Workflow · Content production
Content Production Pipeline: Brief to Publish
Move articles from idea to publication with an AI-assisted brief, outline and draft — and human fact-checking and editing where it counts.
The workflow at a glance
Goal: Publish useful, accurate content faster, without sliding into generic AI-written pages.
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Step 1: Trigger
Topic approved in the content calendar
Each topic has an owner, a target reader and the question it answers.
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Step 2: AI step
Generate the brief
Turn the topic, audience, goal and key points into a structured brief with intent, sections, questions and research needs.
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Step 3: Human review
Editor approves the brief
The editor adds first-hand experience, examples and sources the writer must use.
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Step 4: AI step
Outline and first draft
The writer uses AI for an outline and selective drafting, working from the brief and approved sources only.
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Step 5: Human review
Fact-check and edit
Every claim is checked against its source; the editor rewrites for voice, adds specifics and removes filler.
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Step 6: Action
SEO pass and publish
Write the title, meta description and slug, add internal links and structured data that matches the visible content, then publish.
Why this workflow
AI makes it easy to produce a lot of text quickly. It doesn’t make it easy to produce content that people find useful and trust. Google’s guidance on helpful content asks whether content offers original information, is written for people first and is clear about who made it and how — and it explicitly warns against using AI to mass-produce pages to manipulate search rankings. This pipeline uses AI where it speeds up the work and keeps people responsible for substance and accuracy.
What you need
- A content calendar or project board with clear owners.
- Our Content Brief Generator or your own brief template.
- An AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT or similar) and a research tool such as Perplexity for finding sources.
- An editor’s checklist (see below).
Build it
- Brief first. Generate the brief, then have an editor add what only your team knows: experience, examples, data.
- Research sources. Collect primary sources before drafting and save them with the brief.
- Outline. Ask for an outline that answers the reader’s question in order; cut sections that don’t.
- Draft selectively. Use AI for sections that are mostly explanation; write the opinion, examples and conclusions yourself.
- Fact-check. Check every number, quote and claim against its source.
- Edit. Remove repetition and generic statements; add specifics.
- SEO pass. Use the Meta Title Generator, Meta Description Generator and SEO Slug Generator as starting points, then edit by hand.
Editor’s checklist
- Does the introduction state who this is for and what they’ll get?
- Is there at least one example, number or experience that couldn’t appear in every competitor’s article?
- Is every claim sourced?
- Would a reader finish with enough information to act?
- Are internal links helpful rather than forced?
Variations
- Refreshes: run the same pipeline on older articles, starting from “what has changed since we published?”
- Guest experts: interview an expert, transcribe the call and build the brief around their insights.
Our content creation templates include brief, outline and editing prompts.