We all like the concept of scaling
content creation. You publish more pages, rank for a ton of
keywords, and as a result, you grow faster what seems to be less effort. But there are two huge problems
that often come with this. #1. As you publish more content,
the quality tends to degrade. And with around 7.5 million blog posts being
published everyday, it's tough to stand out with mediocre content. And #2. It can get expensive. But that's often because a lot of companies
build systems in a very inefficient way. So in this tutorial, I'm going to show you how
to scale content creation with maximum output and cost efficiency all while
controlling the quality of your content. Stay tuned. [music] What's up everyone? It's Sam Oh and before we get started, I want
to note that today's tutorial isn't so much about SEO or marketing like our other videos. But I want to take some time to talk about
systems and management because the efficiency of our marketing is usually dictated
based on these things. So if you'd like to see more of this type
of content, let me know in the comments because your feedback is always appreciated. Alright, so first, we need to talk about two reasons
why scaling content is super important today. Because it's not easy to do it well, it's
not cheap, so in order for you to succeed, you have to understand why you're doing it. So #1. On average, it takes somewhere
between 8 to 60 touchpoints to make a sale. Meaning, someone has to interact with
your business whether that be via content, word of mouth, a sales team or whatever
before they'll actually buy something. And of these touch points, helpful content
is probably the easiest, cheapest and least intrusive way to reach a mass
audiences on a consistent basis. And #2. Your competitors are probably doing it. And if they are there helping and serving
your audience then prospects will probably choose them over you. Now, in order to understand how to create a
scalable content system, without massively degrading the quality of content, we need to
look at the basic process of content creation. So, you'll usually start with an outline that's
based around a topic you've discovered when doing keyword research. You'll write the draft, edit it, get any media
together like a featured image, social images, custom images, videos or whatever,
and then hit the publish button. Now, you might be thinking in order to scale
this process, you just need to add more rows running in parallel. But that's probably the worst thing you can do
because you're assuming that each person will produce articles with the same level of quality
and operate at the same level of efficiency. It's unrealistic because people are different
and so are the different tasks in the system. Plus, if you're hiring individual people full
time to do all of these steps is going to be way more expensive than it has to be. Instead, you want something that resembles
an assembly line, where each person in the workflow is working in the same direction,
with the same guidelines, at a balanced pace. And when this happens, each person is contributing
to what becomes a well oiled machine. Now, while this might not seem like a crazy
improvement at first glance, there's a lot of things that go into each part
to make them efficient. So let's walk through each step and go through
some tips to maximize efficiency all while controlling your quality lever. Alright, the first step is to set up your
system for project management. Now, this is what your team will be using
on a daily basis to create content. And its purpose is twofold. #1. It systemizes the workflow for
your content creation process; and #2. It gives everyone on the team a high level
view of the status of any post at any given time. At Ahrefs, we use Kanban boards in Notion,
where each card represents a post or video. Now, we start by assigning a post
to a member of our team. And when they've done their part, they'll
leave any necessary comments, reassign the card to the next person in the process,
and then move it down the assembly line. If you want to create something similar, you
can use project management tools like Notion, Trello, or Airtable. And the main columns you'll want to create
are outlining, drafting, editing, and publishing. Now, if your organization has other steps
you want to add in, then feel free to. For example, we have a pretty heavy
feedback and review process. So we have two columns for that
in our Notion board. Alternatively, you can use Google Sheets to
create a similar effect where you'd have details about each post and update the stage fields
as it progresses through your pipeline. Bottomline: there's no reason not to set this
up even if you're a one-person show. It'll help you stay organized and have a solid
foundation for a future content system. Alright, the next step is to create SOPs. SOP stands for standard operating procedure. And these are detailed documents and
videos that explain how to carry out a task from start to finish. Now, SOPs are absolutely critical
for 5 main reasons. #1. If someone quits or you let them go, SOPs
make it super-easy to hire and onboard new help. #2. They ensure that the writing style and
formatting are consistent across your site. #3. They help to get tasks done faster. Reason being, as you identify inefficiencies in
your processes, your SOPs should get updated with the modified methods. And this also keeps everyone in the loop
and your content consistent. #4. It saves you time from answering
the same questions over and over again. And #5. It allows you to eventually remove
yourself from the process while still maintaining full efficiency. And I could give you 10 more
reasons, but I'll spare you the rant. The bottomline is that you need to create SOPs
for each task so things are done the way you want them to get done. And these will help with quality control too. Now, in order to create SOPs in such great
detail, you need to learn and document the steps for each process. Meaning, you or a team lead should learn how
to do keyword research, create content briefs, write content, edit it, and upload
it to your CMS. So for us, we have SOPs for writers where
we cover style guidelines, content guidelines, and more. And then we have an SOP for an editor where
we cover how they can best do their job. And for a task like content briefs and keyword
research, Josh, the person in charge of our blog, is still doing this. But you can bet your bottom dollar that if
and when someone takes over these tasks, they'll be thoroughly documented. Alright, the next step is to prepare
your content assets. In addition to SOPs, you'll need to do keyword
research to build a bank of topics and create content briefs for writers before
you assign them topics. Now, I won't get into keyword research because
we have tons of tutorials that walk you through how to do it, but I do want to talk about
the importance of content briefs and how to create them. So a content brief is basically an outline
you'd create for writers on what you expect to see in your piece. And briefs are usually
accompanied with an SOP. Now, the reason they're important is
because writers aren't necessarily familiar with SEO copywriting. And when you're scaling content, search engines
are definitely a place you want to get traffic from because it's free, consistent, and passive. So by creating a brief, you can actually guide
the writer to create something that's better optimized for search - especially in
the area of matching searcher intent. So if I wanted to outsource a post on a topic
like "what are high quality backlinks," I'd start with a working title, ask for an intro where
I'd basically reiterate what we have in our SOP, I'd have all my heading tags filled in
to guide the flow, and I'd make notes under each section if there were specific
areas I wanted discussed. Now, what this does is it helps writers to create
an article in the structure we expect to see, it formats the HTML with proper heading tags,
it helps the writers to produce content quickly, and it saves the editor a ton of
time from editing posts. And all of these benefits come at the cost
of spending around 15-45 minutes per brief. Now, if you're not an SEO, we have a full
video on SEO copywriting, so feel free to watch that tutorial and create
your own SOP from it. Alright on to the most difficult part of
this whole process and that's hiring. So coming back to our flow chart, you can
see that you'll need someone to do keyword research and create content briefs. You'll likely need multiple freelance writers. You'll need at least one editor, and then
someone to upload and publish your content to your CMS. Now, you might be tempted to go
and hire one person for each role. But as I mentioned before, people
work at different paces. And if one person or group of people work
significantly slower or faster than another, then you end up with bottlenecks
in your system. So if efficiency is your goal, you'll want to hire
based on creating an equal flow in your system. For example, let's say that a junior SEO spends
1 day per month to do keyword research. And on a weekly basis, they can comfortably
put together 15 content briefs or approximately three per day. Then that means, in order to reach an equal
flow and have a smooth-flowing content system, you need to have enough writers
who can keep up with this person. Now, assuming each freelance writer, on average,
can write two posts per week, then you'd need 7-8 freelance writers to keep up. Now, onto the editing stage. If one full-time editor can review and edit
15 posts per week or 3 per day, then we're in a good cycle. And assuming the uploader can upload 25 posts
per week or 5 posts per day, then you'd only need them for part-time hours. The system is in almost perfect flow,
reaching almost its maximum potential. So now we have a general idea of how many
people we'd need to hire and of course, you can adjust these numbers based on
your organization's goals, processes, and productivity levels. Now, hiring an SEO, an editor, and
an uploader is pretty easy. You just put together a job post, publish them
on various networks, interview people who seem to be good candidates, hire,
train and move on. Now, the tricky part is hiring freelance writers
because a) you need a lot of them; b) you'll probably get the most applications for this
position; and c) writing is probably the most subjective part of this process. So let me walk you through a system we've
used to filter through over 350 applications in around an hour. Now, much like the other job listings, you'll want
to create a detailed job post about the position. And you can post these on sites like Problogger
jobs, Upwork, LinkedIn, your website's job page, or wherever. But the key part to this application
is the way writers should apply. And that's through a Google form. And there are three main advantages to using
a Google form when hiring freelance writers or for any position where you'll get hundreds
or even thousands of applications. #1. You won't get spammed with emails. And this usually results in annoyance and
you end up missing out on potentially good applications because you just
mark emails as read. #2. Google Forms has a direct integration
with Google Sheets. Meaning, every time someone fills out the form,
it'll automatically get fed into Google Sheets. And this allows you to create scoring mechanisms
to automatically qualify or disqualify candidates. For example, one of the questions in our
freelance writer form is: "Define SEO and explain its importance in 50 words or less." So we created a formula to count
the number of words. And if it's over 50, then we won't
even see the application. And #3. You can test writers' knowledge,
skills, and styles at scale. And we do this with both paragraph questions,
which requires manual review, and some multiple choice skill-testing questions which
automatically gets graded. Alright, once you have a pool of vetted candidates,
you don't want to just hire them and send your content briefs. These people have just passed a sniff test. What I highly recommend doing is
to send them a paid writing test. And each writer should get the exact same test
so you can get an apples to apples comparison. So what we'll do is send a sample content
brief and any relevant SOPs. And each writer will be asked to write
a somewhat fragmented article that's similar to what we post on our blog. We'll then review their work using a set of
criteria that we're looking for which we call our "quality writer guidelines." And having these guidelines in place allows
us to fairly assess each writer's skills, style, and ability to follow instructions. Now, for the writers that pass this test,
they'll be sent a content brief for an article that we plan to publish. And we'll send them as many so-called "beta
articles" before we actually commit to making them a regular writer for our blog. The process isn't short, but it ensures that
we uphold the quality of our content which is super-important for us. Now, just because your system tells you that
you should have 10 people to work on your site, it doesn't mean you should
go and hire 10 people today. I highly recommend that you start as SEO,
editor, and/or project manager and focus on hiring solid writers first because that's
usually the hardest part to fill. And once you have a team of writers, you
can look to fill other roles which shouldn't be as challenging. Alright, so now that you've created your SOPs
and hired people for tasks you're not involved in, the final step is to optimize your processes. Now, as your system runs, you're going to
find imperfections and inefficiencies. And just as you would do regular maintenance
for a vehicle, you'll want to do the same for your content system. For example, if multiple people in your team
ask the same questions, then that's a sign to document it in your SOPs. Or if you find an inefficiency in your system,
speak with the people who are involved in those stages and brainstorm how
you can make them better. Now, the final thing I want to show you is
what this system looks like in action and how easily it can be scaled. So let's go back to our previous example. If we have one SEO who can produce 15 content
briefs per week, seven writers who are outputting two articles per week per writer, or 14 in total,
one editor that can edit 15 posts per week, and a part-time uploader who can upload five pieces
per day, or a maximum potential of 25 posts per week, then we have a total of 14 published
articles per week or two per day. This is quite a lot for a single blog. Now, let's add another SEO in here
to create content briefs. We now get 30 of them per week. We'll actually add nine new freelance writers,
for a total of 16 freelance writers or 32 articles per week. And now we're actually going to offer one
of our best technical writers a full time position as an editor. So our output now drops to 30 articles per
week and we have two editors that can edit all of them. Finally, we employ the uploader full time and
either pay them overtime to work another day's worth of uploading, reprioritize their
workload, or bring on another person who can upload our posts to WordPress. And we're now publishing 30 pieces of content
per week which is six posts per business day. And if you want more, then just do the math
and hire more help as needed. And at this point, you should be able to act
as project manager just to make sure that everything is continuing to run
in a smooth way. Now, as you add more steps to this process,
it'll slow down the output which is totally fine. But a way to avoid unnecessary bottlenecks
is to prioritize appropriately. For example, if you create custom graphics
for featured images, I'd recommend doing that at the content brief stage. This way, your designer has sufficient time
to create your graphic, get feedback, and make any necessary revisions. Now, while this system should make sense
conceptually, it's not as easy as it looks. It takes time to find good writers, train
multiple people for multiple roles, and to build a team that really works well together. So if you want to get started with this system,
I again highly recommend that you try all the different steps until you've
really mastered them. Start slow, build out, and with enough commitment
and hard work, you should be able to build out a scalable content system
that works for you. Now, if you enjoyed this video, make sure to
like, share, and subscribe for more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials. I'll see you in the next one.
