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The landscape of online communication is changing, and businesses are increasingly looking to become part of the many conversations that happen over the internet each day. Doing so can help to increase brand awareness, introduce a company to new users or customers, and carve out a brand as a leader in its space.
For many businesses, creating long-form content has been the go-to way of showcasing knowledge, and becoming a firm resource of high-quality material within their niche. Businesses such as Buffer, and industry experts like Neil Patel, have used quality content as a means of building up large audiences and putting their products in front of the eyes of thousands of their target customers, with great success.
As customers increasingly place importance on everything a business produces, from social media to product, creating high-quality written content is a way to ensure that your company satisfies a modern consumers every expectation.
While creating and developing quality content is important for many businesses and industries, companies can find it hard to justify the expense of hiring a full-time writer, or team of writers, to work in-house (especially if the core business proposition does not relate to online media or content). Thankfully, the clear solution to this is the hiring of independent writing and content development contractors, or freelancers, who work remotely to produce content on a consistent basis (but are not hired as full-time employees).
Hiring remote writers and content marketers can allow you to consistently produce high-quality, industry-specific, content on a regular basis, without having you to incur the expense of hiring full-time employees for your office team.
Employing remote writers means that your business has the ability to improve its search ranking, by creating keyword-rich long-form content that is optimized for search engines, increase its authority, by creating a series of highly informative articles about your niche, and increase the value you give to customers, by regularly introducing them to new ideas and supplying them with consistently high-quality information that can be shared across social media or through email newsletters.
The additional benefit of hiring remote writers and content developers is that your business can attract industry experts from across the globe, who are able to create informative and interesting content, as you are able to cast your hiring net far wider than your local town or city. Moreover, hiring remote employees allows you to increase the value your business creates, while decreasing the amount your business spends; as contractors and freelancers do not require the same financial benefits (401ks, health insurance) as your in-house staff.
When interviewing a writer, try to focus less on the specifics (like sentence structure, grammar, and word choice), and more on whether they have achieved the briefs they were given in their previous positions. Try to discover whether they are able to take constructive criticism well, whether they can quickly adapt to the tone used by your company, and whether they are able to write in a way which wonβt put your potential customers off.
A good writer is someone who can adapt to writing about a variety of subject matter (regardless of whether they have experience writing about it before), who can turn work around quickly and with minimal mistakes, and who is able to modify their tone and writing style to suit your company.
For a comprehensive guide on hiring content marketers, click here
To get the best benefit out of your remote writer or content marketer, decide before the interview what your reasons for hiring a writer are; if you are looking to create content that helps to improve your ranking on search engine results, the content you should ask your remote writer to produce will be slightly different than if you are writing solely to provide high-value content for a mailing list.
Deciding beforehand what you are hiring a writer for allows you to maximise the benefit your writer brings after the hire, and allows you to be clearer and more precise with your instructions and the content you would like them to write. Keeping your desired goal in mind, create a series of post titles, or select specific keywords for your writer to target, and then discuss with your writer the potential posts that can be created around these topics.
Managing a remote writer or content developer relies on clarity of communication; in order to ensure the best result, make each brief clear and simple, communicate exactly how long you would like each piece of content to be, and explain what you would like the focus to be. Each writer is an individual, and as writing is a creative discipline, there is potential for the end result to differ slightly from your expectations - to prevent this, ensure that you clearly outline what you are looking for from each piece of content, and your writer will create a piece accordingly.
Creating a content marketing strategy, led either by your content marketer or yourself, is another great way to ensure that high-quality content is produced consistently, and that the burdens of managing are minimised. An extensive content strategy document can be used both as a reference guide, and as a support document for your worker to turn to to make sure that they are writing in your companyβs style, and covering your areas of focus in their work. For a guide on how to create a content marketing strategy, click here.
When it comes to making edits and revisions, try to be as straightforward and direct as possible; make it clear what you do, and do not, like, and outline your recommended amends in plain english. Being upfront about draft work is the only way to ensure that the final version meets your expectations.
To gauge the benefit a remote writer or content developer is bringing to your business, consider the reasons you hired them (be it to increase your websiteβs search ranking, or to provide valuable content for your customers) and periodically check to measure how well your writer is meeting the brief based on whether their content is having the desired results. If, after a while, your SEO rich content has helped improve your ranking in Google for certain keywords, and analytics data tells you that the time on page is good, your writer is likely performing well (and is helping your business gain new customers).
To understand more about the benefits content marketing can bring, click here