Managing & scaling outsourced content production

Quotes

• “As we already talked about, first is having the right set of instructions for them but lets say youve got that team of writers who is already familiar with you and the kind of content you need, I think one thing that is critical is not thinking youre done.” -Kevin

• “I think you really do need to pay attention to what the output is on a author by author basis. This is true whether its internal or outsourced. Its very possible that they slip a bit or lose some creativity just because how many times can they write aboutessentially the same topic, day after day after day.” -Kevin

• “So my most critical piece of advice is, dont assume youre done. You still need to watch what is going on, keep people encouraged and maybe give some people breaks if you think that might make sense because creativity is not infinite.” -Kevin

• “The signs of someone getting burned out is of course different for each one. For us, the one that we tend to see, and this could be a little tricky to recommend but we do a bunch of plagiarism checksbecause no matter what the use of the content is, and for both internal and outsourced, it cannot be plagiarized so we got some automated ways built in where we can kind of watch and make sure that our authors is not plagiarizing any kind of content on the web but also that they are not plagiarizing themselves or sort of spinning and coming back to the same topic basically talking about it in different words but essentially the same way.” -Kevin

• “One thing I really want to make clear is that if you are going for a quality content, you should never assume that you can assign something to a writer and then youre done. I would argue that the better the writer, the better the editor. You need to havean editorial review built into your content creation process and thats where I think you should be able to rely on those editors.” -Kevin

• “I think the way to do it is by sampling. We got one client for example where we are producing literally hundredsof blog posts every week. Its an agency so they have hundreds of clients. So we are creating blog posts for each of their hundred of clients, every single week and in some cases, twice a week. So theres no way they can be reading everything.” -Kevin

• “So that client is digging into like a random 5% of what we produce each week and they got people internally on their staff that they have trained and they trust looking to something that has gone wrong or if it is on the level that they need. So they come back and give us a score.” -Kevin

• “Working with an outsourced team doesnt mean that they dont require management. That is one of the key points to consider when youre thinking about outsourcing your content.” -Kevin

• “Content is part of who and whatyour company is. So making sure that the tone is right, the style is right, and the approach is always consistent and your audience and your customers kind of know what to expect from you and not disappointing them. Those are all critical things and the only way to make sure it works is to put thought into every single step.” -Kevin