Tag Archives: Content Marketing

You don’t need to be a writer to publish content for your company?

So says this article in USA Today. Well, it depends. No, you definitely don’t need to be a writer to regularly publish content for your company. You can publish videos. You can also publish animation and images. Even short posts on social media platforms don’t require you to be a proficient writer.

What type of content you publish depends on your content marketing strategy.

But what about longer blog posts, web pages and articles?

Again, I never try to convince my prospective clients that they need a writer to publish compelling content on their websites and blogs. It’s up to them. They must see some value when they hire me.

I showcase my abilities as an experienced writer, but I don’t go beyond that. After that, they can decide whether they need a professional writer or not.

There are plenty of online tools that help you write well. There are some excellent grammar checkers. Even contemporary word processors like MS Word and Google Docs do a pretty good job of helping you write without spelling and grammar mistakes.

So, in that regard, if your concern is only writing without spelling and grammar mistakes, you are sufficiently equipped by software.

Writing, though, is different. It is not just about correctly writing words and sentences. It’s about using words and sentences to make an impact.

That’s where you often need a trained and experienced writer.

Should content writing be done in-house or outsourced?

Leave a reply

Should you hire in-house team for content writing or outsource?

It is very important for your content marketing strategy to know whether you should do content writing in-house, or you should outsource it.

A few days ago I advised a client to hire an in-house content writer even when she was eager to outsource her organization’s content writing requirement to me.
Initially I had agreed because I thought it was a one-off assignment.

They wanted me to work on a document of around 22-25,000 words. I agreed to work on the assignment because initially she had said that they would be providing the research material and I would just need to compile the information in a “writerly” manner.

But the next day she said that they also wanted me to do the research.

The problem with the research was that it needed to be verified from multiple sources. Another problem was, they wanted to pay a fixed price – per word.

Yet, another problem was, they were finding my content writing service a bit expensive, although, considering the quality I was providing them, they agreed to pay me my price.

I was about to start the work when I got another message from her that she was interested in outsourcing 10-15 such assignments every month.

I told her that they needed to hire an in-house content writer for such a job, and politely declined to work on the current document.

I couldn’t afford to spend so much time on research and writing for an ongoing project for which they were eager to pay a fixed rate. One never knows how much time such research is going to take. Especially when research needs to be verified and confirmed from multiple sources.

How to decide whether you should outsource your content writing or hire an in-house content writer?

To be frank, I have a content writing and copywriting business. It is in my interest when people outsource their content writing needs.

One needs to take multiple factors into consideration before deciding whether hiring an in-house content writer is the way to go or it makes sense to outsource.
I don’t take bulk content writing assignments. Most of the clients who hire me go through my website, like my writing style, and hire me expecting that I’m going to use the same style and the same quality for their websites or blogs.

Therefore, often, it becomes difficult for me to hire multiple writers or outsource my content writing further. I need to manage most of the writing myself.
If the content writing agency can handle the volume of content writing work that you have, well and good, you should outsource.

Outsourcing definitely has its benefits. But if lots of research is required and you don’t want to pay a variable rate (according to the number of hours spent on your work), it is better to hire an in-house content writer. Or a team of in-house content writers, if you need to publish a lot of content.

Take for example the above case of writing documents containing around 25,000 words. And they need 10-15 such documents every month. Add to that research. Sometimes research takes as much time as the actual writing. Sometimes, even more time.

Even if cost-wise paying per word works for you, it doesn’t work for the content writer. If I had taken the assignment, I would have ended up spending all my time on their work, neglecting not just the work from other clients, but also neglecting my own marketing that I need to do to keep getting assignments.

Outsourcing is good when you don’t need lots of content. Cost wise, if you need to publish hundreds of thousands of words in a month, you either work with a bulk content writing agency (and compromise on the quality in the process), or you hire an in-house team that is going to spend all its time researching and writing content. You will get quality content, and the writers will be compensated according to the pay scale they have agreed to.

What is quality assurance in content writing?

Leave a reply

What is quality assurance in content writing?

Quality assurance may have simpler meaning and it may have a bit evolved meaning in terms of content writing.

It goes without saying that the quality of your content must be good in the sense that it should be easy to read, there should be no spelling and grammar mistakes, and the flow must be engaging. Your readers must be able to make sense of what you’re writing.

If you want content writing to be an integral part of your content marketing, then it becomes an ongoing activity. Content marketing is not a singular campaign. It is an ongoing thing.

Since it is an ongoing thing, you need to have a strategy, you need to have benchmarks, and you need to have a quality assurance mechanism. What’s that?

When you are writing and publishing content as per your content marketing strategy, you need to ensure you publish content regularly – out of sight is literally out of mind on the streets of content marketing.
You maintain a publishing schedule and publishing calendar.
The voice of your content represents your brand’s voice.
You have sourcing guidelines when you use data in your blog posts and articles.
The titles or headlines are as per your engagement, branding and search engine optimization needs.
Every piece of content takes your content marketing a step forward.

You may have budgetary constraints but don’t allow them to compromise on your content writing quality.

If it comes to choosing between quantity and quality, go with quality. It is fine to publish just a single blog post every month if you cannot spend more money, but make sure that that single blog post adds value to your content marketing efforts and isn’t just there to fill up random gaps or just to cover keywords.

You should document your quality assurance guidelines. This way, whenever you have a new blog post or an article, you can quickly run it through the guidelines to make sure that most of the conditions are met.

Quality also matters when you’re posting on social media. Just because you are publishing 50-100 words, it doesn’t mean that the content that you publish on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram is less important. They say that you should let your hair loose on social media and social networking websites. Although this is fine, every message represents your brand. So, keep that in mind.

Your content writing quality assurance must include your vision

Content writing quality assurance shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should represent your overall business and content marketing vision.

A couple of days ago I was talking to a client, and he has a very clear idea of what he wants to publish for his blogs. He doesn’t want to follow the hackneyed path. He knows how he wants to engage his audience and for that, what type of content he must publish (and I must write). This clarity should be there in your content writing quality assurance guidelines.

Should the creativity of your content writer be sacrificed at the altar of quality assurance?

Not necessarily. Remember that your content exists to engage and inform your audience. Therefore, choose a content writer with whom you can feel the synergy.

Having a clearly defined set of quality assurance guidelines doesn’t mean you don’t let your content writer do his or her own thing. In fact, an effective content writer is always quite individualistic.

Clients who have been working with me for a couple of years keep coming back to me not just for my content writing skills, but for the way I write. But, it doesn’t mean I write something that is not going to add value to their content marketing efforts write in a manner that goes contrary to their vision or quality assurance guidelines.