Once all the hard yards have been done in building a writing team, there is another marathon to run in the form of managing your writers.
Without attentive management a writing team can very quickly become complacent which consequently can produce second rate writing.
Your SOP’s will underpin effective writer management. Well structured SOP’s will ultimately determine the level to which you manage your writing team.
The two facets of ensuring your writers deliver on their project requirements are the Writing Brief and Continual Writer Feedback.
The Writing Brief
For each new writing project be sure to always write as detailed a brief as possible for the writer/s you’ll be allocating the project to. The core components of the brief should include the following:
- Article title
- Required word count
- Primary and secondary SEO keywords
- Writing Style: Descriptive, persuasive, expository and narrative
- Deadline
- Include any key website links the writer can use for research
Armed with the above information any writer worth their salt should be able to complete the job at hand competently.
Continual Writer Feedback
It’s also very important to provide detailed writer feedback to every member of your writing team from the moment they join.
We’ve noticed a significant difference in the quality of writing between a writer who has received little feedback compared to a writer who receives ongoing feedback.
Remember, feedback can be both positive, negative or even neutral. The main purpose of the feedback to let the writer know whether they’re meeting expectations and hopefully get them to a point where they are consistently writing content which exceeds expectations.
A good way to achieve this is to set a precedent early. We mandate providing feedback on every single one of the first 10 pieces of writing that a writer produces.
This is usually a sufficient amount of feedback for a writer to get a clear understanding of how to write well for your company.
Most writers also value the feedback they receive as this helps them become better writers which in turn improves their career prospects and value in the marketplace.
Plagiarism
An ugly word in the writing world but nonetheless something which has to be addressed. Although to date we have not had a single writer attempt to plagiarise a piece of content, we do still conduct intermittent checks to help mitigate against the risks of such nefarious writing practices.
There are a number of free tools one can use to detect duplicate content and plagiarism. Some popular ones include Copyscape, Grammarly and Small SEO Tools. All you have to do is simply copy and paste the content into a box and the website will then scan the web to detect any instances of plagiarism.