When you envision your completed content, what do you see? Customers engaging with your CTAs, maybe – or a well-built interlinked network of informative articles?
Whether your goals rest with “man,” your readers, or “machine” (the ever-watchful eye of Google’s ranking algorithms), great content will always get you there more quickly.
For those with a budget-content dream mismatch, you’ll need to structure your orders for content carefully in order to stay aligned with your goals and your bottom line.
That journey starts with framing your requests for content with the right tools, at the right level, to the right audience of quality content creators.
Rather than focusing on answering how much outsourcing content costs, adopt an attitude of getting the best content partnership at every spend level.
Step 1: Pick the Right Expert For the Job
Surprisingly, a lot of businesses wade into content creation without a concrete idea of what they’re looking for.
While using platform tools like “casting call” style writer auditions can help with idea suggestions, if you need a content plan created from the ground up, a writer isn’t the right person for the job, a content strategist is.
Trying to morph one into the other is a slippery slope into something called “scope creep” – a project that creeps beyond the boundaries of the initial job listing.
Scope creep isn’t a strategy, it’s a symptom of bad planning; you’ll end up spending far more “fixing” it than doing it the right way from the start.
Determine if you need a content strategist, a writer, or both and work from there – your path ahead will be much clearer.
Step 2: Determine What You Want
It seems pretty simple, right? At first glance, it is – but remember that what you want can encompass a vast number of facets, none of which your writer will be privy to unless you loop them in.
If you like a competitor’s page, for example, sharing that link with your writer will help them strike the right tone for your project. Had an underwhelming experience with past content?
Explain what you didn’t like so that your new writer can avoid making the same mistakes.
This will avoid unnecessary content revisions due to miscommunication, an all-too-common time waster for busy companies like yours.
Stick to a handful of likes and dislikes to avoid overwhelming your writer with information, and extend them a little trust, and creative license – in order to get the proverbial ball rolling.
Step 3: Build Your Team
Once you’ve laid the groundwork for smart, efficient content creation, drive down your freelance writer costs by eliminating uncertainty.
Using the same freelancers or team of freelancers will cut back on the costs. Both in a hit-or-miss monetary sense and time spent on revisions of getting your posts, articles ,and more written in a timely fashion.
Once you’ve worked with your writer(s) on a few projects, they’ll be able to stick to your deadlines and produce content how, when and where you need it most.
This approach is even scalable: if you find that you need more content than an individual can reasonably produce, your content site account manager can recommend additional writers that match your newly hashed-out preferences.
Getting high-quality content at every budget level doesn’t require reinventing the wheel: when you do the research and clearly communicate your needs, your content solution is only a few clicks away.
Make your plan, find your team, and soon you’ll have a powerful collection of high-performing content that will make success that much more obtainable, no matter how competitive your industry may be.
Delany M is a freelance writer within the WriterAccess platform who creates high-performing content. Find out more about her, and the other talented writers if you’re looking to outsource your content creation.
