Tag Archives: Hiring a Content Writer

How to write content for your website without hiring a content writer?

Why you need to write content for your website?

Without accessing content, the search engine crawlers cannot figure what your website is about. The search engine crawlers use big data and AI algorithms to make sense of your website. Hence, a few pages and a few blog posts won’t do. They need to access lots of content from your website before they can rank it for the right search terms and keywords. Hence, you need to write lots of content for your website.

Another reason is that your competitors are constantly trying to outdo your content writing efforts. If you publish one blog post, they will gladly publish 10, or if not 10, at least 2-3 blog posts for every single post you publish. Multiply this with 25 competitors that you have and you can imagine how much content is being pumped.

You are constantly catching up. Does it mean it is a no-win game? No. You can outdo your competitors even with less content provided you stick to high quality content. And regularity.

Of course, you also need fresh content to educate your audience and keep people engaged. If you don’t publish fresh content your website becomes stale, and you give no reason to people to come to your website repeatedly. Research has shown that it takes 5-6 visits to the website before people decide to do business with you.

Why do people hire a content writer to regularly publish content?

There are different reasons why people hire a content writer. Some of these reasons are

Lack of time: They don’t have time to write by themselves.
No writing experience: Writing is a skill that needs to be developed. It is time-consuming. It is an entirely different, dedicated profession.
Regularity: For better search engine visibility and user engagement you need to publish content regularly. You need a commitment. It is a separate, stand-alone activity.

How to write and publish fresh content on your website without hiring a content writer

Mind you, in case you don’t want to turn into a full-fledged content writer yourself (leaving your current profession), this is a temporary situation. Maybe you are a startup. Maybe you don’t have enough funds.

The thing is, right now you cannot offer a good compensation to a content writer. But, as your business grows, as your needs to get higher search engine rankings and higher visibility grow, you will need to hire a professional content writer. So the tips shared in this blog post are only for a temporary situation.

Here are a few things you can do to write and publish content on your website without hiring a content writer.

Regularity and quality are important than quantity

This is something that I keep telling my clients repeatedly: don’t get obsessed about how many words you should write. I’m not saying create 15-word posts, but you don’t always have to aim for 1000 words or 1500 words.

Engagement is more important. Hence, if you have got something important to say and you can say in 400 words, just publish 400 words. Make sure that whatever you are saying is relevant, educational and informative.

Use your subject matter expertise

You already have immense knowledge of your field. If you are an accountant, there are many topics and subtopics you are aware of. If you are an engineer or a software designer, there are many aspects of software design you can talk about (just make sure they are fit for your audience and not for other software designers who may not be your target audience).

Sit someday with an Excel sheet and in one column enter all the topics you can think of. You will be surprised to know how many topics you can come up with.

Interview influencers

Everybody likes to share insights. There must be multiple influencers in your industry. Choose a topic and interview a few influencers on that topic. They will get additional exposure and you will have something to write about.

Prepare a list of questions – 10 or so – and then approach a few influencers and ask them to send you the replies. You can interview them live using Skype or phone (or Zoom) or simply ask them to write down the replies to your questions.

An interview is ready-made content. You just have to prepare questions and the remaining content is provided by the interviewees.

Curate content

Content curation saves people lots of time. It requires some research but if you make collecting and preserving interesting content a habit, it won’t take much time.

While you are browsing the Internet, you keep coming across interesting content based on your industry. Instead of simply reading or viewing and then moving on, save those links. Then every week, compile those links into a single blog post. Write a paragraph and then share the link, for every piece of content. Such curated content is also good for your search engine rankings because concentrated amount of information is available under a single link. Google algorithms like such links.

Repurpose your existing content

If you don’t want to hire a content writer, this is another way of writing and publishing content on your own. But this requires you to have some existing content. There may be many pages on your website. Your blog may have a few blog posts.

Above I have talked about content curation. This is a subtopic of a bigger blog post that I’m writing right now. I can also create a separate blog post on the importance of content creation. Content repurposing can be done not just for your own website, but different platforms. You can turn your existing blog post into a newsletter issue. You can rewrite an existing blog post by adding some new information and publishing it on LinkedIn. You can write a smaller version on LinkedIn and then put the link to your existing blog post on your website.

Publish guest blog posts

For this your website or blog needs to cross a certain threshold level. People would like to write for your blog or website if they expect good visibility or some SEO benefit. For that, you should have a decent presence on search engines and the guest blog posters must be impressed enough to approach you to write for your website. This takes initial hard work.

On an average I get 2-3 queries from different guest posters expressing their desire to write on my website. Although for a few months I haven’t been accepting guest posts (in fact, I’m writing this blog post myself, after many months), I am going to leverage this opportunity in the coming months so that I can publish content regularly on my content writing blog.

Conclusion

Provided that you are a prolific writer, and you love to communicate through the written word, you don’t ever need to hire a content writer, otherwise, this is a temporary solution.

Why do you need to ultimately hire a content writer? Regularity. Google and other search engines are constantly crawling the web to find new content. They set up a pattern to crawl certain websites and blogs. This pattern depends on the publishing frequency. If you don’t publish regularly their crawlers don’t crawl and index your website in a timely manner.

Although you cannot outdo your competitors (because every other business that offers something similar to your business is a competitor, and there may be hundreds), you can convince search engines that they can rely on you for consistent supply of high-quality content through persistent publishing.

Looking for a content writer? 8 things to consider

Why you need a content writer

Why you need a content writer?

The job of your content writer is to provide what your prospective customers and clients are looking for.

There are practically infinite ways people can come across your content.

They may simply land on your website or blog via search engine results.

They may come across your link on one of the social networking websites.

Someone may recommend your link through email or direct message, or even verbally.

They may discover your link on product packaging. Someone may mention you in his or her article or blog post.

People will be entering your website or blog through different links.

They may check other parts of your website or they may leave just after checking the link they arrived on.

The sales funnel stage where you get people to your website, is the education and information part. This part may manifest on your blog, in your newsletter or in your social media updates.

Once they are on your website, you need to convince them into doing business with you.

This is a convincing part of the sales funnel.

People are on your website, they are a bit informed and intrigued, and now, it is the job of the copy on your website to keep them there and convince them into doing business with you.

At every stage, your content writer plays a very important part.

You cannot educate and inform people with drab content.

Your content needs to be informative, conversational, engaging and in many instances, even entertaining.

It should be easier to read but at the same time authoritative.

Why am I explaining in such detail what sort of content you need for your website to generate business?

Because, when you’re looking for a content writer, you keep these qualities in mind, these needs in mind, and then accordingly, you settle for a content writing service that can help you achieve what I have mentioned above.

Writing content is a serious business. Your entire business depends on how well your writer can write.

Benefits of hiring a content writer and therefore, you should be looking for one

Benefits of hiring a content writer

You need to publish content continuously. If you don’t want to, your competitors certainly are.

It’s not just your competitors, in one way or another, everyone publishes content on the Internet, and this makes it hard for your prospective customers and clients to notice your business.

A consistent content marketing means good 15-20 hours every week doing research, writing, updating and editing.

You want to do this yourself? If yes, sure, go ahead.

You should be looking for a content writer because

You need to publish fresh content regularly.
You need to create long-term value and not just promote yourself in spurts.
Your business needs to stand out in terms of providing exceptional content on an ongoing basis.
You need to improve your conversion rate, and this can only be done by someone who can write persuasively and convincingly.
Bad writing can dissuade people from doing business with you.
You need writing all the time for your blog, for your web pages, for your newsletter, for case studies and social media updates.
You need to improve your search engine rankings, and SEO these days depends a lot on high-quality, relevant content.

If you need a content writer and you’re looking for someone who can help you create a convincing presence on the web, you may like to look for the following:

1. Look for talent, not for price

I’m not saying price doesn’t matter, but don’t make it the first quality when you start looking for a content writer.

You don’t want to save money at the cost of your business.

Often, it is a mental block that stops you from hiring a good content writer just because he or she seems to be charging more than another content writer.

A good writer is going to charge more, and this is fine.

Just like you need a web designer, you need a programmer and you need a graphic designer to have a professional website, and you are fine with paying him or her what he or she is asking, the same applies to a content writer.

Remember that writing is not a product. It is not something that can be automated. It is not a piece of code someone can save and then use as and when needed.

It takes the same amount of time every time a content writer writes 500 words for you. It may be a few minutes here and there, since you always need original writing, your content writer needs to make the same effort every time. So, keep that in mind.

2. Spend time studying the website of your content writer

If you need a content writer, it isn’t necessary that you look for someone who has a website (many writers work from various freelancing portals) but as a business owner, you can easily understand that someone who has his or her own website is going to be more serious about the business than someone who merely creates a listing in a directory where no stakes are involved.

A professional content writer is going to have a professional-looking website. The content will be well written. All the information you need to make up your mind will be there.

3. See if the content writer publishes a blog

Again, it isn’t necessary that you need a content writer who publishes a blog but, well, a writer must practice his or her art even when he or she is not being paid for it.

I have been writing professional content for more than a decade now and I have seen that writers who write just for money are, may be good writers, but not “good” writers, although, exceptions are always there.

Through the blog you can get an insight into how the writer expresses himself or herself.

4. Ask the content writer if he or she is comfortable writing for SEO as well as for better conversion

SEO no longer remains about using your keywords repeatedly throughout your blog posts and web pages.

Although you still need to use your keywords because that’s what people are looking for on search engines, more important is the quality of writing and the value it provides to your readers.

If the writing is not good, no matter how well-optimized your content is, your rankings are not going to improve.

Google has been updating its algorithm in such a manner that your rankings these days depend on how people react to your content rather than how you have “optimized” it and how many people are linking to it.

The above-mentioned attributes definitely help, but what helps the most is the quality and relevance of your content. An experienced writer must be able to strike the perfect balance between SEO and better conversion.

5. Take your budget into consideration but don’t be stingy

Although I have talked about the importance of hiring a good content writer irrespective of how much he or she charges, by the end of the day, it matters how much you spend on your content.

This is one advice I give to all my clients: if you don’t have the needed budget, don’t aim for having lots of content.

One high-quality blog post is always going to outperform five mediocre blog posts.

If you cannot publish a blog post every day, try publishing on alternative days. If that is also expensive, try once a week. Even once a month.

But never go for inferior content just because you are getting it in bulk. You will be wasting your money, and it is also bad for your SEO.

6. Go with a long-term content writer

This is another reason why I recommend working with a content writer who has a long-established business providing content writing services rather than someone from one of those freelancing websites – someone who has a business is going to stick around for a long time.

Just as you have stakes in your business, the content writer who runs his or her own business too has high stakes. This is why, he or she is going to stick around.

You can easily check these days the age of a website to know how long a particular website has been active.

7. Google your website or blog writer

Once you have come across your website or blog writer, or copywriter, Google him or her. See if you can find some bad references. Purposely use some bad phrases like “this writer sucks”, “stay away from this content writer”, or “very bad experience with this content writer”, or something like that – use the name of the content writer.

8. Pay close attention to your gut feeling

The way the content writer responds to your emails, the way he or she answers to your WhatsApp questions, your gut feeling will tell you whether to trust that person or not.

Does he or she sound too eager to please you, or this is the way he or she aggressively gets business from you (which should be fine)?

Does he or she seems to be over committing?

Remember one thing: if you compromise on the quality of your content, you are going to attract content writers who have no problem compromising on quality just to get work from you.

This is also a general life lesson. You attract the sort of people you want in your life, whether they are good or bad. I know, doesn’t seem like a business advice, but this happens.

Anyway, if you need a content writer or if you’re looking for one, first most, focus on finding an awesome content writer and then figure out whether you can afford him or her or not. Don’t start with money in mind because that way, you will always end up with a lousy writer.

How to find the killer content writer for your website or blog

Recognize, acknowledge and accept the importance of content writing for your business

What the heck does that mean? you must be wondering. Aren’t you looking for a content writer because you know that your website needs content writing? Many business owners think that way but still they don’t understand content writing and therefore, they expect their content writer to charge as low as $ 5 (just a ballpark figure to explain the trend) for “quality” webpage content or blog post. Just as you have to pay a premium for a quality computer, quality smart phone, quality software, quality web design, quality food in a quality restaurant, and a quality four-wheeler, you also have to pay good money for a quality content writer. If you don’t think that, you’re either not serious about getting content written for your website, or you have a different perception of the real world.

Acknowledge that the content writer you’re planning to hire is running a serious business just like you

Considering the amount of money some people want to pay to their content writer (for example, $ 5) they think that the content writer is just a good-for-nothing, out-of-job fellow who has somehow gotten hold of a computer and an Internet connection and is now trying to make a living off the Internet without having spent any money. I’m not saying such people don’t exist, but if you want to hobnob with such people, then maybe you also have the same sort of attitude and running the same sort of business in your basement, mostly surviving on freebies abundantly available on the Internet.

If you’re doing serious business, then you have to collaborate with a serious person. If you need business class services, then you need to get a person who is running a business. If you want professional content for your website or blog, you need a professional content writer who provides his or her services as a business rather than as a hobby or an in-between-jobs activity.

But how do you know that the content writer you’re contemplating working with is a serious business owner or at least a professional content provider? Here are a few things to consider:

He (or she) has a website with all relevant sections (homepage, services, about section, FAQs, contact form, etc.)
His website shouldn’t look as if it was designed back in 2003
He has clearly and convincingly described how he works and what procedures he follows in order to deliver effective content
He has good command over the language (the language in which the content is to be written)
He has a visible presence on the web – since there is a great possibility that you will be looking for a content writer on the Internet, you should be easily able to find him.
He should have a blog that is regularly updated. Being a content writer he should have lots of content on his own website so that you can get a fair idea of how he communicates
His fees and rates should be there on the website
He shouldn’t be one of those “professionals” who would go to any length vis-à-vis the pricing in order to get your work. If he is too eager to please you it’s an indication that he is not very confident and if he is not confident he won’t be able to apply his skills with confidence to your writing too.
He should reply to your email messages or phone calls or Skype messages within a decent time span. It doesn’t mean his replies should reach you within minutes because he is supposed to be working and not constantly monitoring the messages people send him, but a time gap of, let us say if it is not very urgent, should be at least eight hours.

Remember that these are basic traits and there might be many more characteristics that you may look for in order to find the right content writer for your business.

Have a clearly laid out plan for your content marketing campaign

There is a reason it is called “content marketing”. Hiring a content writer doesn’t mean your job is done and now it is up to him to do your content marketing. Have a plan. You should know what you’re trying to achieve by getting content written for your website or blog. You should know what topics need to be covered and why and what sort of effect they should have on your traffic as well as the people who decide to stick around your website for awhile. Remember that you are the one running your business. You know it’s nitty-gritty. You know more about your customers and clients than the content writer. You know there are various triggers (if you don’t, you need to do your research you need to hire someone who can do it for you) that motivate your customers and clients.

Once you have a plan you will know exactly what your content writer needs to do.

Decide what you want: a content writer, a content marketer, or both

A perfect solution would be a content writer who knows a bit or two about marketing too. This is because effective content writing has less to do with impeccable writing and more to do with convincing writing. How do you convince people? If you can market your idea in a compelling language. Remember that it shouldn’t be perfect language. It should be able to persuade people into doing business with you. A knack for marketing makes your content writer confident and lucid. He knows how to communicate the strengths of what you’re offering in an effective manner (to streamline your sales funnel).

Be ready to let your content writer do what he does best

In order to let the killer content writer create killer content for your website or blog, you will have to let him do his job the way he likes to do it (as long as he is delivering something that helps you grow your business). Once you’re convinced that he understands your audience and he is able to create content accordingly, don’t meddle too much. Don’t force him into writing something he is uncomfortable with. Don’t impose your ideas about how to write because it’s he who is in the business of writing content and not you. You might be a legal eagle but writing is not your calling (unless you are John Grisham, of course), so stick to your expertise and let the content writer do his job.