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How to Create Content at Scale: Expert Tips

CopySmiths July 20, 2022

Having a high-quality digital product or service is great, but it’s not enough to get the attention of your customers. To compete in today’s online market and increase your number of web visitors, you need to scale your content.

But let’s be honest, online content has reached the point of oversaturation, and readers are pickier than ever.

This is why the process of scaling your content must involve more than just growth. It’s not just about producing more and more blog posts, or videos.

True scale is a process that can be:
Shared across teams
Optimized for better results
Replicated for future projects

Creating content at scale takes planning and organization in every stage of the process. When your scaling process focuses on quantity while neglecting quality, you’re more likely to create off-brand content that lacks authenticity.

This will result in a diminishing return on investment (ROI) since no one wants to share, comment on, or interact with low-quality blog posts.

The good news is that you can scale while staying efficient. All you have to do is re-calibrate your content production process and your team. It does take energy, time, and resources—but our expert tips can help you get started.

Tip 1: Start With a Plan

According to the 2020 Content Marketing Institute report, 69% of the most successful content marketers have a documented strategy, while only 16% of the least successful marketers do.

This data proves that it’s not enough to have a content strategy if it doesn’t work. Sure, you can scale up, but will the new content you create be useful to your readers?

First, you need to define your goals. Maybe you want to publish more articles so that you can:

Tell your readers how your products can help them
Increase your social media engagement
Introduce your brand to a new audience
Establish your brand as an industry authority

Write Relevant Articles

Knowing your goals will help you identify the type of content your audience wants to read. This, in turn, makes it easier for you to find the right keywords, headlines, and content ideas—at scale.

You can then build your editorial calendar around your best content ideas so you don’t have to start from scratch every time you want to write an article.

See the Bigger Picture

With the right content strategy, you’ll have plenty of time to create articles and ensure that every one is well written.

A clear image of the volume of articles you have to create (and by what date) will also help you plan your budget and organize a team that can handle the workload.

The video below shows an instance where one of our clients was running out of steam when creating content. After shifting domains, and without a reliable content plan, Google also started to rank them for all the wrong keywords.

With our services, we were able to help them get back on track by implementing a strategy that focused on educating and entertaining their readers. We also set publishing dates in their CMS to ensure there was always fresh content on their site. Their search engine results became more consistent as a result.

Tip 2: Define Clear Content Guidelines

Creating content at scale means you’ll be coordinating a team of content strategists, writers, editors, designers, and maybe even video and audio experts.

With so many people involved, it’s wise to set some ground rules. Writers will need a reference they can turn to for guidelines about your brand voice. Designers will need a guide for the fonts and color themes to use, as will the editors, publishers, and every other member of your content team.

It’s important to define your brand guidelines to ensure that all the content you produce maintains a similar look and feel.

To get started, analyze the existing content on your website. The table below summarizes some important metrics you can use to get started:

Metric	Description	What it Tells You
Time spent on page	The average time a reader spends on a post	Measures if your content is relevant and valuable
Pages per visit	The number of pages viewed over a given time divided by the site visits in that time frame	Does your content have more external links than internal links?
Bounce rate	Number of readers that visit your site but don’t interact with your content	Measures if your content is resonating with your audience
SERP rankings	Results returned by search engine queries	Is your content optimized for search?

The posts with the most visits may have catchy headlines, while the posts with the highest engagement may be the most entertaining.

Take note of these patterns and define rules in your content guide to help your team create content that your readers already love. You can also include a list of industry terms to use and buzzwords to avoid.

Clear content guidelines, as well as templates, will help you get the most out of each article when creating content at scale. Besides, readers will always recognize your brand’s voice, regardless of who creates your content.

At CopySmiths, we encourage our clients to provide detailed briefs with instructions about their keywords, CTAs, and other brand details. We also have internal templates and comprehensive training that ensures everyone on our team is on the same page. Our content recipe is tried-and-tested, and it complies with Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines.

Take a look at how we were able to help one of our customers improve their SERP rankings in as little as two months using our foolproof content guidelines:

“CopySmiths has provided excellent, well-researched and thorough blog content for our website. What I truly appreciate, is their willingness and patience to work with me. They go as far as publishing every article directly through our eCommerce platform so it’s truly a hands-off experience. Katrina and her team of writers are well-versed in what Google looks for in ranking articles – already seeing traction in a number of blog posts and it’s only been 2 months.” — Ryan Popoff, Popov Leather

Expert Tip: To standardize your workflow and produce content even faster, we recommend that you break down the tasks and assign responsibilities to your team so everyone knows what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

Tip 3: Know When to Outsource

The challenge of having an in-house content team vs outsourcing is that an in-house team may not have the skills or resources needed to sustain your content creation process.

They’ll need to find high-traffic keywords, create your content, edit it, and publish it on time. When you factor in all the different types of copy—including web copy, social media content, long-form articles, and newsletters—there’s just too much for a small team to handle.

In most cases, scaling your content will mean scaling your team as well.

The other option is to lessen the load on your in-house content team by outsourcing some content production processes to a third party.

If you’re unsure about outsourcing, here are four indicators to let you know if it’s time. You should also know that 84% of B2B marketers outsource their content creation process, so it’s more common than you might think.

We’ve compiled several content production activities that companies like yours outsource in the table below:

Content Production Process	Percentage of B2B Companies that Outsource
Content creation	84%
Content distribution	31%
Content strategy	13%
Editorial planning	13%

The next challenge lies in finding a suitable content agency to work with. Depending on your budget flexibility, you can also choose to work with a freelance SEO writer.

If you have a strict budget and are looking for a hands-off approach, we recommend working with a custom content agency that has:

Multi-level quality control system to ensure consistent quality
A clear understanding of Google EAT principles and use search intent
Trained writers that can create concise content that reads naturally

At CopySmiths, we have a team that can do everything for you from content ideation, writing and design, to publishing.

Outsourcing, however, doesn’t mean that you have to give up all the responsibility of your content production. You can (and should) maintain an internal content manager who understands your brand’s voice and can act as your gatekeeper for outsourced content.

Our process is set up this way simply to ensure that we produce quality content for you every time. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us for quality blog articles, at scale.

“It has been a pleasure working with CopySmiths–they are reliable, efficient, and great at curating high-quality content on complex subjects.“ — Sander Tamm, e-student.org

b2b brands outsource at least one content marketing activity

Source: B2B Content Marketing 2020

Tip 4: Repurpose Old Content

As you may already know, fresh content is king on Google. However, churning out new media regularly is tiring work, and you may not have the resources for it.

So how about making your old content new again? There are several ways to do this:

Replace outdated keywords in old posts with relevant keywords.
Use current SEO practices to format older articles.
Repurpose reports and case studies into articles.
Replace broken and old links with up-to-date sources.
Review comments on your articles and incorporate feedback into your content.
Add more visual and interactive elements to your content.
Update product and service information.

Repurposing old content will also allow you to reach a wider audience, reinforce your brand’s message, and gain more authority in the industry—all with minimal investments in time and money.

For instance, Hootsuite repurposed their 2021 Digital Report into a blog post as well as a video. Since it’s easier to refresh old media than it is to create new media, you can produce more content at a much faster rate with this method.

Source: Wikimedia

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to create content at scale?

It all depends on who you hire to get the job done. It might be cheaper to outsource if you need bulk content delivered fast.

Businesses with flexible budgets can afford to hire freelance writers, but if you have a strict budget, it’s best to hire a custom content shop.

Learn more about our pricing.

Will my site traffic increase when I scale my content?

Not necessarily. While publishing high-quality content on a regular basis is a great way to increase your rankings, some other factors may hinder your success.

If your site contains questionable backlinks, or if your blog articles aren’t linked to other pages, you won’t see positive results.

What is the number one tip to scaling content effectively?

Don’t rush the process. It’s important that you scale naturally and intentionally.

Just because you can jump from one blog post per week to ten doesn’t mean you should. Instead, execute at a steady pace, measure the results, and use the feedback to scale in an even more efficient way.

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CopySmiths

I'm Katrina McKinnon, founder of CopySmiths and Small Revolution. In my 20 years of experience, I have helped online businesses create high-performing content specifically on an eCommerce store's blog. Find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.