7 Key Considerations for Scaling Your Content Team

According to the Content Marketing Institute, approximately 92% of marketers are now using content marketing strategies and roughly 60% of B2B and B2C marketers anticipate increasing their content marketing budgets over the next 12 months.

If you’re one of these companies, know that simply throwing more money at your content campaigns won’t likely lead to the kinds of marketing gains you hope to achieve.  Instead, you’ve got to be thoughtful about the way you scale your content team.  Keeping the following seven considerations in mind as you grow your marketing initiatives will help ensure a positive ROI on your new expenses:

Document everything

Before you even think about beginning to scale your team, document everything!  If multiple stakeholders are involved in the content creation process, there’s a good chance that each employee carries out activities that the rest of the organization is unaware of.  Duplicating this effort with new hires or investments won’t do your organization any favors.

So what exactly should you document?  Start with the following list:

• Every employee that is involved in creating content at any level (for example, blog post writers, employees that handle your social channels, designers, dedicated developers and so on)
• The specific responsibilities each of these employees holds
• The process that each employee follows to release content under your company’s name

A blog post writer, for instance, might handle everything from maintaining the company’s editorial calendars to publishing regularly-scheduled articles to sharing posts on social channels.  Documenting these responsibilities – as well as the responsibilities of every employee on the content team – will help you determine where weaknesses exist and where your top scaling priorities exist.

Map ROI before scaling your program

One of the biggest challenges involved in scaling a content team is deciding which specific elements to grow first.  Should you start by adding another video person?  Maybe bring on new writers to help grow your blog?

To some extent, documenting the activities of your current team members will help reveal specific gaps.  But it’s also a good idea to map out the ROI of the different channels on which you’re currently participating.  If you know, for example, that your email marketing campaigns bring in four times as many qualified leads as your blog, it may make more sense to expand your email efforts with new technology or employees than to bring on another blog writer.

Of course, measuring the ROI of your different marketing channels isn’t always easy.  Content campaigns tend to involve multiple touches, and determining which specific element in the chain flipped the switch from prospect to customer can be a struggle.  But programs and methodologies for tracking this information do exist, and making use of them before initiating the scaling process can help prevent you from investing in the wrong areas.

Move from generalists to specialists

When your content marketing efforts are young, generalists – employees that can handle different content creation needs – are worth their weight in gold.  But as your marketing initiatives grow, it may make sense for your company to move away from these “T-shaped” marketers and towards specialists in the specific content channels that you’ve deemed most valuable to your company.

As an example, if you anticipate investing heavily in video content over the next 12 months, a video specialist will give you more bang for your buck than a generalist with a blend of video and other skills.  Unfortunately, these employees may also be more expensive to hire and more difficult to find, so be sure you’re confident in the direction your content campaigns will be taking before going this route.

Clearly outline roles

Whether you decide to expand your content team with generalists and specialists, one of the best gifts you can give your new employees is a clearly-defined job description. You can still create an atmosphere that rewards your employees for performance that advances your business objectives.

Imagine that you’re a graphic designer coming into a team that’s in the process of scaling up its content campaigns.  Before your arrival, a single marketing employee has been handling basic design work and other content needs.  Without clear role differentiation, the potential for conflict exists, as the existing employee may fear being replaced and the incoming worker may unintentionally step on some toes.

In this situation, communication is key.  If you plan to bring on new content creators, explain to your existing workers exactly how these new hires will fit into your process and what you hope to achieve by expanding in these specific ways.  Keep your office door open and watch out for any signals that your new team isn’t meshing well.  This type of hand-holding may seem unnecessary, but upfront monitoring of the situation will prevent small miscommunications and confusions from growing into larger conflicts over time.

Invest in “big” content

People aren’t the only resources that should be scaled on a growing team.  As the resources you’ve dedicated to your content campaigns grow, your strategies can – and should – change as well.

In particular, you’ll want to pay attention to the emerging trend of “big” content.  As more and more companies adopt content marketing programs, the amount of communication noise they’re generating has grown as well.  As a result, it’s harder today than ever before to get your message heard online.  If you want to stand out, two blog posts a week and the rare infographic probably isn’t going to cut it anymore!

The solution to this problem is “big” content – things like production-quality videos, interactive infographics, standalone minisites and long-form content of 2,000+ words in length.  Creating these types of content may not be feasible if you’re a single person shop with one employee handling all of your marketing needs.  But as you look to scale your team, consider bringing on the people and allocating the resources needed to create these types of content – rather than just adding another day’s worth of blog posts to your site each week.

Look into marketing automation programs

Alternatively, consider that scaling your marketing team might not take the form of people at all.  Marketing automation programs have exploded in popularity over the past few years, and adding one to your team might make it possible to free up enough of your existing employees’ time to expand your efforts without adding staff.

Essentially, marketing automation programs allow you to deliver content – including email messages, white papers, ebooks and video – to specific stakeholders at certain times, depending on the triggers they’ve executed.  A prospect who downloads your ebook, for example, could be automatically be entered into a lead nurturing email series designed to build confidence in your brand before leading up to a call-to-action.

These types of programs aren’t cheap, but they are less expensive than bringing on a new employee.  Marketo, Pardot, Hubspot and Act On are just a few different options to consider if you’re thinking about going this route.

Consider interns

If additional staffing is an absolute necessity, keep in mind that you have more options besides full-time hires.  If your budget and content creation needs can’t justify paying salary and benefits for a regular employee, consider scaling your team with interns.

According to Nathan Parcells, writing for KISSMetrics, 80% of students intern at least once during college and 50% intern two times or more.  As a result, student interns can be highly qualified, motivated workers who are available for much less than their full-time counterparts.  And because they’ve grown up in the digital age, many of the skills needed in content campaigns come more naturally to them than workers with traditional marketing backgrounds.

Just be sure to keep your legal responsibilities in mind if you decide to work with interns.  As many companies have learned lately, interns aren’t a source of free labor – so avoid legal action against your company by paying them a fair wage that’s commensurate with their experience.

Thinking through these seven considerations before beginning the scaling process will help your company avoid many common issues in the growth process.  However, this list isn’t comprehensive.  If there’s anything else you’d like to add, leave a message below in the comments!