While content is essential to many agencies, creating an efficient content production system can be challenging—so let us show you how.
In this presentation, Seeker founder, Gareth Simpson, demonstrates how to scale your content marketing efforts by using smart systems and automation. By taking a process-driven approach, you can scale your creative output and keep creatives happy. It’s a win-win.
Instant Digital Issuance: An Overview With Critical First Touch Best Practices
How to build a scalable content production system.
1.
2. How to Build a Scalable
Content Production System
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3. ● Gareth Simpson
● Founder of Seeker Digital
● Specialise in outreach for SaaS and
ecommerce brands
● @simpsongareth
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About me
4. What we do
PR & Media MentionsTechnical SEO Content Marketing
Onpage OptimisationLink Detox Outreach Campaigns
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5. ValueCost Quality
Plug and play content tracking system.
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6. ● So many overlook the importance of content
production systems to scale.
● Facilitate the presentation, discovery and
accessibility of content.
C.U.L.T: The four pillars of SEO
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8. The scaling challenge
Cost Unpredictability
Organisation Confusion
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9. The problem is not that business
owners don’t work, it’s that they’re
doing the wrong work.
- Michael Gerber
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10. Break the mould
The solution
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11. It’s all in the commitment to infrastructure
The answer:
SystemsPeople Training
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12. You need multiple people, multiple skill sets.
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13. Break the mould
So Why is it that SEO agencies have
an imbalanced ratio?
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14. SEO: Content Ratio
One of the best strategic decisions I made running this agency was to put content first.
SEOWriter Editor
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15. Writing for the web
Semantic search
Technical SEO
Formats
3
Nuances of writing web content. It is different: UX, calls to action etc.
How to ideate using keyword research and provide better coverage off a topic.
Link placement, anchor texts, internal linking, onpage optimization etc.
Training on every element of the process and content types e.g. how to hit the
deliverables for each.
2
1
4
Training
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19. ● Google Drive
● Google Docs
● Google Sheets
We love GSuite
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20. Information storage
Create a collaborative system that’s accessible to everyone.
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21. While every piece of content is different,
there are many commonalities.
Template everything.
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22. Writing
Writers need an editor to assist content
production and editing.
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30. APIs/ Microservices: By interconnecting multiple systems together, you can
leverage the strengths of each without being siloed.
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31. Zapier is a collection of API clients
that interconnects various systems.
It has a graphical user interface
and provides fast deployment for
interconnecting systems and
creating an all-in-one solution.
A wonderful tool
called Zapier.
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Deadline
Budget
(Working) Title
Direction / Messaging / Research
Meta-d
Target terms
Links
Parameters
Direction / Research
No briefing or discussion on Slack. The communication and discussion should live with the content—don’t split it.
Production
Once that has been added, it’s over to the writer, with an optional step of the content manager assigning briefs according to workload, specialism etc.
Always have a selection of briefs for the writer to pick from so they can choose depending on their mood etc, pick away as they go and mull it over in between other tasks.
Use the features such as X for speed hacks.
Edits
Once the writer has completed the article, it’s submitted to the editor for review. A fresh pair of eyes, to scan over the piece, fix any errors, suggest improvement and review against the brief.
Routines are so important so milestones don’t slip. Habit. Have a submission time end of the day or 3pm for all completed content to be submitted and reviewed.
This phase loops back around as many times as needed.
You may have an additional step where one writer creates an outline/research to be expanded by another writer which can free up their time.
Approval
You may require an optional step to get S/O from the client.
We move the content from an internal production drive to a shared Google Drive with the client for review, they can comment, edit etc.
Thanks to the cloud functionality this is pretty straightforward, as you move the document around the folders it inherits the sharing permissions of the folder you can move content back internally to work privately without clients being on the doc.
Publishing
Once all amendments have been made and content has been signed off, it’s time to push it live.
This could be on an external domain, in which case it may need to be emailed over, or shared.
If on a site you have publishing access to then it can be automated using Contently.
Promotion
For each piece consider your post publishing actions:
Billing
Reporting
Promotion
You may wish to have the writer produce social media content queued up for promo, or ads etc.
Housekeeping post publishing is really important. Get rid of the internal document so it doesn’t get picked up somewhere.
And whilst every content piece is different, there are many commonalities amongst them. Template everything.
Designated content formats and a cataloguing system to quantify time and cost. Over time you work out how long each content format takes to a rough order of magnitude.