You’ve probably hear the cliche “fast, good, or cheap — pick two” at some point in your career as a marketer. The thinking is that you can either have things good and fast, but at a high price; good and cheap, but after months and months of waiting; or fast and cheap, but lacking in quality. Here’s a secret: It is possible to accelerate content creation without giving up quality and without having to mortgage your soul. Here’s what to do.
Tips To Accelerate Content Creation
Plan in advance.
You’re likely to find that things go a lot more smoothly and a lot more quickly when you have a plan for action. Instead of producing a single piece of content and then going back to the drawing board, lay out plans for an entire month’s worth of content all at once. Making plans for your content in advance doesn’t just help speed up the process. It also allows you to develop themes and take a big-picture approach to your content marketing.
Give everyone a task.
Every person on your content marketing team should have a role or group of tasks that he or she is solely responsible for completing. It really slows things down when the content strategist thinks it’s his or her responsibility or right to start writing content or to lean over the shoulder of the content creator, offering tips and suggestions as that person writes. Your content marketing can run like a well-oiled machine if everyone knows what they should do and then does it.
Automate what you can.
Why do certain tasks manually when a computer can complete them more quickly and more accurately? These days, you can automate many aspects of the content creation process, from content ideation to scheduling social media posts.
Set a goal and focus on the most essential tasks.
Creating a strategy for content marketing and having a goal in place for it will help you in a few ways. When you have a set goal, you know why you’re producing content and what you want it to achieve. Knowing your “why” then helps you choose the most essential tasks and focus on them when you’re creating your content.
Accelerate Content Creation Without Sacrificing Quality
You may be worried that boosting your content production — for instance, going from one blog post a week to two, or from one blog post a week to a blog post and a video each week — will lead to a drop in quality. For proof, all you have to do is point out the difference between a mass-produced leather handbag and one that’s hand-made by leather artisans working at Hermes.
Just Start
How you create content can influence how much of it you create, and how much of it is quality content. One way to boost production without sacrificing quality is to focus on creation first, and improvement later. That is, have your writers write and your video creators create, then go back and tweak.
It’s the same advice your teachers gave you in college and high school, when you were stressing out over a six-page paper. Just start writing. If the first paragraph is garbage, come back to it the next day and get rid of it or fix it up. Have an editor review each piece of content, fixing up typos and grammar errors, and editing for style and tone.
Consider Outsourcing
Outsourcing your content creation also allows you to speed up production without taxing your team or lowering quality (provided you vet the additional content creators first). For example, instead of asking your team to make a blog post and a video, hire a writer or video creator, then have the in-house team create the other piece of content.
Repurpose User-Generated Content
Another option is to use a mix of in-house content and user-generated content (UGC). UGC has a few benefits — namely that it’s often, it’s usually plentiful and people like and trust it. One drawback is that a lot of it can be absolute garbage, but you can give one member of your team the job of sorting through submissions and choosing only the best of the bunch for submission.
Tools to Help You Accelerate Content Creation Without Breaking the Bank
We’ve covered fast and good, now let’s take a look at fast and cheap. It’s definitely possible to produce content quickly without paying a high price. It’s all thanks to the many content creation tools out there today.
For example, content marketing platforms help you quickly find content creators who are a good fit for you brand. In some cases, you’re able to outsource much of the content creation process, making it quick and affordable.
Here are a few free or affordable tools to help you accelerate content creation:
- HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator – Helps you come up with ideas for posts and content.
- Co-Schedule’s Headline Analyzer – Assesses your titles and headlines and gives you actionable tips to make them better.
- Buffer – Lets you schedule social media posts in advance.
- Grammarly – Reads your content and offers tips for improving its grammar and flow.
When it comes to content marketing, yes, you can have it all. With the right tools you can create fast, cheap, and good content.