Chapter 11. Scaling Content Like a Production Manager
Assuming that you love Oreos, I’ll bet that you have never questioned why these delicious pieces of heaven must be produced in batches. You understand that this sophisticated production line taking place somewhere in the world guarantees that your cookie will taste consistently crunchy and the cream will have just the right amount of sugar. You are also fully aware that millions of humans just like you expect their chocolate dose to be readily available 24/7. Therefore, no one is asking why a company like Nabisco needs to build sophisticated production and assembly lines to survive. How else could it guarantee the quality, quantity, and overall deliciousness of an Oreo cookie? This begs the question:
Why, then, do we struggle with looking at content as the end result of a standardized production cycle?
Just like baking your favorite chocolate cookie, crafting a content piece demands a certain level of consistency, standardization, and quality control. The problem for many creators, however, is that we remain trapped in the paradigm of viewing content as though it were 100 percent art. Trust me, I understand where you are coming from: writing, drawing, filming, designing, recording, painting, and other endeavors linked to content creation do require a thorough creative process. They emerge from our most genuine forms of inspiration and absolutely contain an element of self-expression. What we are better off staying away from is the notion that content can’t be scaled, extended, or systematized.
In marketing theory, there is a concept called an extended product that can easily help us to understand what a full content product entails.
The extended product is one of three layers that encompasses packaging, distribution, and support. In our society, content pieces are products—in and of themselves. Articles, for example, must be seen as full-on products with packaging, distribution, and promotion needs. An extended product is the final, most-encompassing version of what you are offering. Let’s take a closer look at these layers (see also Figure 11-1):
- The core product
- This is the most basic need satisfied by what you are selling. In other words, the core product is the underlying benefit that your item is here to offer. Going back to Oreos, this would be something along the lines of “satisfied hunger.” In an article about writing tips, this core content product would be “the ability to write better” or “improve one’s writing.”
- The actual product
- This layer encompasses the physical, real manifestation of the product. For Oreos, the actual product would be the chocolate cookie itself. In content, it is quite literally the content piece itself.
- The extended product
- This is the core product plus the actual product plus complementary features that make up the consumption experience. Looking at Oreos, this would include the packaging, marketing, and post-sale support offered by the company to enrich the consumer’s experience. For content, the extended content product entails every additional component added to guarantee that the content piece is effectively consumed by an audience. In our example about writing tips, the extended content product could involve distributing the article among certain groups, a strategy to respond to comments on the article, use of supporting graphics, and any features that enhance the article’s readability.
Figure 11-1. Understanding the extended content product
Are you beginning to see why we can’t think in terms of producing a “simple article” or “just a video”? Whenever you consider the content creation process, make sure to contemplate the extended or augmented version of every piece. In doing so, you will realize that this is about much more than a moment of inspiration. Content creation isn’t about waiting for a muse to appear as much as it is about learning to fabricate your own inspiration system and the distribution system to back it up—a system that is reliable and grounded in repeatable processes that are independent of random events. And how do you go about doing that? You begin by wearing the content production manager hat.
How to Become a Content Production Manager
My father has been a partner and the vice president of production at a woodworking company for more than 20 years. I remember him making detailed calculations of production line speeds, staying up late to improve defect rates, and juggling to have someone replace a broken machine—all while knowing exactly how much money was being wasted until he could succeed at all these things.
This attention to process enhancers and blockers seemed fascinating to me. He understood that the only way he could consistently ship quality doors to his customers was by tightly controlling the process behind them. He also took responsibility for the fact that a faulty step in his process meant a waste of everyone’s time and resources. Even though the buyers considered their wooden doors as special, it was my father’s job to make sure they were indeed all consistently special, with the potential to become uniquely special when the buyer took possession.
Seeing yourself as a content production manager is the only way to guarantee that all your pieces are consistently special, and have the potential to become uniquely special upon contact with the audience. As you can probably imagine, the key here is reverse-engineering “special”—understanding what makes great content and creating a path that can be followed consistently to achieve it. Your team and your audience will thank you, as their time both creating and consuming will be better invested. If your goal is to build an audience and bring long-term, high-quality attention to your content, you are better off investing in steady systems than one-off hacks. And that is, above all, what wearing the production manager’s hat means. I will share three basic steps:
Create your calendar: determine what needs to be produced.
Establish systems and routines: learn how to produce it.
Build a plan for quality assurance: figure out how to ensure that it is consistently good.
Creating an Editorial Calendar
First, understand what an editorial calendar is and what it is not. An editorial calendar becomes your best friend in guaranteeing content quality and quantity. Essentially, an editorial calendar contains your plan for content production in the upcoming days, weeks, or months. Anticipation can be as much as you want and are able to maintain.
The calendar is a roadmap that should bring clarity, not impose harsh rules. The idea is to have a living, breathing document to go back to when you are trying to learn when certain things need to happen so that other things can happen later.
Let us look at an example: if you know that 20 days from now you have included a whitepaper in your editorial calendar, it will be much easier to calculate when you need to produce each one of its components. You will know when you or your creator will have to finish writing the document in order to get it done in time. You will also be able to determine, based on known lead times, when supporting graphics need to be designed or requested. If this piece involves a certain type of distribution (like partnering with other brands), you will know exactly when to reach out and what to say when you do so. Producing consistently great content hinges on your ability to plan ahead, and an editorial calendar can make it happen.
Having a certain piece planned within your editorial calendar shouldn’t be an impediment for making needed changes. This internal document is meant to facilitate, not hinder, content innovation. If some brand comes up with a time-sensitive partnership that needs to go out on a certain date, or you realize that there is a better opportunity to release a piece of content on a different date, by all means go ahead and create changes.
Here are the five steps to create an editorial calendar:
Define your constraints.
Identify personas.
Collect content ideas.
Design extended content products.
Enter tasks by date on your calendar.
Let’s examine each of these more closely.
Step 1: Define Your Constraints
We would be terrible production managers if we did not understand that what is possible is determined by various constraints. We operate within the bounds of the existing resources, available time, and prioritized goals.
Resources such as the content budget affect what type of assistance we are able to contract and how. The time available, which can be calculated based on the amount of content team members, is also finite. Every time you decide to engage in one activity, this is time inevitably taken away from others. Lastly, we are also constrained by what has been prioritized. If you operate within a larger team, there is a high likelihood someone else made this decision for you. If you are operating solo, you have still set some goals to which you will need to adhere. Chapter 2 discusses how these content goals are shaped and articulated—feel free to go back if you need a refresher.
Creating a content budget
Given that constraints will be significantly determined by your budget, spend some time creating a list of items and costs that you will need to manage as your build your content marketing machine. Here’s a list of common expenses:
Internal staff
Design expenses
Images
Videos
Infographics
Tech infrastructure expenses
External authors or author platforms
Freelance assistants
Distribution costs
Paid boost
Distribution platform fees
Tool licenses
Proofreading
Analytics
Curation
Take action: what is possible based on what you have?
After you have defined the time and resources available, decide what cadence works well for your team. Is it possible to produce five ebooks every month? Is it reasonable to think you can create one infographic per week? How long can your articles be, and how many are you able to ship each month? Use this information as the foundation of your calendar.
Step 2: Identify Personas
Recall that Chapter 3 outlines a method to define content personas—that is, fictional people with very real needs that you design to serve as placeholders when you are trying to create something that is relevant for someone. Chapter 3 also explores the idea of convertible reader personas. These are reader or viewer profiles that you are betting on to complete a specific action at some point in time. The importance of understanding who these personas are as you create your editorial calendar can’t be overstated: no calendar would ever make sense if it isn’t built around them.
Decide how often you want to share content for each of these personas. Say Charles, Thomas, and Susie are the three content personas you have identified for a blog about innovation. You know that, out of the three, Thomas is a more strategic reader to target in the long run. Perhaps he is more prone to share your content, or his follow-up purchases are of higher value to you. Charles and Susie, on the other hand, are equally important. In this scenario, it would make sense to dedicate three out of five content pieces to Thomas every week, one to Charles, and one to Susie.
Something to remember is that these allocations took place from a purely internal standpoint. Publicly, nobody knows whom you are targeting with each piece in your calendar. What this means is that you might find your content appealing to all three or two of these personas, and that is perfectly fine. Sometimes, you will end up affecting viewers or readers completely outside of your target audience, and that is fine, too. As long as you are clear on how efficiently your resources are being spent, reaching a larger (unexpected) audience is always a great side effect.
Take action: how will you split your calendar to appeal to each persona?
Now is the time to ask how many pieces you will dedicate to each of the identified personas in the time period you have set for your calendar. Decide on weekly or monthly distributions that make sense for your team.
Step 3: Collect Content Ideas
Chapter 10 addresses effective content brainstorming. That chapter shows how to find new content ideas from sources like your audience’s past behavior, competitors, and totally unrelated brands. You also will find that support tickets, audience comments, and online question-and-answer platforms are great sources of potential content ideas. These forums provide insight as to what people don’t fully understand or are intrigued about. Chapter 13 introduces you to how to conduct Search Engine Optimization (SEO)–driven keyword research, which will become a major source of content inspiration for your calendar.
Exercise: How to Develop Hundreds of Content Ideas Fast
The following list combines a few items that we looked at in Chapter 10 plus additional inspiration sources that you will find useful. Keep this list handy whenever you are working on your editorial calendar.
Review content pieces that have worked well for you in the past and tweak them to come up with something new.
Look at interesting topics, headline formulas, structures, and supporting visuals from brands in other spaces. Bookmark these, as explained in Chapter 10.
Search interesting topics, headlines, structures, and visuals from brands in your same space. Bookmark these, also as explained in Chapter 10.
View online question-and-answer boards where your brand’s core topics are being discussed. Identify common questions that you could potentially answer.
Read your own audience’s comments and support tickets related to topics they would like to see more of or understand better.
Review your keyword research and detect opportunities to create SEO-driven content (more on this in Chapter 13).
Look at underperforming content pieces in your catalog and add a new twist.
As you complete step 3, remember to introduce variety in the content formats you include in the calendar. As we have learned throughout the book, even within the same persona, you will find various levels of engagement that call for particular types of content. Back to the persona example in step 2, there is a chance that you will find a low-involvement Susie and a high-involvement one. Susie is still a single persona who you want to target with content, but you could think of more visually-focused content pieces to call her attention when she is distracted and long-form content when she is focused. Ensure that your editorial calendar is diverse in relation to content formats.
Step 4: Design Extended Content Products
Having a concept is just one of the layers that makes up a full content piece. Earlier in this chapter, we saw how the core content product (main benefit) and actual content product (article, video, etc.) need to be amplified with a third layer of features so it is effectively consumed in the market.
This is where you need to think beyond the Publish button. Your calendar looks full and the ideas are there, but it will take much more than that to achieve your content goals. For every piece, there are a few items that you will want to plan for and include in your editorial calendar:
- Headline
- You miiight have a strong idea, but unless you come up with an equally compelling headline your online audience might never even see it. Chapter 8 touches exclusively on the topic of coming up with appealing headlines. Feel free to hop there to learn more.
- Structure
- Even if you have arrived at a great concept and headline, you have not shaped what the actual piece will look like until you add notes about its structure. These notes can be as detailed as your time allows, but a basic high-level outline will suffice. The more you trust your content creators (internal or external) to elaborate on your team’s ideas, the less detailed your outlines usually need to be. Some creators inevitably require more hand-holding. In these cases, be sure to provide a thorough outline that leaves little space for deviations.
- Supporting media
- Ensure that you prepare a set of supporting visuals that accompany your pieces wherever your audience might find them. Remember that your content pieces might live in many places outside of the platform where you originally hosted them. It is your job to plan the production of these visuals, and the editorial calendar is a place to include information about which of these will be required.
- Call to action
- Plan and make a note of what viewers should do after interacting with each content piece in your calendar. Should they be prompted to sign up for something, comment, or share? Confirm that this is clear from the planning stage.
- Distribution
- How are you planning to share this with your audience? Are there any paid placements or brand partnerships involved? Add the content piece to your calendar knowing how you intend to give it visibility after it is out. As I mentioned earlier, some of these distribution opportunities will require previous outreach, making the planning phase an essential component for distribution success.
- SEO
- Chapter 13 examines this topic in depth, but for now, simply consider which keyword groups you want to target with this piece. Social networks, for example, are also places where you need to optimize for discovery, not just traditional search engines. Your editorial calendar should include notes regarding the concepts or needs that the pieces are most likely to be searched for to fulfill—regardless of where that discovery takes place.
Step 5: Fill Out Your Calendar
At this point, you know what cadence is possible with what you have, understand which personas you need to aim for, own a list of content ideas to bring to life, and have augmented those ideas to make them distribution-ready. You are all set! The next step is actually filling out the calendar to reflect your decisions. It is important to record aspects like the following:
- Format
- Is it going to be a long article or a two-minute video?
- Headline
- A tentative title for the piece.
- Producer
- Who is in charge of bringing this piece to life? Are there multiple producers involved?
- Structure
- A rough outline of what the piece will look like.
- Supporting media
- Will there be any images, files, or videos to create in support of this piece?
- CTA
- What do you expect the user to do next?
- Target persona
- Name the target audience for this piece in terms of the personas you have designed for the overall content strategy.
- Distribution
- How do you anticipate this piece will be promoted? Which channels would be ideal? Is there any outreach or partnership to plan for?
You can use the template shown in Figure 11-2 to facilitate the planning phase.
Figure 11-2. Editorial calendar template
Establishing Systems and Routines for Content Production
After you are done creating the editorial calendar, you will find yourself in front of dozens of pieces that need to be produced before a certain date. Without a plan of attack, these tasks will quickly become overwhelming. Being able to create a nonstop content machine hinges on your ability to split processes into manageable, repeatable tasks.
Some creators shy away from systems because they seem overpowering and rigid. However, in reality, strong systems are the only way you will ever have time and space for flexibility. This is true for content production, business, and many other areas of life. Here is an example: you have included four infographics in your editorial calendar for a certain month. Without established systems, this is what it might look like:
Define when infographics will be published in your editorial calendar.
Start working on them in disorder.
Send whoever is designing them vague instructions.
Receive something that does not match what you originally intended.
Rework the entire thing.
Freak out because you won’t make it by the due date.
Miss your date(s); eventually publish.
Hope people see it.
A completely different approach is to tackle these pieces as follows:
Define when infographics will be published in your editorial calendar.
Split each infographic into data collection, data visualization, and distribution. Make a note of the lead times required for all three tasks and compare that to the final publication date.
Assign the task of data collection for each of the four infographics with a due date based on desired date of publication.
Add instructions for each infographic as the data comes in for each.
Assign the task of data visualization, sending over instructions and a data package for each infographic, and adding a due date based on desired date of publication.
Receive infographics in a specific order and publish by the set date.
Assign distribution tasks to someone who can conduct outreach, build links with other sites, or share using various owned, earned, or paid channels (more on this in Chapter 14).
A key difference between the first, undefined process and the second, systematized workflow is that the final content product was broken down into smaller tasks. Successful infographics were understood as the end result of researching some facts (data), visualizing those facts, and distributing the piece to a certain audience. The fact that you don’t have an internal or external team to rely on for these three types of tasks shouldn’t be an impediment. Especially if you are a one-person operation, knowing how to work your way to the final content product is crucial.
Also important, as you split these processes into manageable chunks, is to make a note of standard lead times for each activity. Consider that it might take one week to collect data for an infographic and two to design it. This means that you should always be thinking of your next infographic as a content product that won’t be live for another three weeks.
Granted, there are exceptions: sometimes tasks are executed faster than expected, and sometimes they take longer than expected. Early delivery isn’t a problem, but delays can seriously affect your ability to maintain an editorial calendar. One healthy way to prevent delays is to add some buffer time on top of the standard lead times you have established so that the creator has additional time to deliver without ruining your planning. Chapter 12 touches on some of the best practices to manage a content marketing team that is able to deliver great work consistently.
Assuring Content Quality
To ensure that your content production process yields high-quality pieces on an ongoing basis, you will need to consider the following:
Defining what “great” looks like for your brand
Reverse-engineering what is required to achieve “great”
Checking for the presence of certain items that allow for “great”
Let’s look at each of these in more detail.
Defining What “Great Content” Looks Like
Remember when we came up with clear content goals that would guide our overall strategy? Now is the time to look at those goals from an execution standpoint. Is your goal to drive more traffic to the site? The challenge, then, will be all about ensuring that the content is clickworthy and shareable. Is it to improve your brand’s position in search engines? You will need to ensure that the content is optimized for crawling and indexing. Make a list of your most important objectives with this content strategy if you have not already.
Now look at those goals long and hard: what should your content pieces look like in order to get there? For example, if you intend to drive more traffic, shareability might become a core component of what “great content” means to you. Because you intend to get hundreds of thousands of visitors to see your site, the content that lives there should be optimized for shares. This is the logic that will drive your quality assurance activities. When a certain piece is finished, and if this is indeed your goal, you will need to check for the presence of certain elements that guarantee or facilitate shares. Of course, first you will need to figure out what those elements are.
Reverse-Engineering What Is Required to Achieve “Great” CONTENT
Reviewing past audience behavior, other brands’ successes/failures, and industry best practices, you will be able to generate a list of factors that enhance (for instance) how often a piece is shared. Continuing with the previous example, you might detect that the following factors contribute to article shares:
Text is broken up into digestible parts
Supporting media has a clean design
Social buttons are present and prominent
Wordcount is above (or under) x
Chapters 12 and 13 introduce other factors that can contribute to content shares. For the time being, try to dissect your own content success factors depending on the goals you have set out to achieve.
Content Quality Assurance
Quality assurance, or QA, is a process commonly used in the software industry—among many, many others. The idea is to constantly verify your products so that they meet or exceed a given set of standards.
With time, you (or your editors) will become acquainted with the factors that improve your content’s chance of being great. As Chapter 2 describes, you will constantly look at metrics that shed light on the type of content that performs best. However, I can’t overemphasize how important it is to have documents in place that allow anyone to understand and participate in your production process. Sometimes, you won’t be there, your editors might change, and memory is something we can’t really rely on for long-term success. Instead, make it your policy to come up with guides like a Content Quality Assurance Checklist.
Creating Your Own Content QA Checklist
To build your own QA checklist, define your expectations in terms of the following line items:
- Headline considerations
- Should the piece’s title be a certain length or include a certain type of words?
- Wordcount or length specifications
- Should the piece itself be a certain length (minimum or maximum)? With articles, this is usually set in terms of a wordcount. Duration works well for video—this is typically delineated in seconds, minutes, or hours. Images and other graphic pieces might require width and length guidelines.
- Styling considerations
- Should the creator mind certain design rules? When referring to an article, is there anything special for which she should be using heading tags (h1, h2, h3)? How about underlined, capitalized, bolded, and italicized text? Should links use a specific class, or open in a new tab? Think about how the piece should look and feel, and add rules that ensure it.
- General structure
- Any specific patterns or outlines to follow here? Should the introduction be a certain length, for example? Do you always want to close with a question? Should paragraph and sentence length stay within certain parameters? Decide what works and add it as a checkable item.
- Supporting media
- Are the supporting graphics shareable? Is type/background contrast sufficient? Do attached files need to stick to a certain size for the sake of page speed? Should they include captions, and what kind of alignment are you expecting (left, center, right)? Are there any visual rules to which they need to adhere?
- Distribution optimization
- Is this piece ideally laid out for distribution? Does it contain proper references to any specific number of influencers, for example?
- Intellectual Property (IP) considerations
- Is every source cited properly? Are we using third-party assets appropriately? Do we have licenses for the resources we are modifying, and do our licenses allow for such changes? (For more on IP, see Chapter 12.)
- Call to action
- Does the piece include a certain type of gated content or call to action? Are we, for instance, linking to a specific number of products?
- SEO considerations
- Are certain terms that can help the article rank higher in a search included? Is there a set number of internal and external links in this piece? Are files and alt tags named properly? Is the URL optimized for search engines? Chapter 13 provide more details on everything related to content and SEO.
- Categorization and tagging
- Has the creator categorized the piece properly and added the right tags? Create a fixed set of categories and tags that he must stick to and make it part of your style guide.
- Tone issues
- Do creators need to avoid offensive language or themes like gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual preferences, or terrorism? Should they stay away from promoting competitors? If so, who are these competitors? Check for the use of active versus passive voice as well as word precision.
- Source blacklist
- Are there any sources that you should stay away from? Make a blacklist of sites to avoid when quoting information.
- Debugging
- These checklist items are small, yet very common human errors that can be minimized if we look out for them. Think about mistakes such as the following:
Typos, spelling, and grammar errors
Proper use of hyphens and other punctuation marks
Stating that you will explain or include something “below” or “later” that never actually makes it into the piece
Mismatch between the number of items offered in the title, the ones actually included in the piece, and those featured in supporting graphics
Capitalization issues—especially with proper nouns (specific products and services)
Broken links
Broken HTML code in articles
Sound/image mismatches in video
Odd cropping or pixelation in images
Now, inevitably, your creators’ ability to deliver on this checklist is directly related to how clear you have been regarding style guidelines. This is where having a Content Style Guide becomes essential.
Spend some time going over this sample Content Quality Checklist:
| ▢ Headline fulfills length requirements |
| ▢ Headline is descriptive and includes main keyword |
| ▢ The piece fulfills wordcount or length requirements |
| ▢ Subtitles and important ideas are styled correctly using HTML tags whenever appropriate |
| ▢ Key terms are highlighted in important headings |
| ▢ The structure is easy to follow |
| ▢ Introductory paragraph provides a thorough description of what comes next |
| ▢ Introductory paragraph includes key terms |
| ▢ Paragraph and sentence length comply with requirements for improved readability |
| ▢ Supporting graphics are clear and overlay text is legible |
| ▢ Supporting graphics enhance shareability |
| ▢ Supporting graphics stay within file size limits |
| ▢ Supporting grpahics are appropriately named and captioned |
| ▢ Third party content is properly attributed |
| ▢ Third party assets are properly licensed |
| ▢ There are links to reputable external resources |
| ▢ There are links to other relevant internal resources |
| ▢ None of those links are broken |
| ▢ Both internal and external links have a descriptive visible or anchor text |
| ▢ Piece contains a clear call to action |
| ▢ URL length and structure is optimized for the searh experience |
| ▢ The piece has been categorized and tagged appropriately |
| ▢ Offensive topics have been avoided |
| ▢ Tone makes sense for our brand and the topic dealt with |
| ▢ Competitors are not mentioned in any way that is detrimental to our brand |
| ▢ Active voice is used throughout |
| ▢ Precise terms have been used instead of vague ones |
| ▢ Spelling and grammar have been corrected |
| ▢ The piece solves or answers what it promises |
| ▢ For lists: number of items included in the title matches those in the bodyof the piece |
| ▢ For video: there are no mismatches between what you see and what you hear |
| ▢ No odd cropping or pixelation in images |
| ▢ The creator has included a complete biography |
The Content Style Guide
The Content Style Guide is a document creators and editors can refer to when they are trying to understand your standards. Depending on the types of content pieces you create, you will need to come up with requirements that apply to various formats. Rules for video, text, and imagery should all be readily available for those involved in the content production process.
To put together your Content Style Guide, include the following sections:
A primer on your brand’s voice and tone (this is defined in Chapter 5). This goes along with a description of the style manual you will adhere to for copywriting. For more on this, read the upcoming sidebar.
An overview of your goals with various content channels.
Specifics on what you are expecting for headline considerations, word count or length specifications, styling considerations, and so on, as discussed in the previous section:
Headline considerations
Wordcount or length specifications
Styling considerations
General structure expected
Supporting media guidelines
Distribution optimization
IP considerations
Calls to action
SEO considerations
Categorization and tagging
Capitalization rules of certain words specific to your space
A source whitelist (preferred) and blacklist (to avoid)
A checklist for creators to verify their own work before you (or your editors) do.