How and Why to Outsource Content Writing Effectively
Anyone in your organization can write. So why should your company outsource your digital content writing?
Furthermore, how do you know what “good” writing is? How can you look outside your organization and find the ideal messaging resource for your brand, your company’s web pages, blog posts, emailers, and other digital and old-school marketing communications content?
Let’s break it down.
Why Should You Outsource Content Writing?
Outsourcing isn’t really such an alien concept. Chances are, you already outsource such services as legal, accounting, IT, or security. But here’s why outsourcing specifically makes such good sense with your marketing communications.
Expertise Matters
It matters to your organization’s reputation — and to your likelihood of attracting the attention of the audiences you seek.
Writing expertise goes far beyond knowing how to make sentences, arrange them into paragraphs, and properly spell most of the words most of the time. The mission of effective marketing communication is to inform your various audiences, inspire their brand confidence, sell your point of view, and compel the actions you seek.
That’s just as difficult as it sounds. And that’s why you should hire an outsource content writer to do the heavy lifting — because that’s what they do professionally. They write as well as you sell insurance, invent household products, interpret legal briefs, cure rare diseases, plant gardens, or do whatever it is that you and your team do so well.
The Google Algorithm Matters, Too
There are countless billions of pages on the Internet. What that means, heartless as it sounds, is that what you put online doesn’t matter if no one sees it — and that’s definitely a possible outcome. Here’s where search engine optimization, or SEO, comes into view.
SEO includes the strategies good writers use to get their content recognized as being worthwhile by search engines. That’s important because content that scores high in search engine algorithms ranks higher on the search engine results pages (SERP) when users pose a query.
Showing up high on the SERP is critical since study after study has shown that most search engine users only react to the first few query response links on the first results page. If your link is number 19 on the 15th SERP, it will likely never be seen by anyone.
The search engines don’t release the factors that determine query result rankings because they don’t want writers simply writing content to please the algorithm — they want it to flow more organically so it’s of maximum value to search engine users.
Nonetheless, we know of four factors of importance to the Google algorithm: Experience – Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trustworthiness. Together, these four writing characteristics have come to be known as E-E-A-T.
As far as Google is concerned, the best writing — i.e., those pages that will rank high on SERPs — exude each of those four characteristics. In short, they seem to be written by an expert with experience in the field who can write with an authoritative voice and inspire the trust of readers.
A Good Content Writing Service Has Writers With Backgrounds You Need
Many marketing communications writers have evolved into their current positions from backgrounds in business, law, accounting, engineering, technology, medicine, science, or other fields that might be pertinent to your organization’s content expectations.
An effective content writing service provider will know the expertise of the writers on their roster. When they hold the degree of knowledge and professionalism that’s relevant to your organization, your outsourced writer will know the language and be able to get up to speed quickly on what you’re promoting. The writer will be able to match your company’s voice and tone in communicating with your audience.
Deadlines Loom
Even if you have one or more communicators on staff who can write in a way that will impress Google and your various audiences, time is not always your friend. The clock, after all, is always ticking.
When are your upcoming writing projects due? How burned out is your on-staff marcom writer getting? How old and obsolete are your sales and marketing materials?
The point is that even the best in-house writing team can run out of hours in the day and workdays in the month. Make contact with a trusted outsource content writing service provider before staff burnout happens.
If you hand off a project or two to a professional content marketing team before deadlines start getting missed, you can slowly introduce them to your company’s products or services, your audiences, the corporate culture you want reflected in the writing, and your preferred communications style. Then they can step in immediately and help pick up the slack nearly effortlessly when you get desperate for their talent.
What Are the Benefits of Content Outsourcing?
A good outsource writer can communicate clearly and concisely in ways that persuade, intrigue, provoke, and make your audience want to continue reading. Or maybe entice readers to jump ahead and place a call or click on a link.
Can your on-staff writers deliver all that on every assignment? Are they always able to meet every hot deadline?
Well-written content carries readers. It makes them think — makes them want to think.
Consider this brief sentence by the humorist Mark Twain: “The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
Simple, eh?
Or this from Carson McCullers: “The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach.”
Beautiful. Deep. But just about anyone with a seventh-grade education is likely to understand what she’s saying. And that’s important because your audience just might read at a seventh-grade level.
How about this sentence: “The sky was low, the color of misery.” It’s from Australian thriller writer Peter Temple. Does it paint a picture in your mind with simple, seventh-grade-level words?
Well-written content highlights ideas and points of view. It makes your audience go wherever you want to take them. That’s true whether the words are contained in blogs, social media posts, web pages, product tutorial videos, annual reports, trade magazine articles, or CEO speeches.
Can Your People Do All That, Every Time?
Do your various audiences always want to read what your staff writer writes? If they don’t, they won’t — nor will they convert from browsers to buyers.
If your marketing materials read muddled, boring, awkward, confusing, or all of the above, that’s no reflection on your people. Good writing is freakin’ hard. Only a pro should do it.
Here’s our advice if you’re asking yourself whether your content should be assigned to an outsider: Be as willing to outsource content writing as you would be to go outside your company for your accounting, legal, and IT security services.
You do that because you know some people are really talented at things you and your people know little about and have no time or inclination to learn. Furthermore, you know it’ll cost you big time if you cut corners and do it wrong.
Where Can I Outsource an Excellent Content Writing Team?
Like everyone and everything else, content writers are readily available online. But just like everything you can find and order on the Internet, the quality varies. So how do you find the right resource for your organization?
Step 1: Read. A lot. From a lot of different sources.
Did you like that quote we used from Mark Twain? Or the one by Carson McCullers? It’s fine if you don’t. Not all words hit everyone in the same way. It just means you should keep looking until you find writers who ring your bell.
Read the online portfolios, writing samples, case studies, and blog posts of outsource content creation teams. Just search for such terms as content writers or content writing services.
See if their writers make you think. Or learn something new. Or reconsider what you thought you always knew about life insurance. Or lawyers. Or oral surgery. Or kitchen cutlery. Or what that shop down the street sells.
Step 2: Identify a few favorites.
Then let relevant staff or family members read their content. Do they understand the messaging? Does it not only inform but make them smile, think, nod their heads in the right places, or even scribble down a phone number?
Step 3: Try the writer out.
Content writers are like psychiatrists. Some can be very, very talented but not quite meshwith you or your audience because the chemistry’s just not there. That’s alright. If that writer is part of a larger team, just ask for another. Explain (if you can) how you and that first writer don’t quite gel, and you’d like to try someone else.
Or be a little patient and realize that your new writer is going to take a while before even coming close to being as enmeshed in your company and industry and culture as you are after thirty zillion years in business.
Expect progress — not necessarily perfection — at first. A great thing about writers is that they typically love to learn and try out different styles.
Consider Us
Are you still reading? Because if you are, you’ve now invested some 1,500 words worth of your valuable time when you had lots more on your plate. Even if you skipped ahead here and there, it’s a lot of words.
But we kept your interest, informed you about the importance of outsourcing content creation, and told you how to do it.
Now let us tell you why you should consider ContentWriters as your company’s outsource content writing partner.
ContentWriters is a premium-quality outsource content marketing service featuring a vetted, curated network of US-based professional writers and editors. Our clients are agencies, brands, publishers, eLearning, and eCommerce companies.
We work closely with managers, directors, VPs, and C-suite executives to create rich SEO content that grabs attention and encourages the response of B2B and B2C audiences in numerous industries and client categories.
Our custom content appeals to college students, young marrieds, retired travelers, time-challenged corporate executives, blue-collar workers, start-up business owners, and the members of countless other groups and sub-groups.
Can one writer address your company’s diverse audiences from multiple communications platforms? Maybe. Or maybe you need to bring on an outsource content writing team with diverse skill sets to match your needs.
When you hire ContentWriters, you get the unique expertise your company needs at any stage of operation. Maybe our content for your organization comes from one veteran writer with an expansive background. Or it could be produced by several writers, each of whom has a much narrower but perhaps deeper niche of writing skills and experience.
Make finding the right outsource content writing team for your company’s marcom needs a shared adventure with us.
David S. has written more than 1,000 articles, essays, columns and blog posts for numerous print and digital properties. He’s been an advertising copywriter and corporate staff writer. This includes being a part of marketing teams in multiple global companies.
