Expertly crafted content drives extra visitors to your website and encourages potential customers to make a purchase. If you don’t have the time or experience to create your own written content, hiring a freelance writer to produce this for you is essential. However, to get the best possible copy, follow these tips when hiring a freelance writer.
Choose a specialist copywriter
While freelance writers are usually flexible on the subjects they cover, where possible choose a writer familiar with your industry, as their experience generally means they can produce high quality work promptly. Similarly, when looking to increase your search engine ranking, always choose a freelance copywriter with expertise in SEO. However, don’t take their word for it. A professional writer will be more than happy to show you samples of their work, as well as providing details of previous clients, so make sure you always ask for these.
You pay for quality content
As with many things, when hiring a content writer you get what you pay for. As you need optimised content that is unique, well-researched and persuasively written to boost web traffic and sales, hiring a copywriter with experience is vital. If you have limited funds for content, in addition to payment, crediting your writer as the author and offering a byline are also appealing to professional writers.
Provide a detailed content brief
When you brief your writers fully about the content you are looking for, you are more likely to get the copy you want first time round, as a title and word count is rarely enough to achieve this. Providing background about your company, details of this particular project and what you are looking to achieve with the content is all essential information for your copywriters. However, they will also need to know the preferred style for the content to allow consistency, as well as the target audience so they can craft content that is tailored to appeal to your likely customers and clients.
If you want them to cover a particular angle or to include certain key points, you should make this clear too. Don’t forget to provide the keyword phrases you want included within the text, though a writer with SEO experience should be able to identify these if necessary. Finally, although a competent freelance writer will have good research skills, it’s helpful to refer them to key articles, relevant websites and the main competitors within your industry, as this provides them with a solid foundation from which they can do their own research.
This may seem like a lot of information, but providing this is always time well spent, and you should also make yourself available to answer any additional questions they may have once they set to work.
Be clear on writing deadlines
From the start of every project it is important to advise your writers of the deadline for the content and while you can ask for written work to be done at short notice, you will usually need to pay extra for this content. When initially working with a copywriter and for larger projects, checking in with your writer is helpful for you both, as it allows any issues to be identified and resolved early on, so there should be no problems meeting the deadline. However, you should also bear in mind that their first submission may require amendments, so make sure that you take this into account when setting the deadline.
Give constructive feedback
Whether you’re happy with their work or you’d like to see some changes in the content produced by the writers you hire, it’s important to let them know through constructive feedback. As most freelance writers are flexible, they can usually adapt their tone, style or approach to articles easily, but you need to advise them what you are looking for. However, it’s also important to listen to their comments and suggestions, as with their experience they may be able to offer additional ideas for content that would benefit your site.
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