BACKGROUND
I joined Miro as employee 318, just before the pandemic started and we entered hypergrowth. At the time, the content organization consisted of two junior content marketers and a director.
As the first seasoned Content Marketing Manager, there were four parts to my role:
Own SEO content strategy
Establish ways of working and processes that would enable us to scale content production
Launch and optimize Miro’s templates libary and the Miroverse UGC templates library.
Build a team of direct reports to scale our content engine
CHALLENGES
Organic traffic was declining due to no SEO strategy
There hadn’t been any work on this previously and organic traffic was declining by 25% year-over-year. My background in SEO uniquely positioned me to take ownership over changing this.
It took ~3-4 weeks to produce even one Article
There was one loose process for creating content, and it took each team member 3+ weeks to complete one article on the blog.
Additionally, there was previously no CMS and the team had to rely on a developer to launch articles on the blog. They had just launched a very clunky solution in Wordpress to change this, but it still took ~1-2 hours to publish each post.
Lack of resources to meet templates production quota set by CEO
Miro had launched a library of templates content, and our CEO wanted us to create over 250 templates that year in order to outpace competitors. Templates also had high SEO value, so the content needed to be crafted to help us rank and drive organic traffic. But we didn’t have anyone dedicated to managing this body of work.
In addition to the quota for the templates library, Miro was also preparing to create a UGC template gallery, Miroverse, to increase our templates content 10x.
SOLUTIONS
SEO Content Cluster Strategy
Establish an SEO content cluster strategy, prioritizing commercial keywords and informational long-tail keywords to support them.
In order to meet production we had to hire three freelance writers with experience in SEO. Each writer would produce ~5-10 assignments per month.
Commercial keywords were typically made into template pages and landing pages. We prioritized them based on volume, keyword difficulty, and product fit.
We also established goals and measurement based on content quality, as well as what we were trying to drive for the business.
Lastly, we consulted with a new SEO Manager hire on technical SEO needs for our content. We established priorities with him and he would manage those elements of the roadmap.
From there, we set out on executing our content strategy. We created landing pages, guides, blog posts, and templates pages. Content format was decided on a keyword-basis based on intent and competition.
Content Production Process v1
The first step in creating a new process for production was understanding the current situation, where we wanted to get to, and what resources we needed unlocked in order to get there.
We established it took:
Over 3 weeks to produce a single piece of content
Only about 16 hours of that was research, writing, and editing. The rest was waiting on design for images, and actually uploading the post into a clunky Wordpress instance.
Working with internal partners was also a source of friction—we would get 20+ article requests per month, so we needed a way of vetting these ideas.
Because the Brand Team was also using Asana to track production, we established that as our production tool. I created an Editorial Calendar project, a submission form, a naming system for tasks, and categorization.
This way, we could connect our content to any design tasks the Brand Team was tackling.
Templates Production
Because of the priority templates our CEO wanted us to make, we didn’t have time to wait for the content production process v1 to be established. So, we worked on creating 250 new templates in a more scrappy manner.
We established priority templates based on keyword research and product fit, then worked with a Product Designer to create the templates. From there, we worked with freelancers to write SEO-optimized landing pages to help the templates rank.
Once this batch was complete, we worked with our new hire to use our content production process in Asana to create a stream for templates.
From there she could manage all the moving parts of the production process in Asana and work more seamlessly with stakeholders.
Hiring
In addition to building a pool of freelancers, we determined the need for four direct reports that I would manage:
Content production
Template and Miroverse production
SEO strategy management
SEO writing
We prioritized the first two to help us meet the more immediate needs, hiring them in September of 2020. Then hired the SEO talent after our strategy had been set up, which was around June of 2021.
With full-time hires focusing on each area, we were able to increase productivity and work quality, as well as build a strong team culture.
RESULTS
SEO Strategy + Templates
We saw tremendous growth due to our SEO strategy. See figures below to see what we accomplished in our first year. Templates ended up being a huge SEO play for us, increasing organic traffic by 186% in the first year, with an average conversion rate of 16%.
Content Production Process v1
We were able to establish a process for content production that increased efficiency and improve stakeholder engagement.
While there was still a ways to go to improve efficiency even more (which we continually worked on from 2021 and beyond), this cut down production by 1 week right out the gate. We also increased our output from a few blog posts per month to 10.
From a stakeholder perspective, we got a 80% satisfaction rate for this process change (up from an abysmal 50%). And by establishing a satisfaction survey, we were able to identify even more points of friction.
The team
We established a team of five with strong focus and performance. By increasing our headcount to meet the needs of our growing content ecosystem, we were able to scale content production, increase organic traffic, and continually improve our production process.
