A 5-step framework to scale your content operations and SEO

Don’t lie.

Show of hands.

How many times have you uttered the following in the last year alone?

• “I can’t find any good writers.”

• “No one can create content as well as me.”

• “Content marketing / SEO doesn’t work in our niche.”

• “That agency just doesn’t understand our unique POV.”

• “I can’t publish more than X articles/mo without quality dropping.”

Probably all of them at one point. Amiright?

But here’s the thing you need to recognize about these oft-repeated clichés:

They’re excuses. All of them.

Here’s why you’re your own worst enemy when it comes to scaling content creation and SEO, and how to solve it so you get back on track ASAP.

Here’s an overview graphic, and then I'll dig into the first few sections in detail.

1. Role specialization

The best writers make bad editors and terrible content managers.

Why?

Because the best writers thrive on ingenuity, saying the same thing multiple times in multiple ways.

Editors should be the opposite, in constant pursuit of consistency and uniformity.

Meanwhile, managers are the glue that keeps the other two’s big-picture goals and day-to-day actions aligned.

In other words, completely different skill sets that too many teams try to force into one individual.

It’s the Michael Scott problem. Great paper salesman. Funny television character. Awful regional manager.

Roll back a few centuries, and the solution comes from the unlikeliest of places: the military.

The brigade management system even influenced the organization of professional kitchens.

It provides the flexibility and coordination to create hundreds of items, all in sync, within minutes of each other, so that all of your table’s food comes out simultaneously with different preparations.

Content teams should be organized in the same fashion.

This starts with separating your writers, editors, and managers.

From there, as you grow in both stature and resources, you continue adding specializations to master each small piece of the much larger content operation machine – like a giant factory assembly line.

It would help if you also had a well-defined workflow where:

• The strategists work on strategy.

• The planners plan.

• The writers write.

• The editors edit.

• The producers coordinate.

You can add designers, videos, and distribution specialists to the mix as you grow.

2. Content quality checklists

This shouldn’t be a trick question, but it often is:

How would you define “good” content?

Everyone talks about the importance of “good” content. Yet, no one can define it the same.

Ask 10 people in your organization, and you’ll get 10 different answers.

As you can expect, that answer is not good enough.

Sorry to be blunt. But the longer you fly without radar keeping you on track, the better your odds of a crash landing.

Documenting a specific quality checklist is the bare minimum that needs to happen right now. Not tomorrow or next week.

And in it, you should define the overall structure of most content, along with the nitty-gritty details for each sub-section – from word counts to source preferences to image criteria.

The more fleshed out this starting point, the faster you’ll:

• Train writers.

• Reduce editing time.

• Drive up ROI (better results for less investment).

The second lesson here is to show, don’t tell.

A good example is your acceptable angles.

Be specific, laying out the ones you like or don’t like, and listing resources to show writers, editors, senior management, clients, or whoever, exactly what these things should look like.

We’re talking OCD levels of organization here because it gets everyone on the same page.

And when everyone is on the same page, your life becomes easier.

Hiring and firing become almost automatic. Everyone knows the expectations and is aligned. The number of dumb questions or stupid arguments evaporates into thin air.

Who knows. You might even get your weekends back to yourself!

The trickle-down effects are magical.

Our senior editors have a one-hour guideline.

They should not spend longer than one hour editing an article. Because if so, that means the writer screwed up. So the problems should be flagged and sent back to them.

Then, we can review an editor’s time across multiple pieces (or clients or writers) and spot operational issues at a moment’s notice.

Too little time spent editing might mean those writers are due a pay increase, while too long spent editing would signal the opposite.

Sound good? Next, I’m going over:

• How to make standardized templates, briefs & outlines

• Creating guidelines and sources for writers, plus...

• Batch and parallel processes

See you then.

-Brad