Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Scaling Content Creation 11 Tips for Scaling the Quantity and Quality of Your Content

In today’s competitive online environment, many companies are struggling to produce enough content to meet consumer demand. But with the right approach, you can streamline your content marketing processes to get better results. Here, we’ll look at how to scale your content more efficiently while maintaining or even increasing quality. Free Actionable Bonus: Looking to outsource your content writing? Get the complete guide to finding, vetting, and hiring freelance writers 11 Tips for Scaling Your Content Creation 1. Develop a System Every stage of the content creation process can be scaled and economized, from brainstorming and collaborating to publishing and promotion. Every stage of the content creation process can be scaled and economized, from brainstorming and collaborating to publishing and promotion. Click To Tweet The first step to streamlining this process is creating a documented content marketing strategy that aligns with your marketing goals. If you’re not sure what should be included in the document, here are some questions to help you get started: What does your company want to achieve in the next 12 months? What are the metrics you’ll measure to monitor the results? Who is responsible for each stage of the content marketing process? Does everyone on your team have access to a brand style guide? Where are your target audience found online? Make sure everyone on your team has access to the documented strategy and is aware of their responsibilities. Holding weekly or monthly meetings will help keep everyone accountable. You can brainstorm new content ideas, identify what’s working, and discuss overall progress. 2. Use an Editorial Calendar An editorial calendar is a simple way to boost productivity. Even a basic calendar will help your team work together more efficiently, and it can be adapted to suit your growing needs. Some things to consider: Content types. Do you have a diverse range of content types to meet audience demand? Which content types do your target customers prefer? Which content types do you need more of? Pain points. What key customer pain points should you be addressing? Funnel content. Are you producing content for every stage of the customer journey? Vary the call to action. What is the intended goal or call to action for each piece of content? Major events. Have you scheduled content for major events, holidays, and seasons? 3. Choose Quality Over Quantity Scaling your content effectively doesn’t just mean producing more content. You can’t ever forget about quality. One piece of great content is going to earn more shares than three average pieces, therefore reaching more prospects. Scaling your content effectively doesn't just mean producing more content. One piece of great content is more valuable than three average pieces. Click To Tweet If you’re hoping to scale both the quantity and quality of your content, then you’ll need to look for help from expert freelance writers. Which brings us to the next the point, the power of outsourcing content creation. 4. Outsource More of Your Content Hiring in-house writers costs more than outsourcing and doesn’t always lead to higher-quality content. Outsource some or all of your content creation so you can focus on promotion and distribution. Related: Hiring In-House Writers vs. Outsourcing to an Agency vs. Hiring Freelance Writers: What’s Right for You 4. Use High-Quality Freelance Writers Hiring inexpensive writers to produce average content at a higher frequency could harm your brand. It may initially cost more to hire experienced writers, but they’ll deliver regular quality content. This is also easier to scale because you’ll save time and money elsewhere. Some writers can also double as influencers, so seek out writers with a greater social media following. Download the complete guide on finding, vetting, and hiring freelance writers 5. Use Subject Matter Experts Hiring a writer who already understands your industry will help you hit deadlines faster and avoid the need for multiple revisions. Regularly using one writer for a specific topic will also build the writer’s subject knowledge. 6. Have a Consistent Promotion Strategy Creating great content is a waste of time if you have no promotion strategy. To maximize your promotion efforts: Discover which social platforms boost content engagement. Publish social media posts at optimal times. Repost social media content multiple times. Use social sharing and email subscription buttons within the content. Submit your content to online communities. Optimize all content for search engines. Take advantage of paid advertising. Link content to related internal web pages and external domains. Leave this field empty if you're human: 7. Reuse and Repurpose Content Increase content engagement with less effort by combining or reusing content. For example: Divide. Split larger content assets into separate blog posts. Create. Create an infographic based around a blog post. Gate. Turn a series of blog posts into a gated piece of content such as an ebook. Snippet. Post a statistic or short snippet from a longer piece to social media. 8. Develop Templates Whether it’s a landing page, email newsletter, or infographic, templates save you time. Keep everything so that you can reuse the format, images, and graphics for future content pieces. 9. Find a Reliable Source for Photos Where do you find your images? Check out Pixabay, PikWizard, Unsplash, and Negative Space for access to thousands of photos that are free to use without attribution for commercial use. Note: the image for this post was taken from Unsplash. Shout out to RawPixel for the image. 10. Use Your Network Tapping into your network is another great way to improve your content marketing. Connecting with colleagues, customers, and competitors helps you source content ideas, find interesting statistics, produce user-generated content, and add authenticity to your brand. 11. Track Results There’s no point in scaling your content marketing if you don’t know what’s working. Take advantage of some of the best free and paid analytics tools to discover which content topics and formats are getting the most engagement, and build upon your strengths. There’s a Better Way†¦ While marketers have different ways of organizing their content creation processes, all content marketers face these common challenges when scaling their content creation: A limited budget for hiring writers Finding the most suitable writers for each project A lack of time to create and publish quality content Distributing content to the right channels on a regular basis Communicating with writers A content creation service can help address all of these issues. While many marketers still use Word, Excel, and email to manage their content creation process, this approach has its limitations, especially if you have a busy schedule. Alternatively, when you have a handy platform that includes an editorial calendar, collaboration tools, team management tools, file sharing tools, workflow management, and publishing tools, it makes the content marketing process much more fluid and manageable. Practical Benefits of a Content Creation Service A content creation service supports your content marketing be providing you with access to multiple tools and functions to plan, create, manage, and publish content for all kinds of content marketing assets including: Blog posts Social media posts Email newsletters and automated emails Ebooks, whitepapers, and other gated content Press releases SEO content Magazine articles Product literature Video scripts Internal marketing documents Increase Productivity A content creation service can streamline your content production, from setting up a team of writers to managing the content output. A content creation service can streamline your content production, from setting up a team of writers to managing the content output. Click To Tweet Our built-in editorial calendar is also a useful planning tool, allowing you to see an overview of all the content you have in the pipeline and any content gaps you need to fill. Remember that a complete content calendar should include a variety of content types, the target audiences, as well as who is actually writing the piece. Improve Efficiency Whatever projects you have planned in your content strategy, having the right software will save you time and effort. A content creation service helps you work more efficiently by storing all the relevant information in a single place and reducing the number of tools you rely on. Without a Content Creation Service With a Content Creation Service Finding writers Social media, job boards Built-in Hiring Social media, job boards Built-in Planning Content Spreadsheets Built-in Assigning Projects Spreadsheets Built-in Communication Email Built-in Writing Word, Google Docs Built-in Plagiarism Check Various tools Built-in Payment PayPal, check Built-in Better Collaboration If you work with other team members and various writers across multiple locations, trying to communicate via different channels soon gets frustrating; we all know how confusing it can become when you’re receiving messages from various email addresses. With the Constant Content â€Å"My Projects† tool, the whole process of communication is made easier with a centralized dashboard that helps you keep track of writers, messages, your content requests, deadlines, and more. You can communicate with each writer directly from your projects page, so you’ll never lose track of project details, notes, and discussions. You can even share files and other documents with your team. Maximize Content Quality As you create more projects and build your team of writers, you’ll have your own private team of writers that can specialize in various subjects. Because you can assign requests to certain projects, you also have control over which writers receive each request. This ability to provide feedback to writers and select the most appropriate writers gives you complete control of your content output and quality. In short, you’re able to pick the right writer for the right reader. Improve Your Content Marketing Results Content marketing continues to be an integral part of building brand awareness, boosting search engine rankings, and engaging your audience. As a marketer, utilizing the right platform will improve your content quality, increase productivity, and maximize efficiency. Many content marketers have come to realize the benefits of content creation services to make the content creation and distribution process run more smoothly. In today’s online climate where virtually every business is a publisher, you need to ask yourself if you can afford not to use a content creation service to get a better return on investment for your efforts. Are you look for a content creation service to support your content marketing? Get in touch with us.