3 Key Questions to Consider Before Hiring a Freelance Content Writer

If you are considering hiring a great freelance content writer for your business, our experience has shown that there are key questions you need to answer, and then tried-and-tested steps to make it happen.

As you know, content marketing is a fantastic way to increase traffic to your website, nurture your audience, and sell your products/ services. Yet there is an ongoing challenge you may have noticed? There is an enormous amount of content – over 4 million blog posts – published on the web each day.

How do you break through the noise and ensure that the content you’re producing will be valuable and connect with your target audience?

The solution is simple, yet not easy. You need to consistently produce and promote the highest quality content you can, that actually converts.

So what do you do if…

• Writing content is not your strength?
• You need to focus your energy on income-generating activities like sales?
• You cannot afford a full-time, in-house writer?
• You have a great content marketer but they are taking on more responsibility and transitioning to a new role?

Then it’s time to hire a high-quality freelance content writer.

We know, because we have experienced these scenarios too.  The leadership team at Bean Ninjas made the decision to outsource our own content writing.

These were the key questions we asked ourselves once we made the decision to bring on a freelance content writer.

1. Will freelance content writers produce quality work?

Our initial concern was about whether we’d find a freelancer who could write content with the level of quality that our readers were used to.

Thankfully we have a documented content strategy with our vision, theme and goal for our blog. So we just looked for a freelancer who could write content at 70% – 80% quality and improve with time.

Good communication, constructive feedback and utilising our in-house editor were key to ongoing improvements in work quality.

2. Why hire freelancers from Eastern Europe?

We found Eastern European freelance content writers more affordable than hiring locally.  As you know, different countries have different salary standards.

Freelancers from Eastern Europe have a great education system and can offer great value. Culturally, they typically avoid the fluff-talk and keep communications direct which is something we appreciate.

They also are very hard-working, and many have two college degrees. This means they tend to produce high quality and technicality in their work, which delivers great value at a lower cost.

3. What type of writing can be outsourced?

Once you realise all the different types of content that can be created for your business, you might feel overwhelmed.  So to make things easier, these are the content types we have focused on that have been beneficial:

• Articles/ blog posts
• Podcast show notes
• Client case studies/customer success stories
• Team member profiles

Now that you have addressed your key questions, it’s time to look at the process for finding and hiring your freelance content writer.

These are our tried and tested 7 steps…