In today’s online marketing world, it can be hard to set yourself apart from the competition. As a business owner, you may be looking for new ways to make your business more visible and to connect with potential customers. Creating content is still one of the best ways to accomplish those goals.
Creating content though can be difficult. It requires a deep understanding of the industry, the way people use the internet, writing skills, and time that many business owners simply don’t have. That’s why many businesses choose to hire content creators.
Here, we’ve put together a guide to help you decide if you should hire a content creator. We’ll show you why content is so important and how you can choose the perfect writer for your business.
How Is Content Useful?
When we talk about content, we are referring to all of the written and visual materials you can use to communicate with your target audience. Content includes everything from written materials such as blog posts, landing pages, and email newsletters to graphic design content such as infographics, Instagram stories, and instructional videos.
Content is important for most businesses regardless of scale and offerings. Content is essential to helping your company rank higher in search engines and allows you to reach out to potential customers on a regular basis. Here are some of the main reasons why content is important for your business.
It's Essential For Branding
Creating content is one of the best ways to get across who you are as a brand and what your values are. Social media content marketing allows you to be playful and less formal—allowing potential customers to feel a personal connection to your brand. Social media posts can show off a softer side of your brand while long-form informational blog posts help potential customers understand how your products can solve their problems.
Helps You Reach Potential Customers
One of the most important steps in digital content creation is understanding who your target audience is. Great content creators know the consumer's buyer persona—who they are, what their pain points are, and what types of content they're looking for. Producing high-quality content consistently can help you reach your target audience by offering solutions and ranking your content higher in search engines.
Not only does a piece of content help you reach your target audience, but it also helps you build a relationship with them. Sharing guest posts and user reviews helps build your credibility and establish trust. Having a technical writer draft an in-depth how-to guide to your products shows consumers that you care enough to help them understand and use your products, even before they make a purchase.
Boosts Visibility and Traffic
We've mentioned ranking in search engines a few times and that's because content is one of the best ways to help you conquer SEO—search engine optimization. While visual marketing is a great way to add a human component to your digital marketing strategy, written content is essential to ranking well in search engines.
By researching keywords in your niche, you can create blog posts that help increase your visibility. We recommend starting with a tool such as Ahrefs to hone in on what types of keywords perform well in your industry. Once you have these keywords you can plug them into a tool such as Clearscope or Buzzsumo to maximize your content performance.
Why You Should Hire A Content Creator
The importance of content to the success of your business cannot be understated. When it comes time to create content, you can't just produce any old information. You need to create content that is engaging, interesting, and informative to stand out from the crowd. For many business owners, creating content can be too time-consuming. For others, they simply don't have the high-level writing skills required to get the job done right.
Better ROI
Hiring a content creator helps ensure that the material you develop produces the greatest ROI. Not all content creators are equal so you may need to hire several writers to meet your business needs. A social media content creator will be more adept at creating engaging or viral content while a web designer will be more suited to creating infographics and digital media using information created by your content writer.
Show Off Your Expertise
Hiring an expert writer can help you become a thought leader in the industry. A great writer should have in-depth knowledge of your industry and be familiar with your product offerings. They should be well versed in web design and using social media platforms to help extend your reach. The best content creators are able to write excellent pieces that can be shared across social networks and to engage a specific end-user. Some content will be tailored for bloggers and influencers to promote while other copywriting can be drafted to inform and educate your audience. Each type of content from video content and podcasts to sales content and blogging should be tailored to the end-user/audience to establish your authority and expertise in the industry.
Can Save Time and Money
Professional writers can produce new content much faster and efficiently than most business owners. They are able to frame product in a specific context and highlight how certain offerings can relieve pain points and offer solutions for potential consumers. By saving you time, you can focus on other aspects of the content strategy or building your business.
A copywriter also plays a role in the contribution of information. They can help present new content ideas and work closely with the content marketer to develop keyword ideas or identify keyword buckets you may have missed in your content plan.
Hiring a successful content creator can also help save money even when you're spending it. A high-quality writer is worth their weight in gold. The amount of traffic they can bring to your website and their ability to boost conversions is worth the expense. You can hire an American in-house writer in your region of the United States or a freelance writer and expand your job applicant pool from New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to London, Zurich, and Tokyo.
Find A Content Creator
You've decided to hire a content creator, but where do you find them? To find an expert content creator, you can post job ads or hire an agency to help you find the writer you're searching for.
Post An Ad
You can post content creator job ad on freelance sites such as Upwork or Freelancer as well as on traditional job sites such as LinkedIn and Indeed.
When posting a job ad, make sure to make the job title and job description as clear as possible. Coordinate your content strategy with the marketing team and make it clear what types of content you want to produce and how regularly that content should be created. Be clear if you need video marketing services in addition to written web content.
Hire An Agency
Feeling like you don't know how to pick the perfect writer? Let an expert agency do the work for you. Companies like Scripted and The Writer Finder can help you find an expert writer to produce print and online content. Agencies have extensive databases of writers from a host of different backgrounds to help you find the perfect content producer.
Choosing A Content Creator
We tend to prioritize writers that have expertise and extensive knowledge in the target industry. We find that it's easy to teach a writer voice and branding style, but much more difficult to get a writer up to speed on knowledge if they aren't familiar with the subject. We recommend choosing writers that have experience in your industry or niche.
If you work in a technical field, it may be important for a writer to have a college degree. For other industries, a degree may simply be an added benefit, not a requirement. Sit down with your marketing team and come up with a list of essential qualifications. Eliminate writers that do not fit your profile.
Once you've narrowed down the applicants, ask professional writers for writing samples so you can get a feel for how they create content. Check for spelling and grammar mistakes and see if their writing is engaging and interesting. See if their content has been published in large publications such as The New York Times or in industry magazines. Set up interviews with a few of these writers so you can see if their personality is a good fit for your team. Once you select a writer or two, you can get started producing good content and driving engagement.
Create Content Successfully
For many businesses, hiring a content creator is an excellent way to promote the brand and establish themselves as experts in the industry. While you can do the writing yourself as a business owner, delegating the work to a professional writer can help save time and improve results. Use these tips to decide whether hiring a content creator is a good fit for your business and start creating stunning content today.