How to Build a Thriving and Prolific B2B Content Team

Welcome to the Perfectly Content Podcast, where we are diving into the challenges of creating standout B2B marketing content and strategies hosted by Foleon's content crew. We are on a mission to help all of the B2B marketers out there become a little more perfect and a lot more content.

Hello everyone. Welcome to our live webinar — we’re really excited to have you here with us. You only see me right now. I'm not alone. I will introduce the other participants in just a minute. Today we're talking all about how to build a thriving and prolific B2B content team. So the room today is full of content managers. I think we might have some freelancers here. We might have some some content specialists. All kinds of people involved in B2B content marketing. The goal today is just to have a really good conversation and hopefully give everybody some takeaways that they can go back to their companies with and start to make things better.

So getting into it quick introduction, my name is Julie Alexander. I'm the director of Brand & Comms at the Foleon content creation platform. I've been in the B2B scale-up or SaaS scale-up space for about seven or eight years now. I started out as a translator, went into copywriting then I went into content management, and then finally brand strategy.

I run a team of five amazing content creators at Foleon and we actually are putting this webinar on together today with Contentoo. And so we've invited Joost, who is the Head of arketing at Contentoo. Would you like to introduce yourself? 

Course thanks, Julie. Yes. My name is Joost. I'm the Head of Marketing of Contentoo and have a background in marketing for the last seven years, first B2C side, and moved to B2B, which I like a bit more. Mainly I did my experience in search and started building the marketing team at Contentoo, since last year. 

Amazing. Thanks. And then we also have a special guest with us today which is Will Gibbons, freelance writer, editor translator. Will, would you like to introduce yourself? 

Yes. Hi there. Hi everybody. Thank you for joining us and thanks to Joost and Julie for asking me to be a part of this today. I'm very proud to be representing the freelance community today. I am a freelance content creator, editor, translator, and I've been working as a freelancer for the last eight years. I actually come from a kind of much different industry because I got my start in academics and I've always been a big lover of reading and writing.

And at one point I think I wanted to become a professor of English literature, but at some point, I think I also just decided that I wanted to make some money. So I took stock of my marketable skills as one does. And yeah, what I found out is that I actually what I'm really good at, telling a story finding the right words to make an emotional impact.

And soon I discovered that there are a lot of clients who are basically looking for exactly those skills. So yeah, I've been working with a wide range of very different companies ever since. Yeah, I'm very happy to be here. 

Amazing. Thanks. Well, we'd also really love to hear from everybody who's joining on the other side. So if you wanna maybe put you name, where you're from, your job title, your company in the chat. We'd love to hear from you. And then I guess a bit of housekeeping as well. I'm sure you've all been in many webinar platforms by this point. It's the way of life now. But yeah, it's pretty straightforward. You've got your chat on the right and you've got the question box up at the top right. 

But also please really feel free to use the chat section throughout the presentation. You know, if you have ideas and experiences we'd really love to hear from you and we'll keep an eye on it and bring that into the conversation as much as possible. I see we've got a few people already.

Hey, from Bulgaria. Awesome. Oh, and that's also another one —I'm based in in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, and you're both in Berlin. This webinar will take about 35 minutes. We'll be chatting for about 35 minutes and then we'll have time for questions at the end.

Also we're gonna kind of build up to like our big key takeaway for today. So what is the one thing based on all of our experiences and input that you can do tomorrow to grow your team and to make your team even better than its today? So looking forward to sharing that with you towards the end.

So our key topics for today — this is actually based on a research report the Contentoo team did last June. And it was really a research report to find out more about the difference between how content managers and freelancers view content creation.

So where do these different parties agree? Where do they see differences? And then trying to drill down and figure out how can everybody work better together. So Contentoo did this really great research and then we kind of teamed up over at Foleon to create the report in this really interactive format.

There were a lot of really interesting findings and topics for discussion that we wanted to dive into — we pulled out four of the bigger topics: people, technology processes and optimization.

And we've narrowed each of those down to some really small specific bits that we can dive into to find out more about what to do to make our content teams better. So we're gonna try to do about five minutes on each topic. It's a bit of a whirlwind, but we've got some some good takeaways for you here.

How do you find the right people — and skills — to build your content team?

So without further ado, first topic being people. Maybe the most important part, maybe we talk about that at the end. What's the most important? But the question we wanted to ask ourselves is how do you find the right people to build your team? Looking, you know, in house, looking at freelance community, how do you really build that perfect team to create content?

And what the findings were from the report is that 62% of freelancers say that they have enough work, while 58% of managers report that they need additional content, which is surprising cause I feel like content managers always need more content. But yeah, the war on talent is real, and finding the right people now is more difficult than ever.

So I'm really curious, Joost from your experience working at Contentoo, which of course has everything to do with working with freelancers connecting them with companies, but also working as a Head of Marketing.
How do you find the right people, whether it's people that you want to hire in house or external people? What skills and experience should someone bring in your team? Do they need to have domain expertise? Do they really need to horoughly understand your products and the topics you write about the industry you're operating in. Do, do they need to speak the native language? Do they need to have experience with the specific type of format you're publishing?

For example, white paper and infographic — each of these require different skills, and I think as a manager, as a content market, it's important to first think, what do you really need? And this is also for the marketing team at contentoo is something we learned through trial and error, but as soon as you know what you need, it's a lot easier.

It's a bit like targeting in your advertising efforts. It's not easier to also find the right week. I feel like that trial and error part that's so integral to marketing, but it's, it's really particularly painful to do trial and error when it comes to people, right? Cause there's, you know, there's people involved and you always want to treat everybody with that most respect and make sure that everyone is just where they should be.

I've found definitely my experience that that's really huge, right? So knowing what you're looking for and understanding based on like, based on the content that we wanna create based on our strategy. Where do we look for that talent? Do we want in-house people? Does that make sense for our company right now?

Is that something that we can pay for right now? Or do we wanna look at the freelance community? Do we wanna find people maybe who, who are native speakers? Who specialize in a very particular type of content creation? Do you wanna go niche or do you wanna go abroad and get kinda more general specialists in house?

Who can, who can for instance, coordinate things? Who can create briefs for freelancers? It's a lot to consider and I think it's kind of tempting sometimes to just get some steps and like maybe build out a big junior team before you have like the senior content marketers in house who can actually kind of drive the, the strategy and operations.

What's your experience with this Will, as a freelancer? 

Well, from my perspective as a freelancer, I think what's important is not only for my clients to know what they want from me, what they expect, but also kind of to know what they offer in a way. And what I mean by that is that I think a lot of companies are used to doing sort of employer branding now in their recruitment practices for in-house employees.

And I think as marketing teams come to rely more on freelancers, and the competition for freelance talent gets tougher, I think there's gonna need to be a more of a employer branding approach when it comes to attracting freelance talent as well. And so that means for me working with companies that kind of make me feel valued as a part of their team.

Companies that are really clear about what they expect me to contribute and how I fit into the bigger picture there so that I feel more engaged. I also feel more motivated to give them what they want. This is why I really enjoy working through clients on a platform, for example.

You know, that gives you a lot more interactivity and opportunities to kind of develop long term relationships. What would you say is one of the best things that a client either has done or could do to give you that feeling of being appreciated? 

Well, I think just understanding what my value is as a freelancer and, and maybe also having really realistic expectations of what it is that, that I'm going to offer.

And I think some companies, some clients maybe have an expectation that, that as a freelance writer with experience in a certain industry, that you are a kind of subject matter expert on maybe some very technical topics. But I think that that's actually quite rare to find a true kind of subject matter expert who is also a really good writer and a freelance writer on top of that.

So, I mean, you're really narrowing your choices down. I think what is a lot more effective is to understand that your freelance talent, your content creator, contributes their skills as a writer primarily. I know that's the industry that I'm an insider in. I'm a content creation insider.

And so I think it's maybe kind of a roundabout answer to your question, but it's, it's I think it's a lot about having realistic expectations. So it sounds like actually, if we kind of combine what you also said and what you said, it's kind of on both sides, right? Really knowing what you want and making those expectations clear.

And Will, I also liked what you said about you know, your, like your skill set is content creation and I think that this is something that we run into both with, with freelancers, but also even with in-house content creators is remembering like the skill set that you hired somebody for, which is in this case to create content, not to necessarily be a subject matter expert.

And of course, over time when you hire in-house people, you can expect them to learn that and to become more of a subject matter expert. But I think a lot of times yeah, people forget that and then they get like, send you with their briefs or they expect like, oh, the content creator should know everything.

Well, I think the more you invest in the relationship with your freelancers, the more they will become experts on your brand and experts on the things that matter for them to be able to do a good job for you. So for me it really also comes back to relationship building and, and taking a long term view of what your relationship with the freelancer is gonna be.

I mean, I know that I'm gonna work a lot harder for a client if I think there's a future there and I feel invested in their brand and their company than if. It's like an anonymous, sketchy agency or something, you know what I mean? So, and some random on the internet, not to on the agencies, but I mean, there's, there's a time and a place for that.

But, I could even imagine that list of benefits to work with freelancers that have seen many verticals or who have worked on many different type of content. Because they also have the capacity to quickly dive into a new a new topic or a new product and take on the, the project that you offer.

Yeah, I think that's true. And I also think that working with a freelancer gives you the benefit of bringing in a fresh perspective anyway. You know, if you're working with an in-house team they're obviously gonna be really experts on your subject matter. You bring in an outsider, then they may notice things that you've been overlooking for a long time.

I mean, I can think of a client that I worked for, they were trying to expand from Germany into an international market and you know, they had worked out some keywords in house and brought them to me. And I just thought, these keywords don't really feel that organic, like you got the feeling that they couldn't see it any other way.

Like they, they were seeing something that just made sense to them. But, you know, it just took a little outsider perspective, I think, to open their mind to, you know, what they were doing. And this is another thing that I think you'll, you'll benefit, benefit from. 

Getting your Martech and Contentech right

And that kind of gives us a good segue into the next pillar, which is technology. And so where it reminds me of this is you were saying, you know, like putting your freelancers in the best position to just do the work that they're there to do. And I think you, you know, you can also say that for your, for anybody creating content, right?

You want to create an environment where your writers can write, your designers can design, where people aren't getting stuck doing admin all the time. I think we've all been there. And so for technology, we really narrowed this down to —and it's a bigger discussion right now, of course — operational efficiency.

And especially with kind of, you know, whispers of like, Oh, will there be a recession? We've seen, you know, in big companies, we've seen layoffs. We've seen some budget cuts. I think most of us have seen budget cuts across the board right now. So I think operational efficiency is, is a big topic right now.

But specifically looking at, at building a highly functional content team you really, of course you wanna be using technology to your benefit, but it can also, it can also bog you down if you choose the wrong technology, if you don't implement it properly, if it isn't all integrated with each other.

And that was also kind of what we saw in the report as well. Right? So technology is key for all businesses. It's important for communication, for security efficiency, employee assistance and ideally you want it to save time and money. So you'll, I'm curious you know, as a head of marketing in a growing company and also, you know, we both work with kind of products that have to do with technology.

I think that what's not a problem in marketing is the, is the amount of technology in the market nowadays, and I think especially younger companies where they are setting up their content marketing processes is supported to, to focus on the fundamentals.

And it's, it's very much related to the maturity states of your, of your business. Also for content from marketing teams. I currently really focus on operational efficiency, and I want to have technology that makes sure that the team is streamlined both in us and freelancers. So what we want to ensure is that writers can write, designers can design et cetera.

So we don't want them to chase people for last input just before deadline or to retrieve an invoice or retrieve an, an old draft or of certain content piece. So to make sure that everyone stays on par, the technology that we offer in the content platform, make sure that all the information and also all the communication.

That belongs to one: projects people can find in in one place. I think that is so key and something that many young content teams typically overlook. They look in all sorts of fancy technology so that the end result is very fancy and that also the way the content finds its way to market.

This is done in a particular way, and that is also important, but I would first focus on the fundamentals of making your content team operationally efficient and then branch out to more exotic technologies. 

Absolutely. So I heard you in the beginning, you know, tech overload is definitely a thing, right?

Like trying to put a band on everything with technology. But really looking at, you know, what, what, what's the most important thing? So, single source of truth I heard you mention and also having, making sure that the right people know what to do when. So if you have rules in place or workflows where if for certain content besides a writer, you need an editor, maybe even the second editor, and the the person who's in charge of the content in-house needs to have a last look before goes live, that you can ensure that the right people see the right stuff.

I'm really curious actually from the audience, if you guys wouldn't mind putting in the chat. Like, I wonder how many of y'all are working with just project management tools something like a Monday or Wrike. There are a lot of different ones out there, but I would say as a content manager, that's probably the one technology that I kind of, I won't work without it anymore.

In my team, we have the huge benefit of having a content operations specialist. So we have really someone whose job it literally is to make sure that all of our processes are set up properly in our project management tool, that things are moving, that we're constantly looking at like what's our turnaround time on our content?

How can we make it better? How can we communicate better? And this helps us so much. I think it's something that is easy to underestimate. Will, I'm curious as a freelancer what your experience is with this. Like, how often you kind of get woven in with these tools or how often you're kind of stuck working with email. 

Well I think tech is one of those topics where the needs and the interests of the freelancer kind of overlap with those of the, the content manager, because we all need to be able to work more efficiently, more quickly. We're all busy and we want to, you know, streamline our process. And for me I think that working with tools that, that automate workflows, basically just free up time for me to make better content, you know, which is what my clients want and is what I want.

I don't want to be flipping through like long threads of emails to try to find an older version of a document that needs to be whatever double checked or things like this. And so I just think that this is why a lot of freelancers like me are really falling in love with the platform model now of being able to really coordinate projects and work directly with clients through a platform rather than have, I don't know, have to deal with email primarily. The less time I can spend in my email inbox, I think the more I am just gonna get done in a day.

And so yeah, I think that it's really just about saving time. I can't remember where it was, but I think it was even today that I saw somebody say something about like there will be a time soon when sending an invoice via email will seem just highly unprofessional. 

(Will) I think I might have written that! No, I mean, that's true too. You know, I mean, just, things like invoicing, handling the, the kind of nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty of doing business. Yeah, it's just, and I mean, and, and it goes back to what I was saying before about building relationships and also kind of, I don't really know if employer branding is the right term for this, looking back on it, but something like you know, just maintaining a good long term relationship.

You know, if you're really busy as a freelancer and you have to make choices about who you're gonna work with then you're probably gonna go with the client that's got the better tech and the better process, and that, you know, is able to just kind of facilitate your efficiency a little bit better rather than going with a client where, you know, well that's gonna take me a lot of time.

And, and a lot of that time that you're spending in your email inbox, well that's not billable hours, you know, it's kinda kryptonite for the freelancer. It's like, we do not wanna be spending precious daylight shuffling paper. So, I think it's the same on both ends. Cause I have like, we work with content like with a freelance platform.

So we also, we are also Contentoo customers for full transparency, but we also have a couple of freelancers that we work with outside of the platform. And I even just had today someone I was like, Hey, following up, where's the article from Friday? And they're like, oh, but I sent it. And I was like, oh.

You get it and these kinds of things happen all the time, you know, so it's a couple days late, the person sent the article. If you kind of cut around the email route and just have it all in a centralized location, you avoid that. The shenanigans. Yeah, absolutely. So kind of moving, I think the next step beyond that.

So if you can manage to really optimize the way that you communicate, the way that you share files, kind of optimize your text stack kind of diving into you've, you've still got to set up your processes in the right way, right? Like, like no matter what technology you're using, it's great if you have a project management tool, but if you don't set up your process as well inside of it, then it's, it's worthless essentially.

Creating the Golden Brief

One of the big parts that we thought about when it came to processes and content creation is obviously the brief like brief for the capital B, you know, the big, the big thing. That kind of everything starts from and I think this can be a hold up for a lot of, for a lot of folks, you know, like how do you create kind of the golden brief.

How do you make sure that you're spending, honestly, like as a content manager as little time as possible on it, but creating, you know, the best possible brief to make sure that, you know, you can hopefully get the content you're looking for in one go. And I know will you have a lot of experience seeing lots of different kinds of briefs and I believe you have some, some kind of main like, quick tips for us on how to create kind of a stellar brief.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it all starts with having a firm foundation in. From the beginning because, you know, I've been, I've got clients with whom I've been working for years now, and it's almost like we can finish each other's sentences. So I mean, there's, you know, you gain this kind of insider knowledge over time or this understanding over time.

But yeah, I think that's crucial no matter what. Starting with a firm basis. So you gotta get that right before you can, before you can create an effective briefing on the fly each time. But for me, what's always really important is to just have a very clear sense of the purpose, like really focus on purpose.

Really give me a sense of like, why is it that you need me to do this? You know, like, and, and what, what am I adding? How is this piece fit into your campaign? Give me a little context. You know, if it's a client that I've worked with often then I'm already up to speed on their branding and their tone of voice and their personas.

And but if it's the first time project, obviously I need to, to have all of that information at, you know, my disposal. I think the most important thing is really just to talk to people. I know it's, you know, sometimes hard to schedule a call or, or you know, if for every briefing that needs to be done, and I don't think it's necessary to do with every briefing, but especially starting out really.

Having a personal exchange, like talking to somebody, and that's the only way that I as a freelancer gain any kind of sense of purpose and any kinda sense of what the client's culture is about, what their brand is about. And also kind of an insider view on how they. How they're approaching their content.

And then, yeah, of course all of the technical things need to be worked out in detail as well as possible. In terms of, you know, deadlines, budget and and so forth. Word counts and what have you. But yeah, I, I really just think that above all, it's, it's yeah, it's purpose. And I think that's what's also gonna contribute to, to the, to the content really working and to both sides, the freelancer and the content manager coming out of the experience well, coming out of a, with a better experience, with a better outcome.

Purpose. Awesome. You I think both as a head of marketing, but again, also as someone who's in a company who's, that's spent a lot of time, I think, optimizing the content brief. What would you say are the, the most important aspects of a good brief? Yeah, of course. The the fundamentals. Like is it, is it meant for for SEO gains?

Is it meant to develop thought leadership? Like what is the goal the purpose of the, I think we already mentioned all the good things. Where does it fit in what campaign? Who are you trying to reach? What is the, the word length? Like, all of these things seem obvious, but are important. So I think that scope should be set correctly.

At the same time you work with creative people, so. If you don't give them any freedom, what's the, what's the point of of creating content together? So I think it's a, it's, it's finding a balance between setting a clear scope, but also giving freelancers creative freedom. And and another thing to add here is that, of course the, the more content you start doing and the more you start to ramping up.

And scaling your content output, you want to find a way where you can also make the briefing scalable, because that can be a lot of time spent on creating the perfect brief. So I would also advise content teams is to, is to work with templates. So of course you also have the benefit as, as will says, if you work more structurally with a freelance, you also really get to understand each other and you can move through this faster.

But if you work with a team of freelancers and you kind of have repeatable content, for example, evergreen blog articles, it would be good to have a system where you, where you can prepopulate your brief with the right information that obviously you can still manually adjust later on, but that typically really speeds up the the process of creating a brief. 

Oh, I recognize that so much. We've been we've been scaling our content production a lot in the last year. And definitely like just creating the briefs to get the content going can be a huge bottleneck. Right. And what I've found is that it was helpful to get more people like, cause I have a few content marketers on my team to kind of give away some of that ownership and also ask them to get involved in brief creation and using templates is really the most important part of that.

I had a conversation a while back that it was like, Oh, you know, this brief took, it'll take two hours. I'm like, Why are you spending, why would you spend two hours on a brief? You know? And that's has been, been my issue, right? Is like does it, is it gonna take me more time to. Put together the brief review, send back edits, like do that whole process with an external person, or is it faster to do it myself?

Yes. Yeah, please, please. Nobody misunderstand me. I'm not saying that you need to call and do an hour long call with your freelancer, with every project you want to, to send through to them. I do think that is important to, to do that in the beginning, at least, you know, getting started. But that will make things, that's an investment that will make it faster and better. 

Yeah. And I also just wanted to say that I agree with Joost’s point about giving your freelancer a little bit of freedom just in terms of, you know knowing what, what, what might be the best way to arrange this information that we're trying to get out there. You know, that's really what our job is.

That's, that's the value that we can contribute. But what we do kind of need sometimes I think is context. Because if I am given a briefing and I think, Oh, that would be a great listicle or a great top five, this or that, or whatever and I don't know. The last two blog posts were already that same format, then that's not gonna work so well.

So that's why I think it's also important to kind of know how you're fitting into the campaign. Also, just on the briefing part, it's good to have this back and forth. Of course, you don't want to overdo it and at some point it should be clear, but especially at the beginning as you start to build a relationship. Better ask more questions on both sides to really understand each other because if you screw up at the briefing stage things will be unclear the moment you start writing and you'll pay the price later.

So better spend more time coordinating in the beginning to to be overall more efficient. Yeah. And maybe just one more thought on that. I, I mean, I can also say that if I'm, if I am receiving a briefing where I feel like the client didn't really care that much about making the briefing that great, then that kind of gives me the impression that, oh, maybe this content isn't that important to them, You know?

And that's a not a really motivating position to be in. Cuz then you're thinking like, well, what is, you know, like what I was saying before, what, what's the purpose? A lot of times, you know, we as freelancers, we're a little reluctant to ask too many questions cause we don't, we wanna make things easier for our clients.

We don't wanna be a pain, We want just be proactive and autonomous and, and get, get things done. But sometimes, yeah, I mean, it's, it's a question of like giving what you give getting what you give, I should say. Mm-hmm. I see. Sam asked a question that I was also kind of thinking about as you guys were talking.

I'm, so, I'm glad you asked that, Sam. So if you've got a bit of an army of freelancers, right? What cadence do you think works best to share context and other projects with them? Right? You don't wanna overwhelm people, but you wanna have things to inspire. And I was thinking that too, like how do you know how much to share?

How often, how much time do you spend on that? What would your advice. Well I, I think that it's always, as I've said it a couple times, great to, to do a, a starting call. You know, if I'm working with a new client, especially, I think this is one thing that is organized really well on the content to platform, is that they are very structured about creating an onboarding moment where everybody has a chance to be there and everybody who's on the team is involved. 

And so from the client side, from the freelance side, you've got this great exchange of yeah, just getting to know each other a little bit, you know, like we, we get to. Just to share ideas and and that gives you, I think, the cultural context, which is important just for understanding what is it that this company is trying to achieve in general with their content.

And then when it's down to like the campaign level context, or even just the project level context I think that has to happen on a, on kind of an ad hoc basis. You know, and it doesn't really have to be that much, especially if you've already established a kind of a relationship with the client.

But it's just, I, I think above all, it's just an acknowledgement that you know, the client wants you to feel like you're a part of their success, you know, that you're a part of their team. And just that kind of acknowledgement is, is very motivating, I think, to a lot of freelancers. 

So I'm almost wondering, you know, cause a lot of people like a lot of in-house teams send around, you know like marketing newsletters, for instance, the rest of the company or you know, like the content team will send like a, a little content update to the rest of the marketing team as a freelancer, is that something that you would be happy to receive every so often?

Just like a, this is, this is what we're doing, this is what's going on. I think, I mean, that would be interesting to me. I've always been really thrilled if I get a email from a client a few weeks or months later saying, oh, look how well we're ranking with this article and look how well this is performed.

And you know, those things I think go a long way to establishing a good relationship and, and to keeping me motivated. And you know, I I work with a lot of different clients and a lot of freelancers do. I think last week I worked with almost 20 different clients. You know, it's pretty busy times at the moment.

That's not typical. But I think in an average week I probably work with about 10 different clients. And so I think making a personal connection. Is important, and that's gonna keep you kind of on the radar and kind of give you a little bit of VIP status when I've gotta make a choice. Like am I gonna go with this project or that one, you know?

How do you evolve your content team and strategy?

Well, I'm only human. I'm gonna go with the, the people that treat me right. Right. Will, our last our last topic for today is on optimization. Again, there's a host of things you can talk about when you're talking about optimizing your content. You're content strategy or content team, your approach.

But we, we wanted to zoom in on this. Ok. So, how. Well, all of it, I guess, how do you continue to evolve your team, your strategy, your output, and your results? So you know, once you feel like you've got these things in place, it's a reasonably well-oiled machine. What are the things that you can do to just to keep it going so that you can ensure?

Because people will come, people will go, That is how it works. You know, strategies might change a little. Business needs might evolve. Budgets will shift how you make sure that you are ready for that and that you're not gonna be thrown completely off kilt or win one piece of the puzzle is removed.

And so in the, in the research report, we also saw managers and freelancers both give reliability a 4.6 outta five for importance. So managers value reliability over writing skills and I'm also one of those. I think reliability is extremely important. And freelancers value, client reliability is the most important driver of success.

So I think we kind of pinpointed reliability or stability, kind of the, the core of this, this optimization part. What kind of tips you, I remember when we talked about this, you had some ideas about like, what can you do to, to make this all scalable and to keep it solid. So the question you showed on the, on the slide, how to evolve as a team, how to evolve your processes, how to optimize.

I think the reliability part is one of the outcomes of the report is so interesting. Cause to me reliability is a, is a condition to evolve as a team. So also being able to count on, on your team in the long term, structurally work with another is, is super important. On only that way you can you can build on top of something.

I think that as, as you build a relationship, what's really important to do is to check in regularly with one another in a few ways. So in one way, you, as you probably also do the managers in the call you have regular weather checks with your team. So how are they feeling? Do they actually enjoy doing the work they do?

I mean, you spend all of your life working. So, so you better enjoy it. And also in the process of content creation, that's, that's super important. And then what we do at content do is that after every a completed project, both on the clients and the freelance site, we ask them to fill out an NPS net bonus course.

So how happy are they with the project. And I do believe by doing this on such a timely interval you have the best chance of staying on course instead of only checking in every quarter or annually. So do that very timely to, to understand each other. And if there are if there's also an, and you discrepancy in a score, obviously you go beyond just the metric and you sit down together and discuss how you.

Improve the way you work or go for a better end result the next time. Well, do you have any thoughts on this one? Yeah, I, I totally agree with Joost. I think that there needs to be a really meaningful two-way feedback process. And yeah, if you can build it into your tech and to your workflow using something like NPS that's really built in to, to the, the, the process, then you know, that's one efficient way to do it.

I also think that informal feedback is really valuable. It's really just about you know, I guess the recurring theme of the day for me. Just strengthening the relationship. Building the relationship. You know, I've got clients that I've worked with once and I have no idea if it was a success or not, cuz then I never heard from them again.

And I just assume everything was fine and hope so — I've got other clients that, you know, are very happy to, to tell me, you know, what they would like to see better, what worked, what didn't. And then also clients who invite me to do the same. And I think that that's always really very, yeah, very helpful for freelancers to have an opportunity to say, Well, actually, now that you ask me, you know, and to just give, give some, some helpful guidance so that we can do this better.

You know, it's really what it's all about. Was not about complaining or hurting anybody's feelings. We just wanna do it better. So, All right. Well that brings us to our big takeaway of the day. 

The one thing you can already do differently tomorrow

So what is the one thing we want you to do tomorrow? This kind of going off of the assumption that I think a lot of the people here are content managers, but even if you're an individual contributor we think that, you know, you can schedule this appointment with your client if you'd like, or with your own manager.

But we want you to tomorrow just schedule the appointment, just. To the meetings schedule 20 minutes with each content creator, internal, and freelancers that you work with and plan to discuss these points. So point number one, give them a gift. And we'll talk about this earlier. But tell them your favorite part of the collaboration.

I think sometimes we forget the value of, of genuine positive feedback. We get busy, things get chaotic, and we, we forget to be like, Oh, that article was amazing, or, I love your writing style, or whatever it is. But so gives them the gift of of compliment. A genuine one. And then it's honestly just a simple stop, start, continue, and going into Q4, right?

We're almost there. This is a perfect time to be doing something like this, right? So what's the one thing we should stop doing? What's the one thing we should start doing? What's the one thing we should keep doing? And I think if you do this with all of your content creators, you're gonna find some themes.

You might also find some interesting outliers, but I think that'll pave a pretty clear path for some goals for, for your team going into Q4. And then just say thank you. It’s simple, but it's really important, I think, especially for your, I would say, especially for your freelancers, but I think for everybody in the team, you know it's kinda pat on the back.

I like that. One of the, actually, nowadays people think that ambition equals doing, doing more things. I think it's about doing the right things, so also providing opportunity for people to say whether it's in hours or freelance where we should stop doing something is is, is vital. 

Joost and Will, thank you so much for joining.It was really a pleasure also just preparing and getting to know you both better. You're just super smart. Thank you. Feelings mutual. Thanks for have a great day everyone. 

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