5 Rules For Outsourcing Your Content Creation

It’s content creation month here at AYB; we’ve been taking a look at our own calendar and talking about all things content. One of the topics that seems to come up often is how many people know they should be creating regular, quality content for their websites, but either just don’t have a lot of time to get on with it themselves or feel that they are not strong enough writers to do it. The other end of the debate is the people who have tried outsourcing their content creation but have had a poor experience in terms of the quality of the work they got back.

The good news is that there are many competent writers available out there who can do a great job of writing content on nearly any subject. If you follow a few simple rules, you should have no problem with outsourcing your content creation and have confidence in the work that will be returned;

1. You get what you pay for! On balance, this statement does tend to be true. If you are only prepared to offer $5 for a 500 word article, expect that it may have a few errors and may not be entirely original. Remember, a writer who will do something for $5 is probably having to accept a large number of those jobs to make a living…

2. Ask to see samples of previous work. Create a shortlist of possible writers by going through their work samples. Determine who suits your style and knock any out who have obvious grammatical errors in their work or who present work that does not appear to be original. Select three or four writers who you will trial.

3. Give your shortlisted writers each an assignment (be prepared to pay them for it!). Once these are returned to you, decide who you want to take on to do your writing based upon which work you liked the best in terms of the content given, and the quality of the writing.

4. Help your writer out. Remember, you are the expert on your business and in your industry; if you would like some decent, original content written it is a good idea to give your writer access to whatever information or documents your company already has on subjects that you would like written content on. You could also think about giving them access to key people – interviews are a good way to create original written content. If you have certain content needs in mind be specific, don’t give broad or vague descriptions which mean the writer has to guess what they should be producing!

5. Consider hiring a writer who has specific expertise in your field. This is also a great way to ensure that you get original content rather than something regurgitated through a Google search. This is a good way to go if you want your site to be considered as a ‘go-to’ for premium content in your field. There are sites such as Zerys which offer writers who specialize in certain areas. Again, expect to pay for this (unless you have a guest post arrangement with an expert where you are linking back to something of theirs). On the other hand, if you are just wanting to ensure that there is ‘good’ content on your site, a writer with strong research skills can still do a great job.