Finding the right writers for your content production efforts

Quotes

• “I think if you have green-ed that decision to outsource before you even look to the writers, you need to make sure that you have put together all the information that you are going to give to the outsource writers because that can actually help you find the rightones.” -Phillip

• “Also putting it down on paper in a set of author briefing or author instructions can really help you figure out what skills, level of familiarity that writer should have. So step one is plotting out what you are going to ask the writersto do and figuring out what information do you want to give them. Once you got that done, youll find it relatively easy to find writers.” -Phillip

• “So there are a couple of steps here, the first one being figuring out what your style guide is. Not onlywhat information you want the person to know but also how do they write like they are going to sound like your company.” -Ben

• “A great place to start is by providing examples. You really are best served by doing both good example and bad example. If you have been writing your company blog for a while and youre happy with the style and the tone and you want a freelancer to match that, then you can give them at least give them two lines from the blog post you really like. If you are just starting from scratch and your company doesnt have that blog, you can find another companys blogs within the same industry that you really like and give them to your authors.” -Phillip

• “Its also important to give an example of what you dont like. This way, there is honesty and a bit of clarity on what you are asking for.” -Phillip

• “You need to have a good understanding of your audience so you can pass that along. Letting the author understand who the audience is pretty critical. In terms of figuring out how long it is, if theres a strong element of why you are having them write is from an SEO perspective then that it is a bit different than if it is a pure content marketing and you are not really interested in SEO.” -Phillip

• “If it is from an SEO perspective then data should guide you which I know you are preaching everyday. Then if SEO is not really your primary concern or just your secondary one, then it brings back to your audience.” -Phillip

• “Our recommendation is to not be too reliant on one writer. One person can always get sick or their computer might die. So especially if youre concerned about timelines and you dont really have long lead time, we would always advise thatyou build a team.” -Phillip

• “I think that spreading the peanut butter relatively thin where you have multiple writers working on a project so you have a contingency plan and you can throttle them up or down is always a good idea. You do want to be able to have repeat writers and people building muscle memory with the type of content that you want to produce.” -Ben