Work Sample | Ditching a content calendar and getting into a flow (video walkthru)

The Content Flow was an Asana board I made to manage production of all of our content over a ~2-year period. It worked for our relatively small team because I stripped the details out and aimed it at answering questions our team had about our work.

While using it, we were able to juggle tight deadlines, major projects, consistent publishing, and even pulled up a virtual event with 1,800 registrants without breaking (too much) of a sweat.

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Question	Principle
"What is a task vs subtask?"	Each task is an asset. Subtasks are the work. Kanban stages are the phases of that work
"Which project does the task go in?"	All assets go through the Content Flow.
"What are we working on right now, who is working on it, and how does it relate to current initiatives?"	Each asset has a set of fields. Use these fields to filter your view.
"How do we handle handoffs?"	Only create and assign a subtask when you move an asset to the next stage. Always have an Owner of the task to default assign subtasks to if you don't know.
"Who is responsible for this task right now?"	Reassign the asset to whoever is working on the current subtask.
"What about XYZ edge case?"	Add fields as needed. And teammates can add assets to their own custom projects as long as the asset also lives in the Content Flow.
"How do I get approval?"	When in doubt, add it to the Content Flow inbox as a "Walk In." If it's already in progress, no sweat. Add it to the correct stage.

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Content Flow originally started as a beta test to see if we could ditch a strict content calendar.

I was inspired by the Gorgias marketing team's posts about their production approach that focused on process. So, I met with Jordan Miller, now a product marketer at AirOps, to swap notes.

I ended up taking the idea a little further, ditching firm deadlines entirely: focus on process, and the rest will follow.

It worked well. So, I made some refinements and graduated it to a 1.0, which allowed us to publish content consistently: a weekly SEO blog post, an ongoing podcast, a website redesign and rewrite, a major virtual event, and any number of guides, webinars, one-off requests, product demo videos, ads, and on and on.

The major event in that list was Impact Studio 2023, which had 1,800 registrants. And we pulled it off in about a month -- during a leadership change. I stepped in to lead that project using this Content Flow. Not only did it help us see the project through, but we also managed our other ongoing projects alongside.

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