How to Scale Content Creation – Affordable High Quality Content

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.

🔑 Here’s the key to scaling

And I was avoiding this so much. After they’ve completed a couple of articles successfully, give them multiple articles at once. Previously, I was handing the writer one article at a time. So when they handed it back to me, I proofread it, and then I handed them another article.

That’s a long process and not very efficient.

Sure you want to do that initially just to make sure they’re a good writer. But after you’ve  given them  2-3 articles and they’ve come back in a way that you like or maybe you’ve given them a few pointers and they’ve gone ahead and improved the article and you’re happy with these articles. 

Give them multiple articles at time. So about 3-5 articles a week depending on the word count.  You want to give writers articles in batches. They’ll appreciate it as well, because it’s easier for them to do. They can just get it all done at once, and they get paid all at once. So make sure you give them multiple articles at once.

Proofreading

Next, you proofread the post. This was a bottleneck for a long time, and it is for a lot of people.

So you’ve done the keyword research, created article frameworks, hired the right writers and now you’re getting a bunch of articles back. This can be a real pain to proofread all these posts. The way you can get around this is just by using a trusted writer.

🔑 This is another key to scale content creation. So you’ve been with a writer for a couple of weeks now, they’ve created a number of articles for you and they understand your style of writing.

You can then ask them if they’d like to proofread articles. Ask them if they’d like to become an editor and of course, you need to pay them a bit more since you’ve promoted them.

Part 4: Assembling the content

The article has been proofread and ready to publish. There are a couple of simple things you need to do.

Do the basic SEO

We could get really advanced into SEO but that’s not what this article is about. Instead, do the basic SEO and here’s how it goes…

Have a target keyword. You need to be doing keyword research, if not, you may as well forget about SEO. Not doing keyword research is like shooting an arrow in the dark, you don’t know what you’re aiming at.

After you have your target keyword, place it into strategic places. This includes the meta title, H1 title, URL and first 100 words of the copy.

This is going to tell the search engines exactly what your article is about.

There’s more to SEO, but this is basically the cream of SEO. I don’t know what that means but it sounds right.

Formatting and multimedia

If your article is just a big block of text, you should slap yourself… just messing around.

But seriously, you need to format your article correctly and add images and videos.

Make sure your paragraphs are not longer than 5 lines. Make sure the text size isn’t too small, no one wants to read a textbook.

Throw in some images and videos, this will help explain what your saying, give users a better understanding and give some life to your post.

Part 5: Repurpose high performing content

If you find a particular article is performing exceptionally well, it’s worth trying it in another format and seeing what happens.

You could convert your article into a YouTube video, you could then record a podcast episode.

How about taking out a few snippets from the article and putting it into a social media post?

Make sure to squeeze the most from your content by repurposing it.

🔑 Do the task first and then outsource

Before outsourcing something, you should do the task and then outsource. This ensures that you understand what’s going on and you know what goes into it.

You become aware of the problems employees/freelancers face and you can help to relieve them.