How I scaled a content team to 150k words/mo

Helloooo content connoisseurs.

It’s Perrin from Content Bites.

Short intro paragraph

• Appetizers: Links from CMI, Ann Hadley, Backlinko and more

• Main course: How I scaled a content team to 150k words/mo

Real quick: I’m trying a slightly different format for this newsletter:

• It’s a bit shorter

• Instead of a shorter, flimsier case study in each email, the best ones will just get their own email.

• The cool links and resources are up front

There’s a poll below, to let me know what you think.

Let’s dig in.

Appetizers: Content marketing links

• Why Investors Trust Marketing, But Not Marketers [New Study]

  (link)

• Making Industry Landing Pages Engaging for B2B Companies (link)

• 7 Examples of Influencer Marketing Campaigns (link)

• The B2B Marketer’s Guide to Social Selling (link)

• Revolutionize Content Creation by Overcoming These Antiquated Beliefs

  (link)

Main Course: How I scaled a writing team to 150,000 words/mo & how to steal my system

When I sold my agency, my content team was doing 150,000 words of content per month.

There are shops that do more, but we were certainly proud of getting to a point where we, as a team, could produce 150,000 words not just of any content — but of quality content — for our clients.

That is NOT where my agency started.

My agency started literally with me writing the content myself.

When that become too much, I hired a single writer.

That writer eventually became our first editor.

And so on…

Until one day, ol’ Perrin woke up and had a fully fledged content machine that was reliably producing tons of content every week.

It was also not easy to get there.

There was quite a bit of pain in fact, lol. We had our fair share of “wtf is this?” content going out the door. An unhappy client here and there. You get the idea.

But when we figured it out, let me tell you: it was… *chef’s kiss" 

Today, I’d like to tell you how I did it.

To make it a bit more tactical, I’m going to imagine we’re all building a 150k-word/mo content machine.

Of course, yours might be different, but hopefully, that can add a bit of specificity that’ll make these things all more tactical.

SO… the following is the rough steps I followed to build my own scaled content machine, and the steps I’d follow to build a similar machine that could produce about the same amount of content.

Step #0: Build a simple project management framework that makes intuitive sense.

This should be something you do before step 1.

You simply cannot build a content team of any kind of scale without having a project management system in place.

It does not need to be complicated, but it does need to be robust enough to handle the amount of content being produced, the people, the communication, and the deadlines.

You need three components for a working project management system:

• A way to communicate

• A way to create and store documents

• A way to manage the logistics of the project

To communicate, I’ve always just used Slack and never found the need to use anything else.

To create and store documents, I’ve use Google Workspace. I tried the Microsoft Suite, but I found that it turned my world into darkness and shrouded my soul in an unshakable malaise. So I now I just use Google.

To manage the logistics of the logistics of the project, there are two good solutions:

• Monday.com

• Clickup.com 

Monday.com is better at automations and sharing externally.

ClickUp is the best bang for your buck and has the best free/cheap tiers.

When I was actually running the agency, we used Monday.com — mostly because we found that when we were truly hitting scale, the automations became invaluable.

Being able to lean on your PM system to automatically create documents, assign things, send notifications, etc… it doesn’t matter at all when you’re just starting, but when you ramp up, it saves LOTS of time.

A content writing system itself only need to answer three questions:

• What’s being created?

• Who’s creating & editing it?

• When is it due?

That means you need two things to make the whole thing work: (1) a content calendar and (2) a project tracker (E.g. ClickUp).

Your calendar can live in your project management tracker, but we often created them separately as Google Sheets because it just felt easier.

For the actual PM system, I typically break things out by writer.

I made a very, very rough mockup of how I set things up. Here’s a screenshot.

The best version of this is for all of the tasks to be tied TO your content calendar and for them to be updated in tandem w/ automations.

Step 1: Hire 4-5 writers who can work fast and autonomously.

To build a machine that yields 150,000 words/mo, you need like 4-5 writers.

In general, you need writers who can generate about 30,000 words/mo, or ~7,500 words/wk, or ~3-4 articles/wk.

This is typically not a lot for a professional writer. Most professional writers can comfortably do 10,000-12,000 words a week.

But it will feel like a lot to someone who is NOT a professional writer. So I generally use it as a litmus test: I ask writers if they’re comfortable with 7,500 words a week, and if it feels like a lot to them, I can be pretty sure they haven’t really written in a professional capacity.

So you need writers who are FAST.

You also need writers who are good.

I wrote about how to find writers in this issue: Why No One Can Find Good Writers And How I Find Them — so if you’re looking for more detailed information on hiring, that’s a good one to read.

But here’s the basics:

• Attract good writers with stability and good pay relative to their cost of living

• Sell yourself in your post posting (here’s a sample)

• Pay writers to do a writing test (here’s a sample)

Finding a single good writer is difficult.

Attracting a good, reliable team of 4-5 writers is terribly tough. It’ll take a while. Generally, I’d plan to either build it over time, or spend two solid months recruiting writers.

But when you find them, I promise it’s worth it.

Step 2: Hire editors who can manage writers and have A+ quality standards but don’t act like d*cks.

Perhaps the most crucial part of a scaled writing system is a good editor.

I actually have NOT found them to be as tough to find as good writers.

Obviously, there’s a bit more expensive, but the market tends to be less saturated (the market of writers tends to attract hobbyists and amateurs, so you have to sift to really find the pros).

So it’s easier to find editors.

There’s also this thing that happens: for someone to call themselves an editor, they have to have had a lot of experience with content. They also usually need to enjoy editing, because it’s difficult to do, and anyone who’s tried it understands how much brainpower it takes.

So by the time someone even gives themselves that label, they usually really really do have a strong level of expertise.

So it should be easier to find.

But it won’t be EASY overall.

The tough part of finding an editor is more about finding someone who understands and can accurately capture what you want for your content.

Usually, that means you want someone with versatility. Someone who can adapt their voice on the fly, who can edit toward your customers, and, ideally, someone with a little experience in your vertical.

Most importantly, you need someone who knows what excellent content looks and feels like.

And lastly, you want someone fast.

Editors need to be able to make LOTS of good words into LOTS of great words. So they need the snappy.

Mostly, you can follow the same steps as hiring a writer, with a couple difference:

• Find them on UpWork, just like you would a writer

• Set up a paid test: have them edit content that’s already good and ask them to make it excellent

• Ask them if they’re okay doing the test on a tight deadline b/c you’re testing for speed, and then give them a tight deadline

Here’s what an editor should be doing for you:

• Managing writers

• Managing the content calendar

• Being solely responsible for content quality

And perhaps MOST importantly, check to make sure they’re not a d*ck.

For whatever reason, the frequency of d**chebags is much higher in this talent pool, and we don’t want our writers to have to deal with that nonsense.

So just vibe check your editors vigorously, and check in with your writers after they start.

Step 3: Hire an editorial coordinator who is hyper organized and likes to be online.

This one took me a good long while to figure out.

Before I really knew what I was doing, I was asking my writers and editors to do all the admin work associated with a scaled content system.

They hated it.

I hated it for them.

It becomes an untenable amount of work really quickly as you start to manage a real pipeline.

So, for every 150,000-200,000 words your team produces, you generally need one editorial coordinator.

This person will:

• Create and manage all the documents

• Check in on deadlines

• Publish on the website (or wherever)

• Coordinate with any external partners (like printers)

• And so on

It’s even worth hiring a part-time editorial coordinator really early on just to make growing smoother.

These folks generally need some writing expertise — enough to be comfortable making adjustments to content.

Mostly, they need to:

• Be organized as all hell

• Enjoy being online

Why do they need to enjoy being online? Because these are usually the folks who are going to be pinged for urgent tasks.

They don’t need to be online all the time, but they usually need to be comfortable being on call.

You can find these folks in lots of different talent pools, including administrative assistants, which is one of the deepest and most awesome talent pools on UpWork (because it’s competitive).

So finding a good one should be fairly easy.

Summary of how to do the damn thang:

• Set up a simple-but-strong project management structure with Google Workspace and either Monday or ClickUp

• Hire 4-5 writers who can produce at least 7,500 words/wk

• Hire a great editor who are good, fast, and nice to manage calendars and quality

• Hire an editorial coordinator to grease the wheels

That’s the issue.

If you missed last weeks issue, you can read it here: Why You Should Review Your OWN Products (and how to do it).

Go forth & conquer.

—Perrin