How to Find Freelance Writers That Will Fuel Your Content Marketing Results. So at some point, working with freelance writers might be a decision you need to make to help you reach your marketing goals. Here are some tips for finding and working with freelance writers to achieve maximum results. When you ask them to write on a topic, it’s easy for them to create something that your audience will find useful and interesting out of experience working in your industry. Give them a writing task to work on and they know where to look for the relevant studies, examples, stories, etc. And even if they work in your industry, every company has its own nuances. They pay more attention to putting relevant and well-researched words together to write great content. After the headline, your opening paragraph is what tells readers whether your content or copy is worth their time or not. You won’t get all of that from a low-quality writer. Following the tips above, you can hire writers who will help you put out the content that your prospects want to see, while saving you the time to create content yourself and expenses of hiring and setting up an in-house content team.
Sometimes it’s best to have your in-house team handle all your content-related projects – especially if they’ve worked with you long enough to know what works and what doesn’t in your industry.
Besides, from 9am to 5pm on every business day, they’re all yours. You can reach out to them anytime and ask them to write your content. You also get to ask for several edits and revisions until you’re satisfied – many freelance writers only allow a limited round of revisions.
Those are just a few benefits you get from in-house writers.
But sometimes, you might also want to consider using outside writers for a few reasons:
- You probably don’t have the resources to get enough full-time writers. You’ll need to incur expenses on training, health care, insurance and so on.
- An in-house content team might have too many tasks on their hands already and can’t take on any more workload when you need them to write.
- You could also come across a freelance writer who you feel can write content that generates leads and sales more than those written by your in-house team.
And so on.
A recent study from HubSpot reveals that the more blog posts companies publish per month, the more traffic and leads they get on their website. Companies that publish 16+ blog posts per month get almost 3.5X more traffic than companies that published between 0 – 4 monthly posts.
In other words, posting at least 4 articles every week is what’s ideal for growth. An in-house team might not have enough hands to pull this off if they really want to create high-quality content. So at some point, working with freelance writers might be a decision you need to make to help you reach your marketing goals.
Here are some tips for finding and working with freelance writers to achieve maximum results.
1. Hunt for specialist writers
Writers who focus on your industry read your industry surveys, stories, e-books, etc. for leisure and work. They’re naturally familiar with relevant happenings in your space. When you ask them to write on a topic, it’s easy for them to create something that your audience will find useful and interesting out of experience working in your industry.
A generalist writer, on the other hand, only writes because you pay them to. They don’t know your audience or which words makes them tick. They might do some research and know a few things about them and your industry topics. That’s fine, but they won’t have the wealth of experience that a specialist has acquired working in your niche over time.
If you’re the content manager in a martech company, for example, you don’t want to hire a writer who will have to google “why a/b testing is important” when you ask them to write an eBook of maybe 5,000 words. Imagine how many things they’d have to Google or even how many times they’d have to call you before completing the whole book.
Real-life example:
Larry Kim is a leader in the PPC space – and he blogs a lot. He not only writes for his blog but also regularly contributes to publications like Search Engine Land, Inc.com, Entrepreneur, etc.
So 2 years ago, when he did an AMA on Inbound.org, Vinny La Barbera asked…
“How in the world do you find time to blog so much – especially for other sources – without sacrificing quality?”
“Most of the content I write about for the WordStream Blog, Search Engine Land, Inc. Magazine (etc.) are just case studies and data that I’ve stumbled upon while doing work in AdWords or lessons learned while promoting/marketing my own content. Having an unlimited supply of data and case studies to blog about is quite an advantage.” Larry replied.
It’s pretty much similar to what you get from a good specialist or niche writer. Give them a writing task to work on and they know where to look for the relevant studies, examples, stories, etc. to create content or copy that drives conversions. They simply know your industry better than a generalist writer.
However, this also doesn’t mean that you get too narrow with your search for specialist writers. You mostly won’t find a writer who precisely centers on your niche. If you’re in the PPC space, for example, you probably won’t find a writer who writes about PPC only. But you can get one who writes about marketing; it’s still closely related.
So where do you go to find your ideal writer?
Tip #1: Go to your industry blogs and look at the recent authors published there. Reach out to them and see if they’d like to write for you.
In a post on Content Marketing Institute, Barry Feldman asked the former editor…
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