Saas Marketer - How to build a content machine

How to build a content machine

Plus: SaaS Marketer Jobs

Dec 01

Step 1 - Understand Systems

The very first thing you need to realise if you want to build a content machine is that you need to remove yourself from the process.

There is no way you can write 30-40 articles in a couple of months.

If you're a founder, you have other things to do
If you're a SaaS Marketer, you have other things to do

You need to be ABOVE the system, not WITHIN the system.

Your content machine will have three roles:

The Operator - you (or the person you forward this email to!)
The Writer/Research - more on this later
The Editor - often also the Operator to start

Step 2 - Determine The Target

Now that you understand the system we're building, we now need to determine what we would like the output of the system to be.

E.g. who do we want to help, how do we want to help them and then what keywords do we want to rank for...

In that order.

Value before rankings ;)

I'm not going to go into detail on how to do this as there are plenty of better guides out their on the internet. I touch upon this here.

Step 3 - Find Decent Writers

Now the big one...

How do you find the writers/researchers you need to command this volume?

Fortunately, there is a shedload of awesome writers available around the world for little investment.

I used UpWork, and here is the job post:

Before hiring anyone... offer a paid test for a fix price. Hand them one of your briefs and then observe how they work with you and of course, their output.

Run this paid test with 5 freelancers and pick the two best... be sure to ask them about their capacity in the coming months to ensure you have enough writer time to hit your content goals.

Bear in mind that writing content requires two different skills:

Working out what to say
Saying it

Some people are good at one of these not both... ideally to scale this system you need to find someone who is good at both.

#1 is easier if the have existing experience in your topic/niche, which is why we screen for that in the job post ;)

To start with, you must be the Editor. You must review every article in Google Doc, then when perfect, have the writer upload onto your site and format.

You then review again...

Over time, you can promote your best writer to become the Editor.

Step 4 - Operate & Improve

You need to track everything in Trello or a spreadsheet, define very clear writing guidelines (you can see and copy ours here) and then stick to the process.

When producing this volume of content you need to maintain a clear and documented process.

Each writer needs to know the topic, target audience, keywords and sub-keywords they need to hit with their article.

Operate the system for a while, understand the inefficiencies, tweak and improve.

I hope that was valuable as you build your content machine, I will keep you updated as we build ours ;)

And of course...

Keep growing,
Tom - SaaS Marketer

P.S.

And yes, if you didn't hear: SaaS Marketer Jobs is now live.

For FREE, you can post your SaaS marketing related jobs and I will make sure they get exposure in the 4.1k strong Facebook Group and maybe even on this email list...

Check it out and post here: https://jobs.saasmarketer.io

We currently have two vacancies ;)

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