Posted november 26

Content scaling: 8 ways to create better content, (way) faster

Traits of content marketers or marketing leaders who might be interested in this guide to scaling content:

Competitive: You've seen your competitors are producing a lot of content and want the same.
Goal-orientated: If you've been set the goals, you'll find any way to achieve those those goals.
Ambitious: Potentially unachievable goals for your small marketing team? No problem.
Assertive: You know the problems you're having with scaling your content and want to fix them.
Very, very smart: Scaling your content is crucial to standing out in an ultra competitive market.

You're blushing now, aren't you? 😊

Move over, time constraints, resource and budget limitations, and ever-increasing content demands. We're here to help you scale your content—and we have no time for excuses.

In this guide, find out the 8 ways to scale your content, without sacrificing on quality.

How to scale your content creation

Create repeatable workflows

There's a lot about the content creation process that can—and should be—standardized. Why? Because it makes everyone's lives easier... and gets content out faster.

By creating repeatable workflows, your content team will not only become very familiar and confident in the content creation process (AKA absolute pros), it will also help prevent any roadblocks of confusion, "what am I meant to do next again?" moments, and messy feedback processes.

This is great for your content team all-round, including when other teams come to play with questions, content requests—or worse—incredibly last-minute content requests, so you can set realistic expectations and deadlines.
Master the art of content repurposing

Recycling is good for the world, and recycling content is good (/brilliant) for marketers. Content repurposing is all about turning one piece of excellent content into multiple pieces of excellent content.

Whether you're taking social media post that #slapped and turning it into a infographic, or taking a YouTube video and chopping it up to add to relevant content across the blog, cross-channel or same-channel content adaptation saves you time, resources, and a ton of budget.

And you never know, some channels might appreciate your work of art more than others.
Make the most of AI... but be strategic about it

Disclaimer: Please, please, please don't go thinking AI can act as a replacement to content writers and creators. Don't be that person.

AI should only be used as an enhancer or inspo for when you're feeling that writer's block or creative burnout. Ideal for research and content ideation, your standard LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini will scrape the internet for you to provide a good round-up of content or answers that others are offering up for related questions or search queries.

And that's the thing: LLMs aren't original and creative like you are, they just copy (a lot of) other people's homework and smush it together.

AI brings a very quick and pretty decent base for each piece of content, but you bring the creativity, the fun, and the next-level product or brand knowledge.

Skipping the boring admin or repetitive tasks, so you have more time to work on more fun stuff? Yes, please.
Check out The AI Playbook: A practical guide to AI for marketers to get all the tea on using AI in the right way.
Ensure all assets are easy to find

No shade to those of you who currently have a pad of paper and a handwritten to do list to your right-side (myself included) but long gone are the days where we rely on scrappy notes—and the occasional doodle—to create some real marketing magic.

In fact, how there any marketing magic before the internet and project management tools, I'm not sure anymore.

Us modern marketers are much better than that these days, making the most of tools and platforms (more on that in a bit) to ensure content and other digital assets are easy to find. With a content library, you can organize assets for easy access and keep them up-to-date for whoever needs them next.

Say goodbye to the 1,000 Slack messages asking where things are, and 1,001 minutes waiting for people to reply. You can find what you need, and get on with the good stuff.
Align your team better... like, a lot better

You might think your team is in sync, but chances are your marketing team is broken... or at least, more broken than you think. Team alignment isn't something that can be fixed by a weekly team call and everyone nodding their head; it takes work and it takes set processes.

Calling all CMOs or marketing leaders, here's how to improve your team alignment; both internal and cross-functional.

Our secret? We use the best marketing strategy for content scaling, team alignment, and random outbursts of "team work makes the dream work"—and that's an integrated marketing strategy.

An integrated marketing team breaks down traditional team silos to make room for a better communication and collaboration process... and results. See for yourself in our guide to integrated marketing.
Choose the right tools for the job

We've already talked about how marketers use AI for content creation, as well as content libraries and digital asset management, but what other tools help with scaling your content creation? Here's our two cents:

1) Project management tools
2) Content calendar tools
3) Analytics and performance tracking tools
4) A platform like Optimizely Content Marketing Platform that includes all of the above

Now, we may be biased, but... an all-in-one marketing solution sounds pretty cushty, doesn't it? 👀
Develop quality templates

Create flexible templates so your content engine (/your beloved team of content writers and creators) can continue to churn out high-quality content with minimal reviews and blockers slowing them down.

Consider incorporating templates for creative briefs for SEO content or thought leadership into your workflow, and polishing up the design brief template so you can work better with the brand team. Quality templates will really speed up your end-to-end content lifecycle, so you'll see great quality and great quantity.
Improve your decision-making with DATA

Whatever data or content marketing metrics you leverage in your team, take advantage of them. This can fuel your decision-making, whether that's about next quarter's marketing strategy, an upcoming campaign, or where best to post specific types of content.

Use data to run the race, because engagement rate is the prize. 🏆

It's all about the quality AND quantity

Too long have we said quality over quantity, but what about having both? By taking these tips on how to scale content creation and injecting them into your marketing strategy and marketing processes, you can be greedy like that.

It's all about finding the balance between speed and quality; take the shortcuts you can to use your time efficiently, while still putting out content that understands the assignment, hits the brief, and gets your target audience swarming.