Turnover in the SaaS world is commonplace.
One-year tenures aren’t uncommon.
That means fast-growing companies are often promoting from within or cherry-picking talent from competitors.
I’ve had the (mis)fortune of being a freelance writer, before building content teams inside an agency, and now also in-house (👋 Hi, meet Wordable.)
And I can tell you from experience that the #1 reason content teams fail is because they have the wrong people doing the wrong jobs at the wrong time.
Sounds trite. But anyone’s who’s tried scaling content from one person to five to a few dozen can tell you it’s true.
Look no further than the fact that most good writers make terrible editors and even worse content managers.
It might seem like those three roles are similar. However, the qualities that make someone excel at one often make them an awful fit for another.
Here’s why, and how to grow your content team from scrappy startup into million-dollar enterprise.
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Get Started TodayIt’s tempting to overlap.
Small companies don’t really have much of a choice. Limited resources = a limited amount of money to splurge on extra people to fill different seats on the content marketing bus.
So it’s true to a degree.
Small content teams DO need to overlap some roles. (Vs large content teams that often don’t, bringing in dedicated people for each role.)
BUT… this will put a glass ceiling on production. A cap on the amount of content. And typically a reduction in quality because your content will be forced into one dimensionality (is that a word?).
Let me explain.
Writers are good at the intangibles. At conjuring up images and visions and explanations out of thin air. Poof. Just like that. 2,000-words actually worth reading (instead of skimming).
I dunno what in the world “creativity” is at the end of the day. But I do know it’s not linear. You can’t always force it. Yes, a disciplined approach helps. The War of Art rightfully highlights the daily struggle with Resistance.
That’s where writers excel: the ingenuity to say the same thing over and over and over in slightly different ways. Take a basic topic like “how Google Analytics lies to you.” Hell, I’ve written this exact piece half a dozen times in the past few years alone. The trick is always to touch on the same themes, but constantly repurpose.
Recycle, remix, recycle. Just like the PSAs say.
Now, contrast that with an editor. Yes, they often need (but don’t always require) the same level of wordsmithing. However, for them, ingenuity isn’t a priority. In fact, it’s frowned upon. What they want is consistency.
My company has multiple editors working across 45+ writers. We’ve had teams of at least 10+ writers on one client account before. Their job, at the end of the day, is to deliver consistency to the client. Yes, voices and tones can (and should) be slightly different across all writers. That’s normal. But there should still be consistent editing across all pieces according to content briefs or style guidelines.
Here’s the thing that gets my goat.
An editor’s job is to edit. Not rewrite.
Lemme say that again. In all caps. Just in case you were scanning and might blow over this part. And throw in some stupid emojis to really drive it home.
👇
👉 AN EDITOR’S JOB IS TO EDIT. NOT REWRITE. 👈
👆
What do I mean?
This is a real, live, in-the-wild client example. Here’s a line from a blog post that a writer wrote:
And here’s the rewrite the editor made:
So… why was this change made?
Sure, style and tone are slightly different.
In other words, the “rewrite” doesn’t actually make the line any better.
So… again… WHY is it being rewritten?
It’s because you’ve “promoted” a writer to editor, or are having them pull double duty — without the proper training or qualifications or underlying skill set and personality.
An editor that rewrites is like a manager that can’t delegate. It’s their way or the highway, like a maniac micro-manager that can’t let go.
The content marketing strategy might be legit. The content marketing effort might be there. But your content creation process sucks. And you will continue to struggle until it’s fixed.
This is a very specific example, I’ll grant you. However, it’s 100% indicative of the larger problem. Your content team isn’t good enough, or isn’t well rounded enough.
Ultimately, this is why execution breaks down. While you’ll never make the shift to content production at the scale most hyper-growth companies require. And why you’ll never get out of first-gear, publishing more than a post or two a week, while never really getting to revamp old content or off-site work needed to make a dent in your space.
Not necessarily because you don’t have the right people.
But because you have them in the wrong roles, without the extra support and completely-skill sets to let everyone flourish with what they’re already good at.
So here’s how to specialize digital content team roles so that you don’t fall into the all-to-common trap of the wrong person in the wrong seat sabotaging your ROI.
Most companies start with a single content creator hire.
I think this is a mistake. Here’s why.
First, you’re completely reliant on one individual.
What if they get sick? What if they burn out? What if you’re not paying them enough and their attention gets split between 20 other clients? What if you spend 6+ months grooming them (albeit, not in a Twitter, Cancel Culture-way) and they bounce after one year?
In other words, a single point of failure.
PLUS, putting all of your eggs in a single mystical “unicorn” writer (that doesn’t exist) sets you up for bad habits.
You never learn how to scale. You never learn how to formalize editing. You never learn how to add graphic designers to the mix. You never learn to appreciate different content styles. You’re not able to adapt to create both formulaic (e.g. glossary/term content) or high-brow (e.g. detailed customer case studies). You never learn how to run parallel processes.
Good luck going head-to-head with savvy competitors. They’ll eat your 2005 content marketing approach for lunch.
Remember your Sun Tzu: don’t pick fights you can’t win. Position 5 might as well be page 5, because the end result is the same: zero traffic.
Hire multiple writers like you’d hire multiple salespeople for one role to compete against each other, and give you a fair barometer of what you do, or don’t like.
These don’t have to be full-time hires right out of the gate. In facts, I’d argue they should almost never be. Load up on freelancers or agencies who can do all of this for you and focus on the hard part of content creation (consistently executing your content ideas).
How to hire content freelancers vs. content agencies is kinda a broad topic for another day. But generally:
Starting with multiple writers will force you to hire/assign a dedicated content manager or editor.
Now, these are the roles you can overlap because the skill sets are usually more complementary. Whether you need one or both, depends on what you did in the last step.
Generally speaking:
There’s no right or wrong answer here necessarily. I’d argue that better (read: more expensive) writers or subject matter experts are easier to work with because you don’t have to edit as much and you don’t need to micromanage (saving you project manager costs down the line).
That being said, some consumer spaces can still get by on relatively shitty content mass-produced by shitty writers, so… get going while the going’s good.
IF you go with more of a content marketer to begin, this person’s background or aptitude should also highlight three things:
The next step in your content marketing team evolution should be to transition from checkers to chess.
Here’s what I mean.
You should have identified and specialized three key content team roles:
What happens if you don’t break out editing as a separate function at this stage?
Your content manager simply won’t have the time or mental bandwidth to spend on those higher-leverage activities that will get you from ~10-20k monthly visits to ~100k+ over the next year.
So waiting too long to separate out these functions is like a massive opportunity cost lost, because you’re foregoing the massive upside that much traffic can bring (we’re talking millions of dollars in revenue if your product or service doesn’t suck).
Those three dedicated content roles should also allow you to start bringing in additional specialized roles.
Here’s where things get fun.
Having dedicated content creators or writers, an editor, and a content manager gives you the infrastructure to start pumping out some serious quality and quantity.
There are two obvious ways to continuing scaling from here:
Think of this point as building out your content “middle managers.” They’re an unnecessary expense when you’re small and resources are strapped. But they’re absolutely essential when you scale, and it’s impossible to break through the glass ceilings holding you back without them.
Everyone covets a marketing flywheel. The point where word of mouth spreads organically, far exceeding what you’re personally pushing out, and where people basically do most of the work for you.
However, based on the cold hard data, most people are unprepared (or unwilling) to actually invest and sacrifice enough to build one. The marketing efforts that report the most success are also the least practiced on a daily basis.
Why?
Because it’s hard.
The only way you’re going to get there is with a well-oiled content machine. And the only way you’re going to build one is with senior-level talent guiding the ship.
The old saying is true.
You wanna go fast? Go alone. You wanna go far? You’re gonna need a team structure.
I can write an article like this by myself in about two hours. Easy peasy. Not because I’m smart, but because I’ve (painfully) lived all of these experiences first-hand.
BUT…
I’m not the one who’s going to edit it. I’m not the one who’s going to upload, format, and prep it. And I’m not the one who’s going to promote it.
‘Cause I don’t like doing that stuff. And I arguably suck at most of them.
While all of this might sound hard, check out Wordable. It will not only clean and properly format your HTML, but also compress images, open links in a new tab, automatically set featured images, or create a table of contents, and lots more within a single click from Google Docs.
Today’s hyper-competitive SERPs require both high-quality and quantity content. The only way to get near that, is with a larger supporting cast who each excels at a specific skill set.
Hiring or training the right people is half the battle of assembling a content team. The other half is getting those people to work together (especially for a remote team spread across boundaries and time zones).
Neither of those things directly address the actual words-on-the-page part. And that’s the main takeaway for today.