If you’re a small business owner, you’ve likely got more work to do than you can possibly get done in a day. Because of this, many small business owners rely on things like outsourcing some of their work in order to get everything necessary done. However, outsourcing can get tricky in some areas.
With things like content writing, it’s important that you’re able to ensure that your work is still done at a high quality. So to help make this happen for you, here are three things you need to be careful of when outsourcing your content writing.
Give Your Writers What They Need
To get the best work back from the writers you’ve outsourced work to, you have to give these writers all the relevant information in order for them to effectively do their job. Without this, outsourcing your blogging could be detrimental to your SEO efforts.
According to Patrick Shea, a contributor to HubSpot.com, the directions you provide to your writers should give them enough information to write exactly what you need from them. This should include how long you need their work to be, what documents they should pull their information from, what voice you need them to use, when to return their work, and more. While you want your directions to give all the relevant information, you should also strive to keep it concise.
Maintain Consistency Through A Style Guide
Having multiple writers working for your company can sometimes make your content seem disjointed. One way to address this is to create a master style guide that all of your writers read and know how to follow.
In this style guide, Neil Patel, a content marketing guru, shares that you should include information about what type of sentences to write, how to use things like the Oxford comma, if stats should be used, how to integrate quotes and references, and more. Anything that you think could help make your content feel more uniform should be included in this style guide and then given to all your writers.
Consider Their Knowledge Of Your Subject Matter
Before you decide to outsource any content writing to a specific writer, you should first consider what their knowledge is about your subject matter or industry and if that’s going to make it hard for them to create quality content for you.
According to Jodi Harris, a contributor to the Content Marketing Institute, any good content writer knows how to research and write content on any topic. However, if you’re in a very niche industry, you could benefit from hiring someone who already has some knowledge in this area and can pull from that experience.
If you’re considering outsourcing the content writing for your business, try to follow the guidelines above to ensure you hire the right people and get the final product you’re looking for.
