influential article.

Initially, I was skeptical of needing another “ops” thing on top of DevOps, ITOps, SecOps, and so on—asterisk Ops (*Ops), I called it. But I realized how content ops was less about actual content and more about how content is produced. It’s people, process, and tools. It’s about workflows, quality standards, governance, re-use, and more.

I’ve realized in the last 4 years that the hardest parts of content are the operations parts. This is where you ask who gets to do what to content, and when. You ask what rules will be enforced on content (and content editors). Since these are the hard questions, it’s wise to start a content project by answering them.

A circle labeled content strategy sits in the upper left of a slide, partially overlapped by a circle labeled content design in the lower left. To the right of the content design circle is a partially overlapping circle labeled content operations that also overlaps with the content strategy circle. On the right of the slide are icons representing people groups, individuals, and robots as users. — Now we have content operations joining content design and content strategy. Still, we're missing a piece that prevents users from getting content.

Content engineering

The last role is probably the least known and understood, and that’s content engineering.

While Ann Rockley and Joe Gollner introduced the term “content engineering” over 20 years ago, its usage has shifted, thanks to Cruce Saunders, who explains content engineering as the practice of organizing the shape, structure, and application of content. It’s about how content will be encoded into digital systems.

Any content has some level of shape, structure, and application—some more rigid than others. If you’re in a content management system (CMS) like Contentful, Drupal, Sanity, or others, you’ve got shape, structure, and application. Same if you’re using Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Confluence, or Notion.

Saunders explains that there are seven disciplines within content engineering: content modeling, metadata, markup, schema, taxonomy, topology, and graph.

It’s these areas for which I’ve developed a passion and in which I’ve built some expertise.

A circle labeled content strategy sits in the upper left of a slide. Below it sits a circle labeled content design. To the right of content design is a circle labeled content operations. Above content operations and to the right of content strategy is a circle labeled content engineering. All for circles slightly overlap each other in a four-part Venn diagram. On the right of the slide are icons representing people groups, individuals, and robots as users. — Now we have all four content roles in place. They all overlap each other a little bit.

The separation and interplay between the four roles

All four roles are necessary to deliver content to an audience.

Notice that the circles representing the roles form a Venn diagram. That’s because the roles, while distinct, also overlap.

Content audits matter for strategy and content design. Content models are defined in content engineering but affect workflows in content operations. Governance standards (content operations) influence content design.

Sometimes one person fills all four roles, and at other times, there may be a number of specialized positions within the four roles. It depends on the project and the organization.

When you recognize the distinctions and the overlaps in the four roles, you’re well equipped for stakeholder discussions, making compromises, or even just thinking systematically.

One final note

The biggest problem with this framework—something I’ve discussed with Kristina Halvorson—is that it doesn’t address the practice of content marketing.

I acknowledge that content marketing is a real thing that needs to fit in a framework, that it doesn’t fit well in mine, and that I’m not sure what to do with it.

Since I came out with these four roles, Kristina has written that she now views content strategy as “four separate-but-related fields of practice: content design, content marketing, content engineering, and content ops.”

I’m not fully onboard with that, but I know Kristina is constantly thinking about and revising frameworks (here, here, and here), and my “four roles” is not my first iteration either. If anyone has any bright ideas, let me know. Happy to evolve how we think about what we do in content.

“Do you anticipate being involved with potential clients or in-house projects that would have a better chance of success if you had someone in one of the roles listed above?”

– From Solo to Scaled: Building a Sustainable Content Strategy Practice (Kindle/paperback) by Natalie Marie Dunbar,
referring to my four roles of content

Top of mind

Things that are bouncing around in my head as I synthesize a range of ideas

When I launched Model Thinking, I hoped to reach two audiences that I called practitioners and purchasers.

Practitioners: Individual contributors working in content or software who want to learn
Purchasers: People with budgetary ability to hire me as a consultant

As I look at the audience that I’m gaining, it seems there’s a very high percentage of practitioners subscribing to the newsletter. That makes me curious about some opportunities for my little business.

I’ve got a couple little surveys for user research, and I’d love it if you could respond to both. Please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues, even if they’re not working in specific content roles. Developers, product managers, etc. are all welcome!

Surveys

The surveys will close on Monday, June 30, so act now!

John Collins

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