How do you produce content at scale?
Is it even possible to scale content production at a cheap rate without losing quality?
Well, you’ve come to the right place because in this post, I’ll be revealing how to scale content creation whilst improving the content at the same time.
Bold promise, I know but I’ve been doing content marketing and outsourcing for years so this is something I know very well.
So, let’s jump straight into the deep end of this topic. Ready? Let’s go champ!
Part 1: Niche Selection
First of all, you will need to be careful with niche selection, you need to ask yourself, does this topic require expert or technical knowledge?
For example, let's say you're reviewing wireless routers, does that need expert knowledge or can you just hand this to any writer and can they give it back to you easily by writing all of that content?
Let's say you know nothing about woodworking, but you're creating a site all about woodworking. Well, if someone is having an issue with their chainsaw and needs the article to go into all the technical details, will any writer be able to write about that? Probably not.
You're going to need someone with technical knowledge about that. So this is something you need to keep in mind. Does it need expert or technical knowledge?
Part 2: keyword research
What is keyword research? Very simply put, keyword research is finding search terms related to your business. For example, you've got a skin care site and it's selling skin care creams. A keyword would be "What's the best skin care cream for women?" If someone is searching for that you would target that keyword.
So how do you do keyword research? You need to do it in a data driven way so you know people are searching for that keyword. You can use tools for this process and you can use the Google autosuggest function.
My favourite way is to use the Google auto suggest function. Now, as someone who's used many tools, I've lost count how many keyword research tools I've used. I found that the best method is just using the Google auto suggest function and it's completely free. So if you type in something like "best protein powder for"
it will suggest a variety of queries. This is a great way to do keyword research because people have already typed these in and Google is showing you.
A great tool you can use is Answer the Public. When you go to Answer the Public, it spits out a bunch of questions. It reveals the questions people are asking for any topic.
When you do keyword research, make sure you've got a bunch of relevant keywords ready.
This way you don't have to keep on doing it every time you want to create an article. Simply create a spreadsheet and have all your keywords in there, very simple.
Part 3: Creating a process
You need to create a process which is part three. And by creating a process, you're going to improve the efficiency of content production. First of all, you want to find the topic you're going to write about, keyword research. Then you want to do research on that keyword or that particular topic. You want to get familiar with it.
Next up, you want to create a post outline. you need to create a framework so your writer can see the framework, understand it and easily type everything out. Next up, you want to proofread the content, and then you would publish the content.
I’ll be going into more detail for each one.
Document requirements
What is required for your article? Do you have a particular style you want writers to use?
Are you reviewing products and want the writer to bullet point all the pros and cons?
Make sure to document the requirements of an article. Don’t just let the writer go in blind because there’s a very high chance the article isn’t going to come back the way you want it.
Create article frameworks - NEVER skip this step
Next up, you want to create an article framework. This is incredibly important. NEVER skip this step. So the way you create an article framework is you need to make sure you use the subheadings, explain what to do under those subheadings, and you can go ahead and even use templates if the keyword or the type of keyword allows for it.
Check out the below example:
Hiring writers (Test First)
Next up is hiring writers. When you hire writers, there's a bunch of market places you can try, I personally go to UpWork. Before I hire a writer, I want to test them first.
I give them a test article which is typically just £9 for a thousand word article because I don't want to commit to giving them more per thousand words because the article might not come back very good.
At least with £9 you haven't lost much. So you want to test writers first. I currently have a few writers. I'm paying £12 - £13 and they give me high quality articles because I'm doing the keyword research and I've created a solid article framework. So they understand exactly what needs to be done.
Also, these are all native English speakers that are working at this price.