It's not only about great content, it's also about how you handle its distribution.
Schedule ahead what you think is needed, and then come to the realization you can or can't write it (yourself) or have to ask others (free or paid), etc. This results in a plan to support your scheduled publishing of content.
And be flexible in this. If something doesn't happen, it's ok to skip a month so to speak.
Consider it from this angle. If you get 5 new posts, and one is great, perhaps feature it as an article on the frontpage. You show value to those who contribute to your site. And others are motivated to perhaps write better content.
And then, if you have decided to write some stuff and hire some writers to make unique content on your behalf.
That you could dedicate a month to doing this. Schedule in a day to prep threads. Another day to think about topics. Another day to organize what you have so far and ask around. Another day to think about how other sites have been doing it. Another day to draft a few ideas by writing just the ideas down. And another day to start working on the first draft. Ask some valued members to take a look and get their input. Invite one to write a draft or improve what you have. etc.
After a month you have perhaps 6 to 12 articles you have started on. You can publish one the next month. And then have a whole month to improve on the other one.
An article is not good just because it's long. But because it's accurate, to the point, easy to read and perhaps comes with some resource links, shared experiences, or rich media such as a video or screenshot.
An article on a community usually is nothing more but a thread that took a bit longer to write. And is more in-depth.
Don't give all the answers, leave some whitespace for your members to share their experiences, knowledge, resources, etc to help grow the article once it's published. Provoke them to participate is what I am saying.
Prepping one month for 6 to 12 articles, means you have a good overview of what's to come. And if there's a slow month on the site, no biggie, you know ahead of time you will at least have an article.
It will be less work the rest of the month. Allowing you to do the same for monthly newsletters, find featured content, create monthly polls etc. And you end up with basically doing great work behind the scenes that results in good unique and valued content on the front-end. Users will always have something new to read. And they're not the wiser that there's already content pending to be published the rest of the year.
You end up with one week having featured content, another one with a guest writer, another one with a poll discussion, and one with say a newsletter. New content weekly. That's worth a visit for a lot of members.
