How to Scale Content Production: The First 5 Steps

Learning how to scale content production is a pivotal step in streamlining your brand’s content marketing strategy. Let’s outline the first 5 steps towards faster, more efficient content development.

CopyDash is a content creation agency for scaling brands. We believe the best way to scale production is to outsource content creation to our expert, high quality content team. But we also believe it’s important to share content strategy knowledge — so this article is designed to give you a head start!

• Scaling content production is vital to your brand’s efficiency and visibility. You’ll simplify content marketing processes, increase your SEO footprint, master content repurposing, and speed up new content output.
• Standardize every stage of your content development and workflow. Develop briefs for each content type, templates for production, and best practices for ideation, research, writing, content promotion and distribution.
• Outsource content production efforts when needed. Trust our pre-built team of writers and strategists. We’ll help implement a scalable content strategy for each stage of your process, and let you get back to growing your brand.

Ready to scale content production? Set up a free conversation with our founder in 90 seconds!

Why Is Scaling Content Production Important?

Scaling content creation is crucial to evolving brands. The need to reach a wider audience while retaining content quality is paramount — and that task can feel overwhelming.

An effective content scaling plan eliminates that feeling. It provides the framework to make smart, stress-free decisions on each content idea — not just based on short-term appeal, but long-term returns on your time, budget and effort.

A scalable content production strategy allows you to judge content performance by a new, broadened set of KPIs:

• Time: Is the time we’ll spend on this content piece justified by its cross-platform appeal? Can we repurpose this content in multiple ways? 
• Lifespan: Will this be relevant content in six months? One year? Five years? Will we have to QA and edit the piece over time?
• Audience: Will this content serve and attract a wider audience as our business grows? Is it truly scalable in its appeal? 

5 Benefits of Scaling Content Production

Scalable content production provides 5 tangible benefits to your overall content marketing efforts:

1. Simplify content marketing processes. No churning, no searching, no confusion — just one streamlined workflow.
2. Increase brand visibility. Faster delivery of better content leads to heightened visibility.
3. Amplify SEO performance. Introduce valuable new content on a regular basis, and you’ll capture keywords and search queries on Google and other search platforms. Write evergreen content pieces, let them entrench, and watch your SERP rankings increase.
4. Drive new leads with strong brand authority. Streamlined production creates stronger content, and a unified brand presentation. Your audience will gain greater clarity into who you are, what you offer and how they’ll benefit.
5. Develop omnichannel marketing strategy. Repurposing content flows naturally into an omnichannel marketing strategy. Use the same copy, infographics and media assets across multiple digital marketing channels — you’ll save time and resources while creating a cohesive brand message.

5 Easy Steps to Scale Content Production

While I firmly believe the best long-term method to scale content production is outsourcing, there are a few first steps any business owner can take. Work on these 5 “starter” goals to prep your content production process for scaling:

1. Create a brand tone & style guide.
2. Develop templates and content briefs for common content types.
3. Standardize each stage of your content workflow.
4. Organize teams on one central workspace hub with a content calendar.
5. Outsource and delegate content creation as needed.

Before You Start: Document Your Current Content Process

It’s important to sit down with your content marketing team and document your current content development process. What’s working — and more importantly, what isn’t working? These questions will define which aspects of your current content creation process need to be adjusted.

As Michael E. Porter famously said, “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

As a team, be honest about these 6 components of your existing content development strategy:

1. Ideation and topic selection
2. Keyword analysis
3. Writing stage
4. SEO content analysis
5. Content promotion & distribution
6. Metrics & analytics review

Which steps are you most confident in? Which ones slow down your content production efforts?

Once you’ve determined your strengths and weaknesses, dive into these 5 steps with a fresh outlook on refining your strategy.

Want some inspiration? Take a look at CopyDash’s content development strategy.

Step 1: Create a Brand Tone & Style Guide

An internal brand tone & style guide is the backbone of successful content marketing strategy. (It’s part of our very first step for startup content marketing.)

Your tone & style guide defines how your brand communicates with its audience. It allows each content writer to “speak as your brand”, ensuring a consistent brand identity across every content piece on every platform.

A quality brand tone and style guide for startups contains the following 8 components:

1. A concise definition of your brand
2. Your brand’s MVP statement – Mission, Value and Purpose
3. Branded content principles
4. Brand voice guidelines
5. Brand continuity guidelines
6. Existing brand assets, including existing content, logo and media
7. Brand color and typographic guide
8. Outline of content construction and content strategy

The last component of your branded tone & style guide is also step 2 in your journey to scalable content production.

Step 2: Develop Templates and Content Briefs

Define the most common types of content you create. Develop a unique content brief for each. This brief should outline the scope, goals and expectations for each piece of new content to which it applies.

Each content brief should contain 4 components:

1. Overview: Brief topic overview, target audience, type of content, overall goals, and project benchmarks
2. Details: Topic explanation, focus and secondary keywords, title ideation, key messages, calls to action
3. Resources: Brand relevant information (internal statistics, etc.), competitor analysis, research materials
4. Workflow: Deliverable assets, necessary approvals and project contact (content manager, etc.)

Next, create a general template for each of your most frequently created content types. A few examples:

• Copywriting: A structured outline with title and header conventions, expectations for introductions and conclusions, where to inject internal links and calls to action, and where to cite references
• Audio content: A detailed template of how audio is to be recorded and edited, including formatting and style
• Video content: A detailed template of how video is to be shot and edited, including formatting and style
• For social media content: A structured outline with expectations for content style, where to inject hashtags or outbound links, and calls to action

No matter who handles your content creation moving forward, each new creator will operate under the same standards and expectations. No wasted time onboarding — just send them your content briefs and templates.

Step 3: Standardize Your Content Workflow

Standardize every single stage of your content development process. Every last one. It may seem like a pain now, but you’ll thank me later.

Create brand standards for (at least) these 6 stages of your workflow:

1. Ideation. What defines a “good content idea” for your business? What makes a topic evergreen for your brand?
2. Research. What sources do you deem credible? How should they be cited? What competitors should you never cite or research? What are your best practices for ethical AI research? (You can copy our AI research standards if you want!)
3. Writing and editing. What is the expected level of communication between your content writer and editor? When are edits and rounds of revision expected? What workspace or hub is the platform for this interaction? (More on this in the next step.)
4. Publishing. How and when do you push a draft to publish? What platform hosts the publishing process? Who on your content team is responsible for this stage of production? Is any of this stage automated?
5. Promotion and distribution. Who is responsible for promotion and distribution of your published content? Do you use automation for any distribution? What is the timeline for promotion efforts?
6. Review. How and when do you review content metrics? What platforms do you utilize to gather analytics data? Who is responsible for gathering data for your analytics review documents?

These documents should take a few hours to complete. That’s nothing compared to the hours you’ll save every week by streamlining your content development workflow. 

Step 4: Define One Central Workspace Hub

When you scale content production, there’s no time to waste trying to herd your content team across multiple platforms. Choose one central workspace hub where the members of your content marketing team will communicate. 

Ideally, this workspace will meet 7 key criteria:

1. Cloud-based platform
2. Content calendar and campaign management
3. Ability to host content creation workflow
4. Granular user permissions control
5. Multi-channel publishing
6. Content analytics and reporting
7. CRM integrations

There are a host of options for content marketing workspace hubs. In the last 2 years, our clients have used Contently, Airtable, Monday.com, and Notion. Some have supplemented these hubs with content strategist platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush.

Step 5: Outsource Content Creation When Needed

By this stage in your scaling process, you’ll know where you need help. Outsource the remainder of your needs to a scalable content creation agency focused on solutions for growing and evolving brands — that’s what we’re here for!

Hiring an external content creation agency to scale content production comes with 3 core benefits:

1. You’ll save time. No onboarding or training necessary. You get direct access to highly skilled content strategists, writers and creators.
2. You’ll save money on hiring, salary and benefits. Plus, an outsourced content agency already has marketing software and tools in-house.
3. You’ll save energy. Why struggle to onboard and manage an in-house marketing team? Direct your energy towards scaling your business.

Learn How to Scale Content Production from CopyDash

I’ve spent the last 16 years honing my skills as a content marketer, copywriter and content strategist for brands of all sizes — and I loved scaling content for growing businesses the most.

Then, I started CopyDash and put my own content development process to the test. We’ve created scalable content solutions that drive growth and visibility for some really exciting brands. 

The 5 tips in this article got you started. Now, let’s have a conversation about how CopyDash can do the rest!

Schedule a free content strategy conversation with our founder — it takes less than 90 seconds to get started!