Editorial workflow · 2024–2026

A publishing workflow the team could repeat

Articles were getting finished before anyone planned their distribution, and the partner handoff was an article link. I co-designed the replacement process and wrote the standards it runs on.

In brief

Role: Co-designed the article-to-social process with the editorial team; wrote and maintained the living content standards; chose the format, wrote the copy, published, and tracked partner responses.
Key decisions: Give partners live social posts instead of an article link; choose the format before writing; approve the angle first; keep the standards current.
Selected result: About 30 articles ran through the workflow, part of over 100 pieces I packaged for social across the partnership. The process set a two-business-day publishing target.

From the standards

The partner never receives the article link as the handoff. The social links are the handoff.

Partner enters mid-copy and never leads. Player and cause centered over brand. Captions carry the emotional and proof work; headlines carry the curiosity work.

No copy before an approved angle. Format follows the partner’s distribution potential, not habit.

Recreated excerpt: rules paraphrased from the living standards document I authored; the document itself is internal.

How the choice worked on one article

A June 2025 feature on family preservation in Wichita. The featured organization had no meaningful social presence of its own, so I chose an article card rather than a collaboration carousel: read the published article ↗

The card went out on the brand’s Facebook channel and carried a tagged link rather than a bare URL, so the traffic it produced could be attributed to the post that produced it:

See the tagged link structure

utm_source=facebook
utm_medium=organic-social
utm_campaign=STTOGTR_FT_2023_413678_FB_TRAFIC_ARTICLES
utm_content=ARTL_WICHITA_V1_PHO
utm_term=ORG_FB

The tagged link. The string records source, medium, campaign, creative version, and platform in a consistent order, so results remain comparable from one article to the next.

The problem

The Stand Together × Freethink partnership published feature articles continuously. The organization or person in each story often had the best chance of helping it reach new people. The old process wasted that chance: social copy was written last, under no shared standard, by whoever had time. Partners received only an article URL and had to make their own social post before they could share anything. The process needed to give partners a usable publishing package.

Changing this was harder than writing a workflow doc. The production chain (pitch, writing, legal and stakeholder review, design, page build) belonged to several people, and a quality standard only survives if it doesn’t slow the calendar down.

My role

I co-designed the article-to-social process with the editorial team. I wrote and maintained the living standards for every social package built from an article: how carousel cards should be structured, how headlines should work, word counts, voice examples, words and claims to avoid, platform adaptations, and a scored review checklist. Inside the running workflow, three steps were mine: choosing the format and writing the copy, publishing and replying with live links, and tracking partner responses with a follow-up after three business days.

I also wrote the brand publication’s voice-and-tone guide. The living social standards translated that editorial direction into practical choices for headlines, captions, and platform adaptations.

The design choices

The social links are the handoff, not the article link. A partner holding live social posts can amplify in one tap. That single change redefined what “done” meant for an article.
Choose the format before writing the copy. If the featured organization has a real social presence, build a carousel it can accept as a collaboration and reshare as editorial coverage. If not, build an article card with a long-form caption. The partner’s real ability to help distribute the story decides the format.
No copy before an approved angle. The brief is a finished artifact before a single card gets drafted, which is where quality control actually lives.
Standards as a living document, updated as performance evidence accumulated, so the system improved instead of ossifying.

Approve the angle. Confirm the article and its publishing brief.
Check the partner’s social presence. An active account can accept and reshare a collaboration carousel. Otherwise, use an article card with a long-form caption.
Write, review, and publish. Target: within two business days of article publication.
Send the live social links. Track partner responses and follow up after three business days.

Choose the format first. A partner’s ability to help share the story determines the format before any copy is written. Recreated diagram; the underlying standards document is not reproduced.

What it produced

About 30 articles ran through the format choice and copy standard, part of over 100 pieces I packaged for social across the partnership. The process set a two-business-day publishing target and named an owner for each step. The handoff was complete when the partner had the live social links.

No clean before-and-after performance baseline was recorded. The evidence here is adoption and a defined workflow. Next time, I would track time to publication and partner sharing from the start.

AttributionI co-designed the process and wrote the living standards. Pitching, article writing, legal review, design, and page build were separate roles. The UTM convention predates me; I managed and adapted it. The custom tracking layer on the Instagram Highlights work was my design.