How to Delegate Content and Writing Tasks Effectively Within a Project Team

How to Delegate Content and Writing Tasks Effectively Within a Project Team - Photo by Eden Constantino on Unsplash 

How to Delegate. Content delivery is built on certain principles, and a writer is not only expected to create content but also to understand how the whole chain works in order to keep it functional. As a project manager, your task is to nurture the whole system; it’s the only way to keep quality consistent and deadlines predictable.

Step 1. Define Who Does What

Whether you oversee the team of tech writing experts or manage college essay writers, each member of a content team must know their area of responsibility and what’s expected of them. Here’s one way to arrange a content workflow:

●       A content lead defines goals, audience, and messaging;

●       A writer comes up with the content;

●       An editor watches over the clarity, consistency, and structure of writing;

●       A designer creates visuals (if they cannot be delivered by writers directly);

●       A webmaster publishes the content and distributes it as agreed.

Along the way, you might involve SEO specialists to help you with the brief and a subject matter expert to validate the technical accuracy of the produced content. In a smaller team, one expert can perform multiple functions. No matter how many people are involved, it’s critical for everyone to know who does what and understand what happens next.

Step 2. Take Good Care of Your Brief

If you expect to achieve great results with the delivered content, you need to take an extra effort and create a detailed brief. The more input you create, the better output you receive. When creating a task for your writers, don’t forget to mention objectives, audience, constraints, success criteria, and deadline. Define the tone of voice, give examples, and provide extra resources and documentation if they can be useful for the writer.

A good brief should answer the questions below:

●       Why does this piece exist?

●       Who is it for?

●       What action should the reader take afterward?

Even if your team is senior enough to have autonomy, it’s always good to know how to meet any particular goals.

Step 3. Invest in Content Documentation

In order to build a strong team, all members must know the rules to play by. The most successful content teams rely on a solid knowledge base created to keep their writing consistent and organized. So as a manager, you should go the extra mile, creating guidelines, templates, checklists, and reusable workflows. It will save your team's time once it encounters similar tasks over and over again.

Pay attention to creating the following sections if your documentation is still under construction:

●       Content brief template

●       Editing checklist

●       SEO checklist

●       Brand voice kit

●       Approval workflow chart

●       Publishing checklist

Step 4. Nurture Your Juniors and Give Autonomy to the Seniors

Writers like equality; however, make sure you create a friendly and stimulating working environment for everyone. Depending on the qualification of your writer, consider creating various paths for them to walk.

A junior writer will be comfortable with tightly scoped sections, rewrites, research summaries, and outline expansion. Make sure you provide detailed briefs, useful examples, and structured feedback. A mid-level writer has enough knowledge to create full drafts, do independent research, and make revisions. All they need is strategic direction and editorial checkpoints from you as a lead. As for the senior writers, they will require some level of ownership, planning, and cross-corporate communication.

The main point here is to control the junior writers and give space for the senior specialists, providing perfect conditions for everyone to grow professionally.

Step 5. Don’t Skip Content Review

To control the quality of the content, you must have at least one review stage. Depending on the complexity of your content and the workload, you can delegate review to one or several team members. Here’s an example of how you can do that.

Writers can do a structural review by themselves. They will check whether everything is according to the brief and whether their content sounds complete.

Next, an editor can check readability, tone of voice, and redundancy, if there is any. If you have a technical reviewer, let them evaluate the accuracy and compliance of the piece. Once the content is published, the webmaster can check formatting, links, and publishing errors.

Such a comprehensive content review might take tons of time if done by a single person, but it will hardly be a problem if divided between multiple team members.

Step 6. Coordinate with Your Team

As a project manager, you might be tempted to do everything, everywhere, all at once, but the smartest thing to do is to stay coordinated in time with each of your team members. Consider replacing a meeting with brief collaborative sessions.

With the help of task management systems like Notion, Trello, or Asana, you can check everyone’s progress when they need it, without interrupting the rest of the team. Even a routine Google Doc provides enough potential to collaborate; think about it and see how you can schedule communication with everyone in order not to make people wait hours for your response.

Step 7. Keep the System When Everything’s in Chaos

A PM or team lead works as a buffer between the content team and everyone else. There is a human factor in everything you do, and people get easily distracted or demotivated by inconsistencies in other departments.

Writers need stability to stay productive. Make sure you finalize requirements, thoroughly review instructions, and negotiate the deadlines before you bring the new tasks to your team. Arrange the process that allows you to make a system out of chaos, and keep everything clear and structured.

Step 8. Beyond Deadlines: More Metrics for You to Track

If you typically measure the quantity of content and timeliness of delivery, here are a few extra points that can tell you more about the performance of your team.

● Revision count will tell you if the quality of writing deteriorates;

● Approval turnaround time can show you whether any new delays happen;

● Missed brief requirements speak loudly about the writers not complying with instructions;

● Time spent waiting for feedback is a useful metric to evaluate the timeliness of your involvement as a manager;

● Bottleneck stages will help you see where the tasks usually get stuck.

Tracking this extended list of metrics is your way to know whether your team processes work or fail. They can also highlight any potential problems with the team members.

Work Smarter, not Harder, to Take Your Team to a New Level

Being a smart PM is all about maintaining a consistent flow instead of chasing your team members. Keep your processes clear and active, just don’t forget to check whether everything works as well as it did before. This way, you can scale your team to whatever size is required and achieve quick and efficient delivery every time.