Who’s on Your Business Content Writing Team and How Do You Manage Them?

According to Econsultancy, content marketing and writing skills are second only to data analysis when it comes to importance for marketers. And while many people can learn to craft grammatically correct, optimized copy, the fact is that writing is somewhat of a talent. Not everyone can infuse marketing copy with enticing voice or create an informational (and interesting) narrative for a heavy technical topic.

Luckily, brands and marketing teams can easily add these critical skills to their projects by investing in business content writing teams. Here’s a look at why you should ensure you have the right people on your content writing team and how to create winning teams for any content project.

The Importance of a Writing Team

A writing team is like the engine that powers your content marketing vehicle. If you don’t have an engine, it doesn’t matter how great the exterior of the vehicle looks. It’s not going anywhere unless you put it on a trailer and pull it with someone else’s engine. And if your engine is too small (i.e., you don’t have the right writers or enough writers), your marketing vehicle can’t move quickly enough or burns itself up.

A writing team lets you shift gears quickly and easily move between all the critical aspects of marketing, including:

• Content strategy
• SEO
• Social media
• Website content creation

Benefits of Working With a Team of Writers for Your Business Content

Databox polled marketers to discover what areas the experts see people failing at when it comes to online marketing. When asked what areas brands and marketing teams were most likely to under-invest in, content quality and research was the clear winner (er…or loser, actually).

Around 40% of respondents said companies didn’t invest enough in writing and content quality, often because they were chasing the latest SEO gimmick or technology they believe might vault them to the top of the SERPs. And while trends such as the featured snippet can help you gain organic search traction, SEO is a long game that requires authority, quality, engaging content.

The biggest benefit of working with a team of writers is that you’re better positioned to provide the type of content that wins SEO long games. Other benefits include:

• You can rely on the creativity and brain power of more people to ensure your content is unique and relevant
• Each writer has different skills, ensuring each type of content is highest quality
• You don’t hitch your wagon to a single content creator, so if someone gets sick, has an emergency or becomes overburdened by the work, others can help out

How Do You Build the Right Writing Team for Each Project?

Gintaras Steponkus is the marketing manager at Solidguides and points out that the right writers for one job aren’t necessarily the right people for another project. “We work on two major domains: business and tech,” says Steponkus. “We have 10 writing team members in total—half for the business domain and the other half for the tech. Roles are assigned based on their interests and academics.”

But Steponkus doesn’t stop there. Writers for Solidguides content also specialize in the type of writing they do. “Different writers are dedicated to blogs, pitching, guest blogs, video creation content and podcasts scripts. Two managers handle the two teams and have expertise in their relevant domain.”

Who you put on your business content writing team depends on your needs and goals. At minimum, you might want:

• Different writers who are qualified and experienced in writing for the types of content you require, including sales copywriters to handle conversion-focused pages, general writers for basic blog posts and social media writers who have the skills required to engage audiences in those specialty formats
• One or more detail-oriented editors with experience in marketing and business content to tweak drafts
• SEO experts to help identify what topics should be covered, how content should be formatted and what keywords to include
• Project or content managers to oversee the flow of all the work and ensure each of these areas is communicating

Steponkus’s point is valid, though: Someone who can write witty, engaging social posts might not be as adept at writing informative, deeply researched white papers — and vice versa. You can definitely find writers that cover all those bases, but those are what Larry Kim of Mobile Monkey would call the unicorns. Which is to say: They’re rare.

Plus, even if your writer can pen everything from compelling, creative product descriptions to professional letters full of legal speak, you might not want to use them that way. Many writers prefer certain types of work and shine brightest when they’re allowed to do it, for example.

Ultimately, building your ideal business content writing team comes down to common sense measures and some trial and error. Use the steps below to get started.

1. Identify your business content marketing goals.
2. Determine what types of content you need to support those goals.
3. Divide the content into major types and ask yourself: Do you want different writers for each category.
4. Make a list of skills and experience writers might need to produce each type of content with excellence.
5. Start adding writers who match those qualifications to your team.

Pro tip: You can use the Crowd Content self-serve marketplace search functions to find writers who have backgrounds in certain niches or who have written certain types of content before. You can also reach out to our customer support reps for help finding the ideal writers for any project — whether you need topic experts or generalists who can tackle a wide array of projects.

How to Drive a Successful Collaborative Writing Process

Once you build a business content writing team, don’t forget you have to manage them.

Danielle Clevy says her team is composed of in-house and freelance members including sales copywriters, substantive writers (for articles, longer blog posts and case studies) and junior and social media writers for shorter copy and social posts.

To manage all those writers, Clevy uses a variety of tools. “We use a combination of project management tools (Asana, mainly, though formerly Basecamp), Zoom for calls, Slack to keep us all in touch and build culture and sometimes Voxer. Each week, everyone is required to use our status template and report on their projects and hours worked.”

However you manage your writing teams, the critical factor is communication. Checking in regularly with writers and other people on the team helps ensure people make deadlines and create content that works well for your campaigns.

Here’s a brief sneak peak of how our enterprise process works to provide a jumping off point in defining your own content process.

1. We start by helping the client define what they need if they don’t already know. Before you can create a content process, you must know what type of content you need.
2. We determine the steps each piece of content needs to go through and who is responsible for each steps. Steps might include:
   1. SEO and keyword research
   2. Fact and content research
   3. Creating instructions or briefs for the content
   4. Creating an editorial calendar with deadlines for each content creation step and publication
   5. Assigning content to writers
   6. Editing content
   7. Providing a final QA pass on content
   8. Formatting content
   9. Adding any last touches, such as images
   10. Pressing publish
3. Once we know what steps are required and who is handling each one, we set everything up via our platform. In this third step, you might need to set up your project management tool so you can keep track of all the moving parts and communicate appropriately with everyone involved.
4. We send out the work with all applicable instructions and deadline notifications.
5. We receive the work back and review it, providing ample feedback as needed for revisions or just to ensure future work moves ever closer to the mark you’ve set.
6. We finalize and publish content (or send it to our clients for this purpose).

You don’t have to handle writing team management on your own, though. If this sounds like a lot of work, consider Crowd Content Enterprise solutions, which include project management.

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