Use Ar­ti­cle Writ­ers With Purpose

I of­ten have or­ders from clients that state a word count, num­ber of ar­ti­cles and a gen­eral topic, which is okay; I can work with that be­cause I’ve been do­ing this a long time and I can use my initiative.

De­spite work­ing on client projects daily, I oc­ca­sion­ally pay some­one to write for my own projects, us­ing free­lance ar­ti­cle writ­ers for example.

That might be a link build­ing cam­paign to im­prove my site’s foot­print or a post for my own blog be­cause I just don’t have time to up­date it and the con­tent is grow­ing stale.

As a writer, I know how im­por­tant the goals of a client can be to pro­duce a suc­cess­ful page of content.

Are Ar­ti­cle Writ­ers Concerned?

Here’s my rule of thumb, pay a de­cent rate and you will get a de­cent re­sult. No writer wants to see a two page brief and an ac­com­pa­ny­ing style guide if they are earn­ing bot­tom buck for the job.

You don’t need to tell good writ­ers to cre­ate short para­graphs with no run-on sen­tences be­cause they will al­ready know how to help you achieve your goals. Why buy a dog and bark your­self? You just wouldn’t do it.

At most, I would ask writ­ers to use Header 1, Header 2 and Header 3 for ti­tles be­cause I can paste it straight into a Word­Press site. This way, some of my on-page SEO is al­ready done be­cause Word­Press is clever enough to know that these should be tagged H1, H2 and H3.

When I write for clients, I try to take as much ef­fort away from their day as pos­si­ble. The bet­ter I am for their busi­ness, the more re­peat work I will re­ceive. It’s com­mon sense, but can you ex­pect a writer liv­ing in the UK or US to re­search and write about a sub­ject they have no in­ter­est in if they are not motivated?

Find­ing Pur­pose­ful Writers

Writ­ers who cre­ate con­tent that will en­hance your web­site or out­reach cam­paign need to know who you are and what line of busi­ness you are in. It helps if they know your tar­get mar­ket too be­cause this helps them set the cor­rect tone of voice.

Now, there are some de­cent con­tent mills where you can let the writ­ers know all these de­tails when you fill out the brief.

Dis­ap­point­ingly, most con­tent mills that have a num­ber of writ­ers on their books have a pol­icy of strip­ping any con­tact de­tails or web­site ad­dress out of the brief be­cause they are afraid of writ­ers steal­ing clients and not get­ting a cut. Not all con­tent mills are the same, but most op­er­ate this way.

Go for Bou­tique and Get it Right

Any­one who has or­dered con­tent in the past will tes­tify that it’s a hit and miss process that can be frus­trat­ing be­cause it not only wastes time wait­ing for re­vi­sions, but can be costly if it just doesn’t work out. That’s be­fore you even get into the con­fronta­tion with writ­ers who in­sist their work is good, when they clearly skipped a few gram­mar lessons at school; but are up to date with ‘txt spk’ (text speak for the hu­mans read­ing this).

At least with a bou­tique agency, you can usu­ally speak to your ac­count man­ager and com­mu­ni­cate your in­ten­tions prop­erly. It’s like us­ing free­lance ar­ti­cle writ­ers, but slightly bet­ter for vol­ume orders.

Of course, if you have a free­lance writer that has great avail­abil­ity and you can sup­ply them with a de­cent amount of work then you will strug­gle to get a bet­ter re­la­tion­ship with other sup­pli­ers. Find­ing your tone of voice and un­der­stand­ing your needs is not some­thing that eas­ily fits on a one-page brief.

Abel Fro­man is a dig­i­tal con­tent man­ager who has been hir­ing ar­ti­cle writ­ers for eight years. He rarely uses untested tal­ent and will only use writ­ers with an im­pres­sive port­fo­lio. WordswithWorth.co.uk are a ex­actly who he likes to hire for the qual­ity, well struc­tured pe­ices he needs.