The 5 Simple Steps to Build a Remote Content Team That Rocks

Are you trying to build a remote content team and don’t know where to start from?

The best content teams do not just crank up content and slap them online. They work toward a common marketing goal.  This article shows you how to build such a team.

This article is written from my experience building content teams and working with up to seven remote content teams in the past five years.

In my experience working with different teams, I discovered what separates the rock stars from the rookies. You’ll find everything in this article.

In this article, you’d find:

• All you need to do to build and manage a remote content team.
• Actionable steps, screenshots, and tools to get started right away.

Let’s dive in!

Step 1: Start With Your Remote Content Team Goals

Lack of clear goals is one of the reasons remote teams fail. Your first step in building your team is setting measurable and specific goals.

How to set SMART content team goals 

Answering the following questions will help you set smart goals for your content team.

• How will content help you achieve your marketing goals? 
• What kind of content will your team be creating?
• How often will this content be produced and published?
• What results will the content produce?
• What is the timeline for all of the above?

Your answers to these questions are your content goals. 

Now convert them to SMART goals.

This video explains how to set smart goals.

Here are examples of content goals to inspire you.

• Generate 10 inbound leads per month for the next 12 months.
• Generate 1000 visits per month organically for the next 12 months.
• Increase customer conversion by 25% by the next quarter.

Notice that these goals have specific numbers and time bounds, that is how SMART goals are created.

Now to do the same for your team. You don’t have to pull your hair over this. There are tools to help you do it fast and easily.

Goal setting tools

Use Hubspot’s smart marketing goal setting template to create, document your goals and share it with your team.

Step 2: Hire the Best Talents

Goals do not achieve themselves. You need the right talent/people to bring your goals to life.

Source: get entrepreneurial.com

Getting the right people on your team is crucial. However, it can take a lot of time and business resources. According to Business2Community, 83 percent of recruiters struggle to find suitable talents. Also,  small business owners spend around 40% of their working hours on tasks that do not generate income, such as hiring.

How to effectively staff your remote content team

First, you need to be sure about who you need to hire. 

Here are a few questions to help you figure out who you need to hire. Answer this question on a piece of paper or word editor.

• What skill(s) do I need to produce the content my business needs?
• What job titles offer these skills?

These are the people you need to hire. 

Team hiring tools

Here are four tools you need to staff your team:

• A career/hiring page on your website.
• Hiring platforms like Glassdoor, Linkedin, and Toggl Hire.
• Social media posts or job ads.
• Marketplaces like Fiverr, Upwork, and ClearVoice.

Note: If you’re just starting out with your team, I’ll advise you to start with freelancers. They provide you with the ease and flexibility to experiment and know for sure who you need to hire.

Step 3: Take Onboarding Seriously

For your new team members to be effective right off the door and help you achieve your goals you must bring them up to speed on your goals and how you work.

Source: wizergos.com

Effective onboarding helps align the skills of your new team member with your mission. 

Jumping on a quick video call with the new hire usually does the job. On this call, you provide the new team member a detailed tour of how the team works, your mission, your success stories, and all the necessary documents that you use in the team. You’d find some of these documents in the next sections.

Now you have your goals and a team of experts. How do you put them to work?

Step 4: Create Systems to Manage Your Remote Content Team 

Managing a team requires some work. Managing a team when they’re scattered all over the world requires more work.

How to manage a content team to produce results

Proper task scheduling, assigning, tracking, and documentation. These are the secrets to managing your remote content

Let’s look at each of them. 

Scheduling

Plan all your activities for a specified period of time (for example a month), lay out all the tasks that need to be accomplished for each activity, and the expected results.

For example, if you plan on writing one pillar page and 4 topic cluster content for the next 4 weeks then schedule the tasks for each of these tasks with their start and end time. You can do this for up to a quarter. Some teams actually do for a complete year.

Assigning

After scheduling, assign laid out tasks to the team members responsible.

Tracking

Follow your team’s activities to ensure time and quality are on track. This is from the beginning of the activity to the end.

Processes

Who should report to who? How is content created and what steps do you follow to get the quality and results that you need.

A well-documented process for content creation will help your team to work in a streamlined manner and help new hires get onboard faster.

Remote team management tools

There are lots of free and paid team management tools you can use. However, a good team management tool must help you:

• Assign tasks with requirements and deadlines
• See the progress on each task
• Give and receive feedback
• Collaborate among team members

Here is a list of 5 team management tools you can choose from

• Toggl Plan
• Trello
• Asana
• ClickUp

For example, this is how scheduling and assigning looks like on Toggl Plan

And on ClickUp

Create documentation to guide your team

Clear documentation enables you to manage your team and put everyone on the same page.

Here are some vital docs your team must have to work effectively:

• Your content strategy doc
• A content guideline
• A content creation checklist, and
• Standardized work templates

Step 5: Enable Effective Communication 

According to WorkPlace Insight, 88 percent of remote workers struggle with inconsistent working practices and miscommunication

To build a team of happy and energetic content developers, you must invest in resources and time to promote seamless and effective communication among team members.

Source: moneycrashers.com

How to promote effective communication

• Introduce regular standup meetings, at least once a week, to discuss work, progress, and challenges with your team
• Create a chain of communication so team members know who to run to for help.
• Encourage team members to connect with one another on personal levels.
• Organize work-free online hangouts

Team communication tools

Communicating with your team is easy, and FREE.

Some tools that facilitate effective team communication

• Slack
• Ping
• Skype
• Microsoft Teams

In my experience working and building remote content teams, Slack is one of the best tools for team communication. This is because of its chat, integrated VoIP, video conferencing, and sub-team features, called channels.

Source: original screenshot

Here are some tips to utilize Slack effectively.

• Have individual channels for each client or project.
• All work-related discussions should be on the channels.
• Encourage your staff to use threads for separate topics instead of creating new posts.
• Integrate all your tools with Slack so you can run everything from one place.

There you have it. Five steps to building and managing a remote content team. If you read to this point, then you have enough info and tools to get started building a team that rocks.

But it doesn’t end there. You also need to secure your online workspace.

Secure Your Remote Workspace

Below are security best practices to keep your online workspace secure and your business data far away from the reach of cyberattacks.

• Use a secure file-sharing tool like Google Suite to share and store files.
• Change all shared passwords when an employee leaves.
• Login in through a mutual VPS when you want to access company data.
• Consider creating corporate emails for your team members so you can implement strict access rules to important documents.
• Get your employees to sign a non-disclosure agreement if you’re handling delicate business data.
• Invest in a SaaS security system like Blissfully, Torii, Zylo, etc.

Remote Content Team Management Best Practices

A roundup of all we discussed in this article.

• Start with setting your goals straight and hiring right.
• Keep the communication channel open at all times.
• Use team management tools to organize and monitor tasks.
• Build a robust set of documentation to get new hires and your team in sync.
• Build camaraderie and a sense of belonging in your team.
• Do not fall for the temptation to micromanage your team.

Your content team isn’t an on-demand content vending machine. It is as an actual department like Finance or HR. 

If you go through the goal setting, hiring, team management, and communication steps explained here, you’re on your way to building a kick-ass content team that’ll help you achieve your content goals.

Check out my blog on 10 Powerful Tips to Manage a Content Team That Rocks for more ideas on how to manage your content team.

Visit my blog for more content on how to grow your business using content and the power of social media.