Are you looking for article writers? There are tons of professionals out there, but it’s important to choose the right one for your content creation needs.
Article writing isn’t easy, so if you don’t have the copywriting skills to do it yourself, you’re still okay. You can simplify your life and have more free time while someone else crafts the quality content you need for your company blog and elsewhere online.
If you have a project that needs to be done immediately, you can call us. However, if you’re not sure how to hire a writer for articles, we take you through the steps to ensure that you find the perfect person for the job.
Decide on Freelance or In-house Article Writers
It takes a lot of hard work to handle article writing effectively. Therefore if you want to hire a content writer, you must decide if you want a freelancer or a full-time provider. This isn’t a small decision, and each option has pros and cons to analyze.
Regardless, though, you can get the content you need from both of them, whether you need articles or blog posts.
Pros of an In-house Article Writer
- In-house article writing is often more dependable. The writer doesn’t skip deadlines and completes the content on time.
- These professionals focus on their work and can react quickly when your company needs new blog posts.
- They’re invested in you and the content they produce. With that, they take ownership of the work to ensure your success.
- These writers often have basic SEO knowledge, so they can handle whatever you might need.
Cons of an In-house Article Writer
- Hiring in-house writers comes with more technical and financial complexities because you’re hiring a new employee. This includes health insurance and benefits.
- Finding the right talent for article writing can be a challenge, especially if you’re not within the tech capitals of the world.
- The process of vetting, finding, and negotiating with the candidates takes time. You may spend weeks or months looking for a writer who can provide the right content. However, it’s easy to choose one that does a poor job or isn’t a good fit within the company. Therefore, you need to conduct various interviews.
- Small businesses may not have the money to hire in-house writers.
From a financial standpoint, the cost of hiring someone full-time means that smaller companies might not benefit at all. Still, you can hire content writers on a contract basis and then focus on hiring one for full-time work on your articles.
In the meantime, it’s best to start off with a freelancer or use content writing services like ours. You always get fresh and unique content when you need it most.
Pros of a Freelance Writer
- Freelance writers often come at a lower cost and have a low level of commitment. If you have the right content strategy and processes in place, it’s easy to scale content efforts with freelance writing.
- Hiring a freelancer is often better because you don’t have to deal with employee benefits and perks, reducing labor costs.
- Freelance writers tend to have fast onboarding times.
- It’s easy to find a writer because of various job boards.
Typically, freelancers offer companies the same quality as an in-house one, but there are fewer risks and costs associated with it.
They can handle landing pages or any other project you have and may take less time to do it. With that, they often understand SEO and can incorporate that into your article or blog posts. Plus, full-time writers may spend more time and work doing things before they can publish anything to the website.
Larger companies can also hire freelancers, but they need to know what’s required from the writer. Typically, these professionals aren’t accountable for the strategy, and if that’s part of the job description, it might not work out.
Cons of a Freelance Writer
- Freelancers can be expensive, just as having a full-time employee. You should calculate the content marketing costs before hiring someone at an hourly rate.
- Communication on projects can be another issue. Most freelancers set their schedules and work in various time zones. You should be clear about deadlines before allowing them to write articles.
- Some freelancers take on too many projects or have a large client base. Therefore, writing an article for you might take the backburner, or they may have longer turnaround times.
Before giving anyone the job of creating content for the web, make sure that you know these things:
- How much content is required?
- What does success look like?
- What’s your budget?
- How do you communicate with them?
Define Your Needs for Content
Writing requires a broad set of skills and can come with specializations. While one writer may write about anything with enough time, it doesn’t mean that they are providing high-quality and fresh content for every format.
You want someone who has strengths that align with your goals and needs. The writer may be the best at creating landing pages, but they can’t write interesting stories within the articles.
Copywriting takes on many forms, so you need someone who can write at the education level of your audience and with SEO in mind. While you’re free to choose anyone, those who are good at blog posts might not like the idea of writing technical pieces.
To analyze the writer’s skill, look at what content options they can craft, such as:
- Long/short article options
- Social media content
- Ad copy (Facebook Ads and Google Adwords)
- Landing pages for lead generation
- Copy for pages on websites (about and home page)
- White papers and eBooks
- Video scripts
- Blog post options
Ask to take a look at the writer’s portfolio. Then, look at what they’ve done in the past. You can see where their experience shines and what content they’ve created. Then, find the patterns you like and base the decision on those.
You can also ask the writer about their specialties, favorite types of content, and everything else.
Make sure you’re clear about what you need before you hire someone. If you need light and fun content, they should have those attributes. For those who need more serious pieces, look for that.
Understand Your Budget
No one works for free, so you should be clear about your budget before you hire anyone for your business. You must understand the results you expect from them and what that means to you. Then, you can decide what you’re willing to invest in for appropriate content.
One issue many businesses face when hiring a writer is deciding what their budget is and not thinking about what they might get from a specific price range. Content alone is worthless. You need the right kind of writing to grow your business. Therefore, you must look for people who fit in with the company to get a higher return on the investment. This might mean paying more.
Here are simple price thresholds with the qualities you can see:
- Under 10 cents a word – You see lower quality writing and are likely to do most of the legwork, such as editing, outlining, researching, and finding ideas.
- Between 10 to 19 cents a word – You see a slightly higher quality. Here, you can get deals because many writers don’t charge what they should, so you get a low price. This helps you offer better content on your website.
- Between 20 to 29 cents per word – There’s overall great quality here. You see more knowledgeable and experienced writers within their specialty.
- Above 30 cents per word – You see excellent quality. Many times, the writers have a lot of experience, and it shows in where they publish and how often. Their blog posts get shared a lot or have external/internal links.
For example, if someone charges you $500 for 1,500 words, it costs between 30 and 35 cents. Therefore, it’s important to know how many words you need for each article and how often you need that many words.
You should also be aware of what returns you see. Do more people visit your website? Can you convert leads into sales?
Interview the Writers
Once you have an article writer you like, schedule an interview with them to learn more about their writing style and skills. In the interview, ask the writer some questions to understand if you two can work together well.
Before hiring a content writer to help with web content and blog posts, ask these six questions to see if they’re the right fit for your company and readers:
What Content Style Do You Specialize In?
Writers can write almost anything, whether it’s a Facebook update or an email. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the skills shine through in both of those mediums. Before you hire someone, understand what content they’ve written in the past or the writing style they prefer.
Beginners tend to do almost anything for money, but that means more mediocre content. Make sure to play to their strengths. You might want someone who’s good with websites, but that could be in the form of a blog or article. This often means they’re good at long-form content writing, but you can still ask them to do some product descriptions or write science fiction stories.
From there, they could start writing ads for the site, and they may even find that they enjoy ads and are good at them. They can continue writing articles or an online course, giving them opportunities to learn and grow.
What Industries Do You Currently Specialize In?
Typically, a writer does a specific type of content well and may specialize in a particular industry. If they have little experience in online business, they might not know what to write about because they’re learning about the industry instead of the written content.
Article writing means knowing the audience and producing high-quality articles for the blog that are relevant. Check out the writer’s portfolio to see what topics they tend to use.
Do You Understand Search Engine Optimization and Optimizing the Content for Search Engines?
The goal here is to have readable content that is free of errors. Ultimately, the article you have written should get plenty of search engine exposure and show up at the top of the search results without being a paid advert.
Blog writing should be relevant to the searcher’s intent (audience), but it must also focus on SEO. Therefore, ask the writer if they understand SEO and ask them to explain it. This means they can link to previous articles, do keyword research, and add the keyword in alt-tags and titles of articles.
These articles go on your business website, and you want people searching for the topics to find your information. This is the ultimate concept for SEO, so you need an SEO expert.
SEO isn’t dead, even though more and more businesses think about user experience more than SEO. Just make sure that they don’t overuse keywords and have the basics down if nothing else.
What’s Your Writing Process for a Blog Post or Other Pieces of Content?
Each person has different processes, such as how they come up with an idea for an article, research things, outline it all, and write the post.
It’s not up to you to know everything about the process as long as you get valuable and quality content for the web and your blog. With that, you may ask the writer to be their own editor, so when they’re done writing, they check for mistakes.
Copywriting is an art form, and blogs come about from various ideas.
Still, you should ask them about their process for writing articles. That way, you get ideas into how they work.
Do You Need Assistance with Research?
The article writer has to research the topic for the article before writing anything. If they don’t, this is a bad sign. Even if they’re just writing articles for a blog, they need to ensure that the facts are right.
Google is getting very good at finding out when information is incorrect and might rank you lower on the results page. With that, the reader deserves to have correct data when they go to your website to learn something. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and showing yourself in a bad light.
How Many Revisions Are Included?
An article writer is likely to make mistakes, and this is normal. This might mean making edits here and there. The writer understands this, but there could be times where the mishaps are large, and you ask them to fix the articles before they go on your website.
Negotiate with Them
Negotiation is crucial to help you find the right article writing professional for your blog. There could be various things to negotiate, but most people worry about the pay for the articles.
Typically, you pay the person based on how many words are in the article. Though you shouldn’t try to ask for a lower price to get your services cheaper, you can ask for a discount if you request many words or documents.
Work with Your Content Article Writer
Everyone realizes that copywriting is a challenge, so the professional might need some guidance. Your business is unique, so the readers expect an article that has everything they need. With that, it must be done in a timely manner. Share your story, call and discuss your expectations, and send guidelines so that they know what to do.
Conclusion
Hiring an article writer is crucial for your business. The tips we discussed can help you choose someone. If you’re reading to see more sales, feel free to call. We can help with creative writing, product descriptions, and SEO.
If you want original content for your next project, request our services today!
