Human-Reviewed Content Workflows

We start by listing the content you produce and sorting it by risk. A festival greeting is low risk. A service page describing what you offer is medium risk, because wrong details mislead customers. A page that states prices, guarantees, health or financial claims, or compares you with competitors is high risk. Risk decides how many people review a piece and how closely. We then look at who is available: owners, subject experts, editors, designers and an approver. In small teams one person may hold several roles, but the roles stay distinct so that the drafter is not the only checker. Next we define stages. Typical stages are a brief, an AI-assisted draft, a fact check against approved sources, an edit for clarity and voice, a compliance check where needed, final approval and publishing. For each stage we write what is checked, who does it, how long it should take and what the output is. We create short checklists, for example confirming that every number, name and date matches a source; that no claim goes beyond what you can prove; that wording is original and quotes are credited; that links work; and that the piece suits the audience and reading level. The brief is important: it lists the purpose, audience, key points, sources to use, words to avoid and the call to action, so that the draft starts closer to the target; see prompt and knowledge base development. We set rules for AI use: which tools are approved, what information must never be pasted into them, and how output is labelled internally as a draft. We build the workflow in the tools you already have, such as a shared drive, task board or content calendar, with statuses that make progress visible and prevent publishing before approval. We add audit trails, such as comments and version history, so you can see who approved what. We run a pilot on a few real pieces, measure the time taken at each stage and the number of corrections, and refine. We train the team in reviewing AI text, which differs from reviewing human drafts, because errors can be confident and fluent; see standard operating procedure documentation. We record common mistakes in a short error log that feeds back into the briefs and instructions. We review the workflow every quarter, adjusting stages as volume and risk change. We cannot guarantee that every error is caught, and review adds time, but a clear structure reduces mistakes and keeps responsibility with people.