Collaboration is the secret to the most successful articles.
Writing well is the barrier to entry, but collaboration takes you to the top.
Sadly, most writers overlook collaboration. They assume that a clients’ brief is final, meaning that you can’t ask for extra resources or help. But nothing could be further from the truth.
A few months ago, I received an ‘SEO recommendations’ document from my clients’ team. They have an extremely talented crew, but I must admit, I was a little heartbroken.
SEO was always my thing. My articles typically perform well in search. When I asked my contact about the document, they told me that collaboration makes articles better.
The recommendations included a title, meta description, and subheader suggestions. Related and LSI keywords — some of which I didn’t surface in my content research. Potential search intent. After getting over my ego and reading through, I understood how this collaborative effort would help the final piece. I was happy they sent it.
This made me think about how writers work.
A lot of advice you find online says that you should focus on research: SERP pages, keeping a swipe file, benchmark reports, interviews, observations, HARO requests. And I agree, research is obviously important to make good content.
But you can’t always produce content from one perspective. That’s not how content works.
Thousands of writers, maybe even you, are making the same mistakes. Don’t silo yourself. Ask for resources. Collect many viewpoints and discuss them in your article. Even if you (theoretically) write the best article in the world, if you don’t have experts weigh in, it won’t carry as much credibility.
There are different strategies for collaborating with experts:
- Go beyond the HARO quotes and interview sources
- Ask for a product expert to revise your article
- Lean on in-house SEO teams for recommendations
- Ask your friends on Twitter
- Reach out to subject matter experts
Collaboration is key.
You can’t expect to know everything about a topic. It doesn’t work like that. Your clients want incredible, ground-breaking, never-the-same content. And that isn’t made by itself.
