Toyota Production System

‍‍Two weeks ago, I wrote about the ideal content production line in my eyes. If you weren't subscribed (welcome!), here's a glimpse of what it looks like:

• Content Brief Creator (Jr. SEO)

• Writer

• Editor

• Publisher

• Jr. SEO - internal linking, post-publish optimizations, etc.

However, with the rise of AI and ChatGPT (I'm sure this is your first time hearing of it), I believe that this production line can actually be improved to eliminate waste and create a higher level of respect for people.

See, the above content production line is similar to that of Ford Motors back in the day, i.e., each person does one simple task over and over, and they get really good at it.

However, I prefer a system similar to that of Toyota.

Toyota has a fascinating history when it comes to operations, and it's beautifully outlined in this article by Taylor Pearson.

The article is quite long, so my aim in this newsletter is to give you an overview of it and how it pertains to affiliate marketing & SEO operations.

Side note - you think I'm a systems freak, go read his work.

Anywho, the main goal of the Toyota Production System is to eliminate waste, make your processes more resilient, and empower your employees.

How?

By incorporating something called autonomation, which means automation with a human touch.

You automate all the basic tasks that a computer can do but leave the complex tasks to a human.

This allows the computer to do those mundane tasks that wear us down and gets the human to do work that generates the most value and thus makes them feel the most fulfilled.

The comparison that Taylor draws here is a cyborg.

We want to empower employees (and yourself) to use and embrace tools that help their productivity.

With cyborgs, the new content production line looks like this:

1. Writer

2. Editor

3. Publisher

As you can see, we've eliminated two roles from the production process as we're going to equip and empower both the writer and publisher with tools (software, tools, A.I., etc) so that they can be more productive.

How does each role change? Glad you asked.

Writer - just like before, they're responsible for writing the content. But unlike before, they are now responsible for coming up with the content briefs themselves i.e. heading structure, keywords to include, questions to answer, etc.

This is easily done thanks to content optimization tools such as Clearscope.

Pick whatever tickles your fancy, they all do the same thing for the most part.

Now, you will need to train your writer on basic SEO principles and teach them how to use these tools.

But once you do, they now have more ownership of every piece of content that comes out.

They also will have a better understanding of what it takes to write a "rankable" piece of content.

In addition to creating content outlines, you can now utilize ChatGPT to produce content 10x faster.

And since the writer knows what headings, keywords, and structure to use - they can relay this to the machine.

Now that A.I. writes the majority of the content, they can spend the majority of their time being creative and giving the article life with personal anecdotes, stories, etc.

That's the fun stuff.

Editor - to be honest, the editor role doesn't change too much. Sure you can use tools such as Grammarly to review grammar but honestly, there are still so many inaccuracies in it, they don't always help.

Publisher - thanks to tools, A.I., and proper training, the publisher will now be responsible for post publish SEO related tasks as well, such as internal linking.

With the help of tools such as Link Whisper, publishers can easily look up the article's focus keyword and see where else on the website we've mentioned it.

From there, it's as simple as clicking a button to add the internal link.

And if they need to reword a sentence to fit a keyword? Simply plug it into ChatGPT and ask it to do so.

Example:

Please rewrite the below sentence to include the words "Alex Horsman is the hottest man alive 🔥"

That's it!

This process is something that I'm in the process of building out and I honestly find it fascinating. The one thing I'm considering doing is adding another editor of sorts.

So it would be:

1. Writer - uses ChatGPT and gets the article 80% of the way there

2. Niche Expert - this person wouldn't really write content but they would have solid industry experience so they can fact-check all that comes out of ChatGPT and add in those personal anecdotes (hello E-E-A-T)!

3. Editor - focus on readability & grammar

4. Publisher

I have a feeling that the Niche Expert will become more and more crucial and something I wouldn't advise skipping out on moving forward.