Hiring Blog Writers? 5 Things You Should Know BEFORE You Do

If you’re a small business owner looking to expand your online presence, you probably know that generating content is one of the fastest (if not THE fastest) ways of doing this. And if you’re still getting up and running, you may also not have a writer on staff yet, and that means hiring blog writers remotely, or on a temporary basis.

But how do you go about doing that? What’s the best approach?

Typically, business owners will seek out freelancers to help them with their content creation. The benefit here is obvious: you don’t have to worry about a long-term commitment, and once posted, the content can continue to drive interest for months or even years.

Nevertheless, there are a few different methods, and some of them are much simpler than others.

The Danger of Doing Too Much

One route might be to put together your own team. After all, you know you need a lot of blog posts, probably at least one post a week, if you’re serious about driving customers to your site.

So you put out a notice on Craigslist (or any other hiring site) and see what you can find. When you start out, this might seem like the ideal solution. You hire writers on an individual basis, and you no longer have to worry about managing the blog yourself.

Except now, you have to manage the writers. And that can be just as much work.

Here are a few things to know before you go this route:

1: You Still Have to Develop a Strategy

Even if you hire freelancers, you have to get them all on the same page. Make sure they’re writing on-brand, on-message, and on time. This can be a little tricky if the freelancers are each working in their own style, having developed their own preferences.

The writers need direction. Ultimately, the burden is still going to be on you. And the tricky thing is that rather than dealing with one writer or one company, you’ve got several you have to manage.

The other solution is just to put all of the responsibility of writing the blog on one freelancer. That will solve the issues of consistency, and make your strategy more consistent… but what happens if that freelancer fails to deliver in a timely fashion?

2: You Still Need to Coordinate a Production Schedule…

As the main point of contact for your bloggers, you need to manage the schedule and make sure new content is being posted every week. That’s not so bad if you’re dealing with just one person at a time, but if you’re talking to different writers in different time zones, it can quickly turn into a logistical headache.

3: …And Coordinate Topics

Typically, owners think about hiring blog writers based on their expertise in a specific field, or their ability to create quality content in a timely fashion. However, producing an entire blog is something that takes more than just good writing.

It also requires an understanding of what keywords drive traffic to your site. At least some Search Engine Optimization. And even if all your writers understand how to incorporate this into their material, you still have to be the one to make sure you have the right set of topics to take advantage of that.

All of which means that you’re still spending time thinking about and managing the blog… when your attention could be spent elsewhere.

4: Keep the Style Consistent

As you have different writers, who learned their skills on their own, you also have to contend with different work styles, and possibly also inconsistent formatting.

While most writers should be able to adapt to the specific preferences of their employer, the fact remains that any time you replace a writer on your team, you’re going to need to bring yet another person up to speed on how the finished product needs to look.

Again, more time you could be spending running your business…

5: And Adjust for Freelancers Who Flake

Lastly, if you’ve assigned a specific post (or set of posts) to a particular writer, you are counting on one person to come through for you. Of course, the expectation should be that they will. But we know that in reality, it isn’t always the case that this actually happens.

Hiring blog writers is inherently a risky proposition. Freelancers, even writers with long resumes, can prove to be unreliable in a pinch, and if you’re expecting to get your material out in a reliable fashion, you can sometimes find yourself scrambling if someone doesn’t come through.

So what’s to be done?

Should You Even Bother Hiring Blog Writers?

In a word: yes!

Although managing the writers can be a chore in and of itself, there’s no denying that having the content is an invaluable asset to growing your online presence.

For one thing, content creation is far and away the best strategy for getting traffic to your website. Long-form content can be specifically tailored to your business. A good writer, versed in SEO strategy, will fold in targeted keywords to make the content relevant both to you and to your customer base.

In addition, content marketing is extremely cost-effective. On a word-by-word basis, hiring a copywriter is more expensive than a content writer. And when it comes to outbound marketing, there’s no comparison: content marketing costs 60% less, and generates more than three times as many leads.

So having a quality blog is a good idea. And if you’re looking at hiring blog writers, you probably already know that it’s in your best interest not to take on the responsibility yourself. After all, that’s just one more thing you have to worry about.

Fortunately, there’s a solution…

The SteadyContent Solution

When you work with SteadyContent, you work with the best of both worlds: you get an entire team of blog writers… but you don’t have to manage them at all. That’s up to us.

All you need to do is provide the initial information for the blog.

What are some potential topics?

What is your business about?

What tone do you want the blog to strike?

And if you want a customer to take a specific action, what would that be? Buy an item? Sign up for a service?

Our Research Process

Once you fill out a few details, the research team sets to work, analyzing current trends on various search engines, looking for the absolute best keywords, combinations, and phrases to drive traffic to your site.

After that, our researchers develop a set of blog topics; headlines that will attract a variety of customers. We look at creating a mix of topics so that we appeal to potential leads that may have different problems or questions.

And at the same time, we look to create a cohesive blog that is balanced, where the information and posts support one another (as this is likely to keep a reader engaged and on the site, reading more).

Our Writers

Once you approve the topics, we turn it over to our writing team… all 600 of them.

That might seem like a lot, but of the writers who apply to SteadyContent, fewer than 5% are accepted. That’s an acceptance rate on par with Harvard, Stanford, or Yale; we only approve the best. Each applicant goes through a multiple-stage test, including test articles, English skills, and formatting.

When we look at hiring blog writers, we look for the absolute best.

And because our writers are top-notch at both quality and production, they generate hundreds of articles (and millions of words) every month).

What That Means for You…

The advantage here is that you get all the benefits of the team and none of the risk. We train all our writers to make sure that our formatting is consistent. We handle the assignments, deadlines, and dealing with the writers directly.

That means way less overhead for you. And a lot more free time to do other things.

Free Time and Peace of Mind

It also means you don’t have to worry about writing any of it yourself. After the initial conversation, you can simply kick back and watch the posts roll in. Every week at the agreed time, a new post will appear, and you can look it over and approve it when it arrives.

Each post will be well-written, double-checked by one of our 150 editors, and optimized to boost your website’s visibility. In addition, we can coordinate our posts with your social media accounts, so your followers on Twitter can instantly see when you have new material for them to read.

So when it comes to hiring blog writers, give yourself the gift of peace of mind. Take the uncertainty out of the equation. Kick back, and watch your blog posts (and your web traffic) steadily rise––with SteadyContent.