Step 1: Identify Common Challenges When Upscaling Content Production
In-house content creation has many challenges that hinder content production scaling.
These challenges typically include bandwidth, productivity, and business goals.
If your main limitation is team bandwidth: the best solution is to outsource content creation.
In fact, 50% of organizations choose to outsource their content marketing efforts according to the B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Insights for 2022 by Content Marketing Institute.
The most successful content teams are outsourced or are composed of multiple people, according to that same survey.
Organizations that outsourced their content creators saw positive results with their content marketing efforts across a wide range of metrics and goals.
These include increased website engagement, conversions, and traffic.
86% of organizations who outsource content, according to CMI’s B2B report in 2021, specifically outsourced content creation.
But when it comes to outsourcing content initiatives, many content marketing teams are faced with major problems, such as finding writers.
Don’t worry, we can help.
Step 2: Find & Retain Reliable Writers In Your Industry
It’s very easy to find writers.
There are plenty of freelance communities, gig marketplaces, job boards, and individual freelance websites to choose from.
Finding reliable writers is the hard part.
CMI’s B2B report noted that the top challenge 65% of organizations faced when outsourcing content was finding someone with topical expertise.
To make it easier for you, here’s a checklist of what to look for when finding reliable outsourced writers:
- Does your freelance job listing specify the industry the writer should be experienced in?
- Does your potential writer have portfolios and writing samples?
- Are the writing samples specific to your industry?
- Does the potential writer have testimonials available for review?
- Do you have the bandwidth to review all incoming portfolios and samples?
Once you’ve found the right number of freelance writers for your content needs, be sure to focus on retaining them with consistent work and competitive pay.
Otherwise, you will find yourself constantly searching for new freelancers to fulfill your content production needs
Step 3: Reduce Administrative Time Spent On Content Creation
The next challenge that you may face when outsourcing your content marketing efforts is the amount of time spent in-house managing your outsourced writers.
Let’s say that your organization’s content needs require a pool of seven freelancers to fulfill.
Your next steps are to:
- Introduce them to your organization and it’s products or services.
- Discuss ideation and new topic briefs.
- Follow up on upcoming or missed deadlines.
- Discuss payment options and make payments.
For this step, we recommend looking for creative ways to reduce that administrative time and improve your content marketing ROI.
Creating a standardized onboarding routine or introducing an automated system makes a great addition to scaling your content creation journey.
Step 4: Get The Content You Want The First Time
Build out a standardized brief-creation strategy to ensure that each writer understands the specific goal of their content.
In addition to communicating with freelancers discussed above, you’ll want to be mindful of the time spent getting your content from the first draft to publishing-ready.
Depending on the quality of the writers you have chosen, this may be as simple as one round of proofreading to several rounds of comments and revisions.
Creating a standardized brief process helps to streamline and speed up the content creation process.
How Contentfly Simplifies The Outsourced Content Creation Process
If the steps above seem daunting, Contentfly can help bring outsourced writers online faster.
Speed Up The Writer Selection Process With Pre-Vetted Writer Pools
When you sign up with Contentfly, you no longer have to search for individual writers to create your content.
The process for finding new writers is simple:
- Submit a content request through the Contentfly dashboard.
- Contentfly matches your content request to a writer that fits your industry.
- You receive a completed piece of content within a specified time frame based on the length of your content.
Implement A Streamlined Onboarding & Payment Process
Contentfly handles the vetting process and assigns content requests to the appropriate writers.
On top of removing tedious administrative work, Contentfly will also work with you to get writers up to speed about your organization and content goals.
This means you no longer have to worry about where to find the best source of writers or how much time it will take to individually introduce each one to your organization and project.
In addition, Contentfly handles all of the contact with writers for each content request.
This will reduce the amount of administrative time spent setting deadlines and following up about content pieces.
Remove The Editing Step & Publish Immediately
Another big hassle eliminated from the content creation process by choosing Contentfly is editing.
Instead of receiving a first draft that you have to review, comment upon, and return to the writer, you receive a piece of content that is ready to publish.
This reduces the amount of time your in-house team must spend on multiple rounds of editing and following up with writers.
It also allows you to plan your content around specified turnaround times that include a round of editing.
Even if revisions are needed, you can communicate them through your Contentfly dashboard as opposed to having to track down emails from various freelancers.
Contentfly has a pool of writers that have been vetted for writing skill and writing quality. Only 1% of the writers who apply to Contentfly are accepted.