Content writing is vital for businesses in today’s digital age. When done right, content creation can help you establish an online presence. Producing great content helps you stay competitive and improve your conversion rate. Content marketing is constantly evolving and there is no sign that it is going away. But writing content can be daunting for someone who does not know how to do it. This is where outsourcing content can come in handy.
According to a 2020 SEMrush survey, 30% of B2B businesses outsource content marketing. When you outsource, you can reduce costs and free your time to work on various aspects of your business. It is not enough to just write content, post it on social media, and share it because there are other factors that need to be considered. When done right, outsourcing content can contribute to increasing website visits and boosting revenue. Here are some tips on how to become successful with outsourcing content.
Signs You Need To Outsource Content
- Your Current Content Strategy Is Not Delivering the Expected Outcome
- Content Writing Isn’t Your Cup of Tea
- You Cannot Explore Other Business Opportunities
- You Have New Ideas But Do Not Have The Expertise
- You Have Too Much On Your Plate
How To Succeed With Outsourcing Content
- Figure out what content you need help with
- Set your goals
- Define your audience
- Choose between an agency and a freelancer
- Provide Clear Instructions
- Aim For Consistency
- Track Results
Let’s get on with it.
Signs You Need to Outsource Content
Writing content is one of the most effective ways to generate website traffic and increase the potential return on your investment. But writing content goes beyond playing with words and phrases. To capture the attention of your audience, you need to do it right. If you are struggling with writing content, be aware of the following signs that it’s time to consider outsourcing.
1. Your Current Content Strategy Is Not Delivering the Expected Outcome
Okay, you have invested in the latest tools and technology but your website or blog is still not generating or converting leads. This means something is wrong with your strategy. Compelling content does not come out of thin air and it can’t rely on random sprouts of inspiration. To get content that drives results, you need a clear and actionable strategy in place. Outsourcing gives you access to a team specializing in planning and executing the right strategy for your business.
2. Content Writing Isn’t Your Cup of Tea
Some business owners have a flair for writing. It gives them an outlet for communicating their thoughts, ideas, and perspectives to their audience. However, if writing engaging content consumes your time, then it makes sense to outsource your content to an expert who can craft compelling and thought-provoking content day in and day out.
3. You Cannot Explore Other Business Opportunities
Creating content can be integrated into your business plan and marketing strategy but you need to do it right. But if you find yourself tied up with content production and you cannot entertain new ideas that can lead to business opportunities and growth, outsourcing may be a good solution so that you can focus on growing your business.
4. You Have New Ideas But Do Not Have The Expertise
You want to experiment with new tools, ideas, and platforms for your content writing but you are not sure if you are going down the right path. By outsourcing, you will be guided by the provider throughout the process and help you make an informed decision so you don’t waste time and money on experimenting.
5. You Have Too Much On Your Plate
You may find yourself juggling hundreds of daily tasks, leaving little time for writing and posting blogs regularly. As a result, the quality of the articles you are posting can be affected. When writing compelling content, you need to give it your time. If you don’t have such luxury, you are better off handing the writing task to someone who can give their time.
How To Succeed with Outsourcing Content
Writing content can be a little tricky. Delivering quality content is an effective way to break through the noise and stay competitive in your industry. But writing content goes beyond adding keywords or links to articles or blog posts. There are other technical aspects you need to consider. Here are some tips when outsourcing content writing.
1. Figure out the content you need help with
There are different types of content that you can outsource to a provider. You can have them do keyword research or come up with blog topics. In addition, you can also have them create and edit videos for you. Before everything else, you need to determine what kind of content you want to hire a contractor for.
First of all, it makes no sense to hire a huge team if you only need them to do keyword research for you. Identify the current bottlenecks in your content process. Determine which tasks are too time-consuming for your team. Are you outsourcing because you want to improve results? Maybe you lack a certain level of expertise to get the job done.
Identifying your content needs is important in setting a budget for your content marketing efforts. It may not be worthwhile wasting your money on an entire content marketing team when you only need a video editor or link builder. At the same time, you wouldn’t want to outsource to a freelancer only to realize that you actually need a content marketing agency.
2. Set your goals
What do you want to achieve from content marketing? When done right, writing content can help you reach new customers, increase revenue, or boost brand awareness. By setting your goals, you can create your content strategy. This includes knowing your target audience’s persona.
Setting goals will help you and your team get organized and be on the same page. Goal setting allows us to aim for a certain destination and see the bigger picture. It also allows us to tell whether you are moving forward with your marketing efforts or just going in circles. A recent survey revealed that 89% of goal-setting marketers achieve their goals some or most of the time, and 3% always achieve them.
When setting your content marketing goals, make sure that it will support your company goals. Setting goals helps you determine whether you are really achieving your desired results. When you have a goal in mind, you are establishing a path towards success but recognizing failure is just as important as recognizing success.
3. Define Your Audience
The general aim of content marketing is to arouse the interest of your target audience. Demographic data such as age, gender, occupation, and others is insufficient in understanding how your product or service can lead to customer satisfaction. You need to create an actual buyer persona to help you create useful content to grab their attention and boost your business.
Just how important is it to target the right audience? Data reveals that $37 billion is wasted in ad spending every year from ads that fail to engage their target audience. Depending on the product you are offering, your target audience could be broad or niche. Defining your target audience will help you create proper content that will resonate with your target audience. At the same time, defining your target audience will help you strengthen relationships and improve communication with customers.
4. Choose between an agency or a freelancer
When choosing to outsource content, it is important to decide whether to outsource to a content marketing agency or a freelancer. With the former, you can cover a wide range of topics related to your industry. The latter, on the other hand, are more focused on specific niches. This is where the challenge lies so choose your writers wisely.
Whether it’s from an outsourcing agency or a freelancer, do always ask for a sample of their previous work so you can gauge whether they are the right fit for your requirement. It is always wise to choose writers with positive testimonials from previous clients. A writer may have previous experience in your niche, however, if they also have written articles on a wide range of topics and consistently churns out high-quality, this could indicate their willingness to learn about your industry and brand in order to do a good job.
Choosing between an agency and a freelancer depends on how much manpower you need to get your content marketing in shape. If you are looking for a team with a diverse set of skills to manage your content marketing, the former is your best choice but if you are outsourcing just one particular type of task, then a freelancer may be your best option.
5. Provide Clear Instructions
Relaying information to an outsourcing agency or freelancer can be daunting. Although you can give the writer some flexibility in the writing style and the use of keywords, don’t leave the writer in the dark with vague instructions. One way of doing this is by giving them a sample output they can pattern their writing from.
To ensure that you get quality content from the writer, you need to be crystal clear with the instructions with the voice, style, formatting, and layout. It will help them a lot if you have a branding document or style guide to give to writers. A style guide will maintain consistency and will unify the brand voice.
Set guidelines for the type of content you need but allow the writer to do what they do best. You should specify information about your preferred grammar, structure, punctuation, tone, and language. Give them all the necessary resources to do their job like supporting materials, technical documents, or product and service information.
6. Aim For Consistency
Your content need not be a literary masterpiece but needs to be published as regularly as possible. Your audience will care more about receiving actionable information rather than the writer adhering to your in-house style guide. They are not looking for perfect content but rather they just need valuable content.
Always prioritize consistency over minor details that can cause bottlenecks in your publication schedule. It is more important to publish high-quality content promptly and consistently. Make every post as impactful as possible and provide the writer with clear feedback on how they can improve.
Style guides can help preserve the integrity of your brand but it is also important for your brand to be visible to your potential customers. After all, it is your audience that keeps your business afloat with their money. They pay for the value that you will provide them and not whether or not your writers adhere to your style guides.
8. Track results
Just because an article adheres to your style guide does not mean it will gain traction and improve your revenue. It is more important for the articles to convert than for it to be perfect. Social media shares such as blog comments, website traffic, email newsletter subscriptions and others indicate how effective your content is.
Success metrics should be clearly defined in your content strategy. Evaluate the results of your published content using tools such as Google Analytics. Although it can be difficult to judge content, you can see trends appear over time. When outsourcing content, make engagement and increasing conversion rate your top priority.
To ensure the success of your content outsourcing, make sure that you truly understand your audience. If in doubt, you can always ask your audience the kind of content they like. If you don’t understand your audience, it will be difficult for you to engage with them and increase your conversion rate.
Outsourcing content offers a lot of benefits for your business. It will not only free you from wasting time on creating and publishing content yourself but will also help improve your online presence and boost your conversion rate.
Why Should You Outsource Content Writing To airisX?
In the SEO world, there is the famous cliché which goes, “Content is king.” Landing pages, website content, product detail pages – every online business or brand needs compelling, creative copy to present their offerings to the world. According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), content writing is one of the most effective ways to promote a business. Their B2C content marketing stats reveal that 86% of marketers believe that content marketing is an effective strategy.
At airisX, we help drive traffic and increase your conversion rates by creating engaging copy that captures your readers attention and drives them to action. Whether writing content for your blog, bullet points and product description, landing pages, and/or news articles, our writers have the training and expertise to craft the content you need. Contact us at contact@airisx.com and we will get your content marketing in motion.