If your business has an online wing dependent on producing consumable content such as blog posts, videos, or podcasts, you may have considered outsourcing it to contractors, freelancers or professional third parties. This can be an efficient and effective move: hiring experts in a certain field is rarely a bad move. That said, there are a number of dos and don’ts throughout this practice.
Outsourcing content
The basics of outsourcing content creation are to find professionals with experience who are offering services within your budget. You should assess your needs before contacting external creators so that you can provide them with all the information and resources that they need from the beginning.
Do:
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Use professionals
Working out who is a professional and who is an amateur isn’t always easy. Use contacts to get recommendations and always ask those you are considering hiring to provide previous examples of their work. Using professionals guarantees quality of work and prevents you from wasting your time and money.
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Ensure top quality
Take the example of a graphic designer you are hiring to design a new logo. They know what makes a good logo and should have done it before , but to be absolutely sure of this, you should ask them to send their portfolio. You should come to an agreement with the professional that you are outsourcing to that you will work together with them until the final product is perfect, so that they cannot submit sub-standard work and then disappear once they have been paid.
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Use it for boosting SEO and traffic
There is little point in outsourcing content creation if you are not going to use it for the right purposes. One such purpose is boosting SEO and traffic towards your website. Hire freelancers who know how to embed links and use keywords so that you appear higher up Google search results, and always share blog posts or videos over social media to help drive traffic back to your website.
Don’t:
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Overpay
Nobody wants to overpay for anything, and there is often a way to get something for cheaper. Outsourcing content creation is not something you should try and do on the cheap, but you should equally never overpay. Check the going rate for certain types of content and do not assume that the first person you find is automatically the best.
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Outsource for content you can do yourself
Always consider if you could do the task yourself or if there are any members of your team with the ability and eagerness to do it instead. A member of staff who can write or produce video may have been waiting for the opportunity to show off their skills and this would remove the need for you to find an external party to do it for you.
Outsourcing content can plug gaps in your team’s skill set, but you could save money by hiring for a full-time position with the job role of content creation. Another option could be to send members of staff on a training course; however, this takes more time than getting the instant results that come with freelancers.
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