“If you want something done right,” they say, “do it yourself.” That kind of DIY mindset can be a smart, scrappy move. It keeps budgets tight, timelines flexible, and everything under your control. But, as your business grows, so will your awareness of this one not-so-simple fact: There’s a hidden cost to saving money.

Tasking non-creative roles with handling creative work themselves might save you thousands in agency fees today, only to lose far more in missed leads, muddle messaging, and long-term brand damage. Because, when you treat content creation like a side task, you end up with side-task-quality content.

Don’t believe the illusion of cost-saving DIY content

At some point, every brand goes the DIY content route. And, for some, it works. It starts innocently enough. Your Marketing Manager writes a blog post here, your Product Engineer writes a whitepaper there, and everybody pitches in to “help with the Instagram.” You might even loop in advanced AI tools or borrow templates from free sites. It’s all very resourceful—until it isn’t.

When it comes to content, it’s not enough to “just put something out there.” It’s not like chumming the water, where no matter what you use you’ll draw attention. It’s like building your own car: every choice from the nuts and bolts to wax finish can change the way it rides and how other people see it. Sputter and lurch your way down the street and people won’t feel safe riding with you.

Creating content is about more than just filling an awkward silence. It’s about persuasion, clarity, experience. It’s about building trust with your audience and driving them to act, knowing the narrative you’ve weaved is one that inspires. You don’t just need content; you need content that converts, content that advances brand strategy and moves people closer to a decision.

Without all that, all you’re doing is creating noise—and spending a lot of time doing it.

On average, a good blog article can take around four hours to complete. And a great article, one that achieves most or all KPIs, can take six or more hours on average. If it takes an expert that long to achieve quantifiable results, expecting non-creatives to do it themselves in less time simply isn’t realistic.

Don’t expect non-creatives to own the creative pipeline

Content creation seems like something anyone can do. But there’s a difference between doing what you love and doing what you have to do to get back to doing what you love. That’s what we call “drift.”

Say a founder asks their sales team to write a thought leadership blog post or an engineer is tagged in to draft website copy for a product page. Neither specializes in the task given to them, but both are expected to produce at relatively the same level of speed and quality as someone who does. That’s drift, and it takes experts away from their areas of expertise in favor of allocating them to work as amateurs.

Non-creatives are increasingly forced to do creative work

In a 2024 study by Adobe, 79% of non-creatives tasked with content responsibilities reported feeling overwhelmed, under-resourced, and unequipped. To be clear, that’s after factoring in the help that generative AI solutions like ChatGPT provided—and it shows in their work. Slides are bloated, copy is confusing, design lacks polish, and messaging is inconsistent.

When you expect professionals to operate outside of their specialties, the results aren’t very special.

These DIY content efforts tend to produce friction

Bottlenecks from mismanaged revision cycles, miscommunication between departments, and inconsistent outputs all dilute your brand’s impact in the marketplace. By requiring talent to spend hours on tasks they never wanted or were never trained to do, you’re robbing them of the focus they need to succeed in their actual roles.

The irony? The same companies that push DIY content creation onto their non-creative teams often have the budget to improve their content pipeline. They’re just investing it in labor hours racked up by people pulled away from their more productive specialties. Over time, this creates a hard-to-spot drag on performance and can burn out some of your best employees.

High-quality content doesn’t come from side tasking

Another study by Adobe showed that 39% of U.S. consumers think poor writing is the most annoying thing about brand content. Another 28% say poor design. That means more than half of your audience is actively irritated by what they see as low-quality content—no matter the messaging. And this isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about real-world business impact.

On the other hand, the 2021 State of Brand Consistency report found that companies with consistent branding experienced a revenue increase of up to 33% compared to those with fragmented branding.

The consequences of DIY content show up in subtle but powerful ways. Whether it’s lost productivity from time that could’ve been spent within your area of expertise, lost goodwill between departments, or lost revenue, the reality is loss. And, without a suitable course correction, that loss will continue to grow.

What can you do about it?

Before committing to revolutionizing your content pipeline, you’ll want to know what’s broken. Although most DIY content processes are likely resulting in some form of loss, it’s likely that some may actually be working. For example, your Receptionist might be excelling at their social media responsibilities.

Audit the damage

Start with a diagnostic mindset and avoid passing blame. It’s reasonable to blame a Social Media Specialist for poor social media content, but less reasonable to blame an engineer. Pull up your latest content across formats (e.g., blog posts, emails, landing pages, sales decks, etc.). See who made each piece, what the goals were, and whether they met those goals.

Look for patterns. Are blog posts consistently missing engagement benchmarks? Are product one-pagers all formatted differently? Is your email newsletter visually aligned with your brand? Most importantly, how much content is being created but never used?

This kind of audit should surface three core findings: where quality is lagging, where the right processes are in place, and where internal teams are stretched beyond their role.

Identify areas for improvement

You’ll likely learn that many pieces of content were created under pressure—whether from management or from the creator’s desire to “get it over with” so they can get back to their primary responsibilities. Other times, you might find content that was created without the time, tools, or talent to do the job properly.

Those issues aren’t your non-creative team members’ failures. They’re systemic problems.

From there, you can begin categorizing content gaps by priority:

1. High-visibility assets that are underperforming

2. High-value assets that are underutilized

3. Mission-critical messaging that isn’t resonating

4. Formats or mediums your team isn’t equipped to handle

Once you’ve identified the disconnects, you’ll be in a stronger position to fix them. An honest audit isn’t about catching mistakes; it’s about surfacing opportunities. What can be improved? What should you offload? Where can you reinforce your brand messaging and marketing ROI?

In short, you can’t optimize what you don’t understand, and you can’t scale what you haven’t stabilized.

Most importantly, stop overloading internal teams

You hired your Product Lead to refine the roadmap, not rewrite your case studies. Your non-creative roles shouldn’t also be moonlighting as your content creators. When content becomes “everyone’s job,” it turns into no one’s focus—and then comes the drift.

It’s important to note that this isn’t some diatribe intended to gatekeep creative work. It’s about preserving excellence. Your internal teams are valuable because they’re specialists. When they’re forced to stretch into content creation without expert support, everyone loses. Quality suffers, morale dips, and the work feels like an unending series of inconsistencies.

Content becomes a task to get through, not a tool to drive to growth. That’s when you see generic copy, lifeless designs, and tone-deaf messaging slip through the cracks. That’s when you learn your Customer Success Manager has actually just been using ChatGPT to draft all their helpdesk articles, and that’s why you’ve been hearing complaints about “rigid” or “emotionless” experiences.

When the people in charge of content creation are just trying to survive their to-do lists, they’re not building your brand.

Allocate specialists to their specialties

Respecting your team’s time and talent doesn’t mean removing them from the content process altogether. It means elevating their role from doers to subject matter experts (SMEs). Your product team absolutely needs to play a role in the development of product-specific content. But that role should be advisory and unintrusive, allowing them to focus on the work they enjoy.

When you stop relying on non-creatives to carry the creative load, your content can start to breathe again. And your team? They’ll get back to doing what they’re best at—without burning out on frustrating creative projects in the process.

Bring in strategic, specialized support

It’s time to rethink who creates your content, why, and how it ties back to business goals. A good creative partner can help connect the dots between branding, messaging, audience interests, and content performance. More importantly, they can reduce friction.

Instead of scrambling to meet demand with patchwork fixes and late-night rewrites, consider working with a team to deliver high-quality content quickly and affordably. A team that understands your voice and elevates your vision can unlock the solutions your internal people need to focus on what only they can do.

Create a smarter, simpler workflow

Once you have the right people in place, the next step is to design a workflow that respects everyone’s time. That means creating a lightweight process that brings order, clarity, and repeatability to your content pipeline.

Start by identifying a single point of intake. How do content requests get made? Who approves them? Then build a content calendar that maps out what’s being produced, when, and by whom. Even a shared spreadsheet beats working from memory or across email chains. The goal is visibility, so no one’s guessing at what’s next or chasing last-minute approvals.

Next, define roles. Who writes? Who reviews? Who signs off? Answering these three questions alone will remove the majority of the revision cycle headaches most teams face. Add simple checklists or templates for things like briefs, tone of voice, or asset formats. Try to minimize the number of projects that require you to start completely from scratch—then centralize those assets.

Most importantly, create a style guide with thorough instructions for what makes you you. Your brand voice is about so much more than just the content you release. Having detailed instructions about how to write the way only you can write helps present a unified front to your audience, no matter who’s actually doing the writing.

And remember, smart workflows don’t have to be complicated. Using advanced technologies like generative AI can add substantial value to your content pipeline. But these technologies are just machines and machines need informed people to pilot them. Know where content lives, how it moves, and who owns what, and you’ll be well on your way to streamlining the content creation process.

Stop undervaluing the work that represents your brand

Content isn’t fluff. It’s not something anybody can, or should, do. It’s infrastructure. It’s the landing page that earns you a demo, the article that convinces a skeptical buyer, the email that reignites a dormant lead. And when you prioritize it, delegate it to dedicated experts, you’re strengthening your brand’s ability to compete far more than you could if you tried to cut corners and save money.

DIY content creation might feel budget-friendly in the short-term, but the costs compound. Missed opportunities, team burnout, brand dilution, and slow marketing cycles all work to stall, not support, growth. You don’t need more hustle. You need a system, a strategy, and a team built to make content work.

Because the question isn’t “how much will it cost to do it right?” It’s “how much are we losing by doing it ourselves?”

Learn more about proven strategies for content creation in the AI era.