Collaborative Writing: A Guide to Maximizing Your Writing Team’s Productivity

Collaborative writing refers to a process where two or more people work together to draft text-based content. The process typically involves steps such as brainstorming ideas, writing the draft, editing the piece, etc.

Authors can write collaboratively to produce different formats of content such as books, research papers, online blogs, etc.

The biggest advantage of collaborative writing is that it makes your WordPress content production team efficient by enabling them to:

• Generate better ideas by bringing different perspectives together
• Stay motivated and accountable because they will be working towards a common goal as a team
• Divide tasks based on their interests and strengths, leading to faster turnaround time

The above points help writers produce content that adds value to their readers, become more efficient, and remain inspired which can in turn fuel further creativity and output.

Here are four steps that will allow you to facilitate better collaboration among your writers during content production for higher productivity.

1. Set realistic goals for your content team

Your authors can collaborate efficiently with each other when they know what it is they are working towards. The first step to ensure better collaboration among your team members is to identify and set realistic goals that help you achieve your business objectives. Here are a few goals for you to choose from:

Each goal can be broken down into a list of action items with a definition of done to avoid ambiguity and confusion during the execution phase. While setting goals and listing the tasks within them, take your resources and time available to your team into account.

A common mistake that your WordPress content team might make is to set vague goals that are difficult to measure. Therefore, it is crucial to define your goals based on the crucial performance metrics you aim to improve.

For example, if your goal is to “improve the on-site user experience” then you can translate it into “increase dwell time” which can be further broken down into tasks such as “update old content” and “optimize landing pages”.

2. Empower your team to build their own process

Traditionally, WordPress content teams worked according to the Waterfall model in which the content writing process was created by managers. Although this method still works, it has a major design flaw — the manager is not the primary person who is writing content.

Consequently, the actual needs of the authors based on the demands of the project at hand are rarely addressed, leading to an unproductive content production process. Not to mention, the Waterfall model is also quite rigid which makes it difficult to adapt to changing conditions.

A better solution would be to shift to an Agile model of content production where your writers come up with the process themselves by assessing the goals and considering the resources available.

You can execute this step by providing your team with all the data they need and giving them the autonomy to make changes to your existing content production workflow as necessary. You can keep monitoring the key performance indicators like adherence to deadlines, reader satisfaction, etc., and provide inputs and suggestions if needed.

3. Create writing guidelines for your brand

Regardless of the topic and format, all your content pieces achieve one central goal — relay your brand’s message to the target audience. However, it can be challenging to ensure that all the content produced by you achieve this, particularly if you have a large remote content team.

A style guide for your brand helps you overcome this challenge by explaining to your authors how they need to collaborate with each other to produce valuable content in your company’s language productively.

Keep the following WordPress collaborative writing best practices in mind while creating a style guide to improve your team’s efficiency:

• Ask your team for their suggestions and input while creating the style guide
• Help every team member (new or existing) to use the style guide by adding examples within it to differentiate between “good content” and “bad content”.
• Avoid making the style guide too restrictive because content writing is a creative process
• Keep updating the style guide regularly as the preferences of your target audience or your brand objectives evolve

4. Equip your team with the right tools

The tools used by your content team provide the foundations upon which your workflows are built. It is, hence, crucial for you to ensure that not only does your team has access to the right tools but also the right training and support to make the most out of them.

While testing different tools and building your workflow, it is crucial to keep your tech stack lean as cycling through multiple tools in a day is time-consuming and frustrating. Furthermore, they take up a big chunk of your budget which decreases the ROI of your content production process.

For instance, third-party content editing tools like Google Docs are widely used by WordPress content teams which affect productivity in the following ways:

• Back and forth of content between the text editor and the Gutenberg Editor during the review phase
• Reliance on email and video conferencing tools to exchange feedback on dynamic content (CTA blocks, interactive forms, etc.)
• Making your organizational data unsafe as you have to give unrestricted access to your data to external teams during the review phase

Fortunately, WordPress teams can adopt a certain tool that helps them become productive through collaborative writing without having to deal with the challenges we listed above.

Use Multicollab to make your writing team more productive

Multicollab brings Google Docs’ collaborative features to the WordPress Gutenberg Editor which enables you to comment, suggest, and tag your team members right in the blog editor:

Since the Gutenberg Editor is a blog editor, you can also exchange feedback on dynamic content and videos which will make your review process more efficient:

As your review and editorial process are shifted to WordPress, you won’t have to worry about who is accessing your company’s files and what changes are being made to them. This tool for collaborative writing allows you to manage permissions easily and lets you create custom roles with specific permissions based on your needs:

The Gutenberg Editor is built for WordPress content teams to efficiently create and manage pages and posts through its features and functionalities.

Try Multicollab (beta) now to transform the Gutenberg Editor into a real-time collaborative workspace.

FAQs

• What is collaborative writing?
  Collaborative writing is the process of multiple individuals contributing and working together on a single written document or content piece.

• What are three collaborative writing strategies?
  Three collaborative writing strategies are brainstorming, using collaborative writing software, and assigning specific roles to team members.

• What are the benefits of collaborative writing?
  The benefits of collaborative writing include increased creativity, improved quality and accuracy of content, and increased efficiency and productivity.

• What are the characteristics of good collaborative writing?
  The characteristics of good collaborative writing include clear communication, well-defined roles and responsibilities, effective project management, and a focus on quality and accuracy.

• How do you start collaborative writing?
  To start collaborative writing, set realistic goals for your content, empower your team to build their own collaborative writing workflow, establish guidelines and expectations, and use collaborative writing tools and strategies.

• What is a collaborative writing tool?
  Multicollab is a WordPress collaborative writing tool that enables Google Docs-style editorial commenting in the Gutenberg Editor. You can exchange feedback with your team on all types of content including videos and dynamic content blocks.