Today’s digital age has reinvented how businesses can achieve successful marketing. For one, the majority of current content strategies are focused on building an online presence through social media pages, websites, newsletters, and blogs. These platforms often require quality copywriting to ensure audiences are engaged, but it also results in boosting lead generation and expanding market reach.
Businesses recognize the importance of effective content marketing, and SEMrush reports that at least 91% use it to their advantage. Having a great writer is pivotal to the success of your content marketing strategies. With that said, we’ve some tips to help you hire excellent content writers — whether you’re tapping up regular contributors or getting a ghostwriter for your blog.
Understand What You Need
In order to make the most out of your partnership with a content writer, you must first be aware of the kind of content that you need from them. And while SEO is certainly something that you should pay attention to, you should always center your content on your audience and the kind of content they would like. Are they into lifestyle posts? Would they be interested in reviews about technology?
Be sure to use your business’ analytics and data to get a better gauge of your market. If you’re unsure of where to get the data, you can use traditional questionnaires and surveys. These can already reveal a lot of information to help with content creation. Once you have a better understanding, you can then use this as a guide when hiring writers with the skills to write the specific content you need.
Writing Tests Can Reveal a Lot
For you to properly gauge a writer’s skill level and expertise, you can require them to do a creative test project. A ZenBusiness guide to ghostwriting points out that ghostwriting is a massive and lucrative global market. After all, ghostwriters turn concepts into great content for their clients. But of course, writing is much more than stringing words together, and it’s crucial to hire the best professional possible. You wouldn’t want to waste your resources and impede customer conversion due to a bad hire.
When creating your own writing test, be sure to include guidelines that are also used for real tasks, so you can see how they would respond on the job. Having a writing test allows you to measure a potential hire’s research skills, grammatical competence, and attention to detail.
Properly Compensate Quality Work
It goes without saying that you’ll only be able to attract great content writers if you can afford to pay them. Great content writers know how to price their work, and if you want high-quality content, you’re going to need to match their fees. For freelance content writers, they usually calculate their fees based on their experience and what you need from them. This can be on a per-word or per-article basis. But in order to ensure that you’re not getting ripped off, you can get a general idea of the baseline pay for freelance writers based on the rates posted on the Editorial Freelancers Association. Furthermore, you can also make use of rate databases and calculators when negotiating with a content writer.
Ultimately, if you want your business online content to successfully penetrate your customer base, you’re going to need competent content writers who have an understanding of SEO strategies, digital techniques, and know how to create effective written content. For more information on how to market your small business, be sure to take a look at our post ‘7 Content Marketing Tactics Every Small Business Should Steal’.
