Hiring a content writer doesn’t mean he or she is going to come up with everything you need to communicate on behalf of your business. Being a unique business you need a unique voice and this voice can only manifest if you provide sufficient information to the content writer before he or she proceeds with some effective content writing work.
Many business owners or decision-makers leave it up to the content writer to come up with the best content for their websites. Sometimes it works but mostly it doesn’t. A content writer has to be extremely experienced if he or she can come up with the right kind of information on his or her own. For instance, if you have hired me as a content writer and you are providing software development services and I need to write about your website how am I supposed to know what sort of software you provide, what the software applications can achieve and what all platforms you work on? Me being me I can dig out some information, but most content writers will turn up with superficial content or very badly prepared copy. And then you will blame the content writer for doing shoddy work. How do you expect quality work if you are not providing enough information to the content writer?
You and the content writer need to work together
The content writer you have hired may be highly talented but he or she may not be aware of what sort of questions he or she should ask you, and being a business owner it’s up to you to provide that information. Before leaving the content writer to his or her own devices you must provide the following information to him or her:
- A well-defined site map
- Titles of all the pages you want content for
- Comprehensive descriptions of products and services you provide
- A list of advantages of doing business with you
- Profile of your target market
- Your objective of getting the content written
- Company-specific information
These bits of information will help him or her understand your requirement properly and deliver you exactly what you are looking for.
An experienced content writer on the other hand asks all these questions before he or she begins to do your work. For instance, I have a template that I normally send to my clients and request them to fill it up before I can proceed with my work. This gives me all the information that I may require while working on a particular project.
The basic idea is, it is not solely the content writer’s responsibility to create better content for you just because you’re paying him or her. No matter how well he or she writes he or she is not a magician and certainly not a plagiarist. If you don’t want him or her to copy/paste information from different “sources” provide all the information you can. Whenever copying/pasting takes place it begins with the content writer going through various websites in order to obtain the right information. It is the wrong advice that the content writer should visit competitors’ websites and obtained all the information needed.
