How to Outsource Content Writing

Content marketing is a great way to grow your business’s bottom line and helps attract more organic traffic to your site. By creating engaging blog posts, you have a higher chance to attract your target audience and convert them into sales.

However, it can be a time-consuming process to write the content yourself, especially if you’re also responsible for other business operations. This is why it’s best to outsource content writing and leave it in the hands of experts to create premium quality content.

In this article, we’ll walk you through some of the important steps needed to outsource content writing for your business.

Step #1. Define your goals

Before you start finding expert content writers to outsource work, you need to determine what you want to achieve. For instance, most business owners aim to increase their bottom line income, earn new leads, make more sales, increase brand visibility and engage new and returning site visitors.

Defining your goals can help you determine what kind of work you actually have to outsource, whether it’s creating content for attracting a larger, general audience or you want to target a specific audience. This gives the content writer a better idea of what kind of writing they’ll have to output for catering to your audience better. It also helps them identify whether they’re the best fit for what you’re looking for or not.

This will give you a better idea of what kind of writer you need to find so you’re successful in outsourcing content for your business. This is because you must know what you’re looking to achieve in order to find a content writer that can help you progress faster. In addition to this, you also need to consider whether you’re looking to hire a content writer long-term or just for a quick, short-term project.

Step #2. Decide on a budget

The second most important factor when outsourcing content writing is your budget. You need to ask yourself whether you’re willing to spend a lot of money on creating high-quality content or are you looking to do this on a budget, as a side hustle. This will give you a better idea of the content writers you can “afford” easily.

However, it’s also important to not cheap out and create low-quality content. If you underpay for creating content, the chances are the writer will create content that may contain some mistakes and isn’t SEO optimized. This can hurt the growth of your business and puts out a bad first impression for new site visitors.

You should keep a realistic budget according to the type of content you need as it can help you find the perfect candidate to outsource work to. This way, you can connect with more professionals and experts that will create highly optimized SEO blog posts for you. This also pays off in the long run as higher quality content will attract more site visitors and eventually will increase conversions on your site.

Step #3. Define business requirements

When outsourcing work, it’s also important to decide on the type of content you want to create. This means that you need to decide whether you want to create longer-style detailed blog posts about a specific topic or are you looking to engage your audience with shorter articles about general trending topics.

You also need to determine the quality of content you need when outsourcing content writing. For instance, is there a quality stand the expert writer has to keep in mind? Or does the writer have to include a set number of focus keywords for each post they create? Defining such requirements can also help the content writer better understand your business’s tone of voice for writing content.

Other than determining the quality of content you need, you should also consider whether you want to hire a content writer that’s local to your business or anyone will do? Outsourcing work to someone that’s local to you makes it easier to manage deadlines and send them payments easily, as well as making sure they’re working in the same time zone as you. Additionally, you can also create a style guide as it helps maintain consistency across your content. You can just send the style guide to the writer you’re looking to outsource work to. As a result, it can help them better understand all the requirements they need to keep in check when creating content for your business.

Step #4. Create a content calendar

Creating a content calendar is also helpful when you’re working with multiple writers, especially new writers you onboard. The content calendar essentially tells your content writers exactly when the publications need to be made. This way, you can set a deadline for each publication and ensure a successful content strategy for your business.

By telling the content writer when they need to submit their work, you enhance workflows for your business as everyone knows what they have to do and when they have to do required tasks.

For better management of your team of content writers, you can use a solid project management system like Trello.

Trello lets you create project ‘boards’ which essentially lets you create tasks and assign them to your content writers with a deadline. This way, your content writers can let you know exactly when they’ve completed a specific task, so you don’t have to constantly annoy them with queries.

Step #5. Find the ‘right’ expert for the job

Now that you’re better prepared to start finding experts for outsourcing content writing, you can start looking for the right candidate for outsourcing your work.

It’s important to consider the type of content writer you want to hire for getting the most value out of your money. Some of the main types of content writers include:

• Freelance writers. You can connect with freelance writers through popular freelance sites such as UpWork, Fiverr, and Freelancer. You can find most new and some amateur writers on freelance sites but for a cheaper price than what an expert would charge you. A freelance writer can write content for you but the quality will not be there. You can expect lower-quality writing with little to no SEO optimization.

• Content marketing agencies. Content marketing agencies offer professional writers that know what they’re doing. Although more pricey than hiring a freelance writer, professional writers can help you create grammatically-correct blog posts that are fully SEO optimized. The only downside is that such content may look similar to the content on other high-priority websites, which is not ideal if you want your brand to stand out.

• Industry experts. Industry experts are professional content creators who have extensive knowledge about topics and can help create premium, unique content for your business.

Check out How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Content Writer? for more information.

It’s better to look for the right person to create exactly the type of content you need. For instance, a WordPress expert will help you create detailed tutorials of your plugin or themes. On the other hand, if you ask them to write you magazine-styled articles about photography, they might not perform at their best.

Step #6. Validate the expert’s work with the use of samples

Before you fully commit to hiring an expert for content writing, it’s a great idea to ask for a few samples of their work. For example, you can ask them to write a paid sample of the type of content they will have to create later when the project starts. This will give you a better idea of their work ethic and the quality of content they can provide to your business.

You can also go over the previously published content of the writer and validate the consistency of their work. In addition to this, it’s always a great idea to use metrics or analytics from the published posts by the content writer to determine how ‘fit’ the content writer is for your business and audience.

Step #7. Start creating high-quality content

Once you find the right expert for your business, you can start creating high-quality content that resonates well with your audience.

It’s also important to remember to give new content writers the proper ‘direction’ when they first start. For instance, you want to give them access to the style guide and content calendar of your business. This way, they have a better sense of all the ‘requirements’ they have to fulfill when creating content for you.

You also should provide them with all the third-party resources they need such as plugins and tools needed to double-check work or passwords for accessing exclusive webpages and admin panels.

Outsource content writing today!

Outsourcing content may seem difficult, but if you prepare ahead of time it can make it easier to onboard new content writers, especially after the first time.

Ideally, you want to define your goals, define business requirements, decide on a budget that works for you, and create a content calendar before hiring an expert to write content for you. This also helps the content writer evaluate whether they’re the right fit for your business and quickens the onboarding process. As a result, you can quickly start creating content for ensuring a successful content strategy for your business.

Do you have any questions about how to outsource content writing? Let us know in the comments box below.