Made up your mind to build an outsourced content team? Well, that’s a great decision. After all, there’s only so much you can do with limited resources at hand, right?

While an outsourced content team can boost your content game and give you a completive edge, building one can be challenging. Because when you’re new, you don’t know who to hire, how many writers to hire to meet your demand, how to ensure quality, and how to manage & monitor everything. And all this can be quite overwhelming, especially if you’re already busy managing daily operations.

However, I got you covered. This blog discusses six practical tips that I use to build and manage outsourced content teams. These tips come from my practical experience as I’ve been on both sides, i.e., building an outsourced content team and working as a part of one. So, you can expect valuable insights only and no fluff!

Let’s jump right into our practical tips:

1. How Many Writers do you Need?

One of the biggest mistakes content leads/heads make while building an outsourced team is they jump right into hiring. And I fell into this trap as well. Where I needed one writer, I ended up hiring three, which was a total waste of time and money.

So, before you jump into hiring, consider all your requirements and ask yourself the following questions:

Q1. How Many Content Pieces Are You Planning to Produce Each Day/Week?

The number of content pieces or the word count will help you determine how many writers you’ll need. 

For instance, on average, one writer can write around 1500 words a day. So, if you need 10,000 words a day, you’ll need 7-8 writers. However, if you need 500 words a day, one writer would suffice.

Tip: Don’t overburden a writer with more than 1500 words a day. Otherwise, you might notice a sharp decline in quality.

Q2. What Do you Need the Writers for (blogs, articles, social media posts, press releases, etc.)?

This will help you determine the type of writers you may need. Yes, social media, press releases, and blog writers are different. While you may find writers who can handle all of this along with graphics design, they cannot produce high-quality results.

So, when you need a social media content writer, you’ll need to find someone who specializes in social media posts.

Q3. What do you Want to Outsource?

A content team doesn’t always have just writers. Depending on your needs, you may also need a keyword researcher, proofreader, editor, graphics designer, and content strategist. So, check what you’re short of and only then proceed further. This will help you determine the roles you need to hire for.

2. Look for Them!

Once you have your requirements ready and the clarity, you can get on with sourcing.

There are several reliable sources where you can find talented writers (let’s say you need only writers). Nope, I’m not talking about Upwork, Guru, or any other content mills. If you need quality writers, you need to go to reputed job boards like Smart Blogger or Pro Blogger, use LinkedIn, or try ExpertRight: a platform that connects you to vetted freelancers and agencies from all domains. From designers, digital marketing experts, and photographers to content writers, ExpertRight can help you with all your outsourcing needs.

3. Have a Vetting Process in Place

This pointer is in continuation of the previous one. When looking for writers for your outsourced content team, you’re highly likely to come across wannabe writers. Such writers appear to be experienced while they’re not. And sadly, you come to know about that after you’ve spent your time and money onboarding them. However, with a well-defined vetting process, you can ensure you hire ideal writers. Here’s what you need to do:

Create a Test Assignment

Your vetting process should be both simple and effective, so it saves you time and helps you find quality writers, respectively. And to ensure that, you can create a test assignment that includes two things:

1. MCQs to test Grammar Skills: This will help filter the majority of bad writers.

2. Written Test: For the ones who pass the grammar test, have them write a 200–400-word blog on a topic of your choice. Ensure the topic can be wrapped up in 200-400 words. If you give a lengthy topic while limiting the word count, it might confuse the writers, leading to poor results.
   
   

   Once done, the writers can share the content piece via Google Docs for review. This way, you can test different skills such as research ability, readability, sentence structure, originality, SEO, etc., review the assignment and add comments conveniently.

   
   

Pro Tip: Most writers won’t take up the test assignment if it’s unpaid. So, pay the writers, even for the test assignment, as they’re investing their time and effort.

Schedule an Interview: If you’re satisfied with the writers’ content and responses, set up an interview. You can ask them the following questions or whatever you didn’t include in your test assignment:

1. What is your writing experience?

2. What is your area of expertise, or what topics do you enjoy writing about?

3. Do you have any experience writing for a specific industry or niche?

4. How do you approach research for your writing projects?

5. Can you provide references or testimonials from previous clients?

6. What is your availability and turnaround time for projects?

7. How do you handle revisions or edits to your work?

8. Do you have experience working with a content management system (CMS)?

9. What is your rate for writing services?

   
   

P.S. The above is what I do. You can have as many steps as you want. But, in the end, the motive is to create a filter that allows only deserving candidates to pass through.

4. Training is Mandatory

While some writers are ready to produce quality content the moment they’re hired, most need training. So, set up an interactive training program as a part of writer onboarding. The motive of this training program is to help writers understand your brand, its voice, tonality, and purpose and adapt to the same. If your writers are trained for a few days, the chances of them making mistakes will significantly reduce. And this will save you a lot of time, money, and reputation in the long run.

5. Managing your Outsourced Content Team

Once the training and onboarding are done, you need to start assigning the work and managing the team. If you have the bandwidth, you can:

Build a content strategy

• Conduct brainstorming sessions

• Share the outlines with your writers

• Give them a deadline

• Ask for updates

• Edit them

• Post them

• Track KPIs to check the performance.

If you’re too occupied in day-to-day operations and are building an outsourced content team to save time, you can hire a content lead or project manager to offload some tasks. However, make sure you know the difference between a content lead and a project manager before you hire one. Because while they sound similar, these roles have some distinct responsibilities. For instance: 

• Content Lead: A content lead handles the technical aspects of content, from developing and executing content strategies to approving and distributing content across different channels. They work closely with the writers and help them along the way. 

• Project Manager: Project managers don’t necessarily possess expertise in drafting or managing content. Their primary goal is to help the organization complete a project within the given budget and time. And to achieve this goal, project managers ensure there’s seamless communication among internal team members (editors, writers, designers, etc.) and the stakeholders. 

So, consider your requirements and hire the one you need. This will help you manage your content team better and achieve the desired results.

6.Ensuring Improvement

You may think that once you’ve hired writers and a team lead to manage them, everything will work fine. Sadly, that’s not the reality. While a team lead will save you time, you may still have to intervene to ensure quality and continuous improvement. And to do that, you can:

• Go through the content that is being published, on your own.

• Compare the content published each week or month.

• Incorporate a feedback mechanism that offers a detailed review to your writers after every task.

• Make sure your writers get any reworks within 1-2 days of writing the first draft. Otherwise, they may have to go through the entire thing from the beginning, which can be both annoying and time-consuming for the writers.

  
  

Wrapping Up

Well, that’s it. That is how you build a successful outsourced content team. You can follow these tips and take your content game to another level. However, feel free to add or remove tips as you like because this is not some one-size fits all approach. Every business has different requirements and thus needs different solutions. Keep coming for more similar insightful and practical content!