Having a content strategy for your brand is crucial to your company’s success. To fulfill your marketing goals, you’ve probably employed an in-house team to churn out content, or you tackle the mountainous task of strategizing and writing your own. Either way, meeting the demands of current content marketing trends is exhausting, expensive, and time-consuming.
So how do you keep up?
One method many marketers are turning to is hiring freelance writers. They are more affordable, and they lessen your workload so you and your team aren’t spread so thin. Finding a qualified freelancer to help refine your content strategy may be the boost you need to hit your online marketing goals this year.Here are
3 reasonsyou should incorporate freelance writers into your content strategy in 2017:
1. It’s Easy To Find Writers In Your Niche
According to
Paychex, “the U.S. economy has grown in recent years to approximately 53 million freelancers, or around 1 in every 3 working Americans.” This means that professionals from every industry are resorting to freelancing, making it easier to find niche writers that know and understand your target audience.Writers with industry experience will produce highly valuable, niche-specific content that will reel in the traffic you want.So where do you find these niche writers?The best place to look is freelance job boards. Here are a few that top freelancers use to scope out opportunities:
Freelance Writing Problogger Freelance Writers Den Freelance Writing Gigs Writers Weekly MediaBistro Paid to Blog Journalism Jobs 2. Writers Can Achieve Multiple Goals For Your Content Strategy
A solid content strategy should have
at leastone of the following goals:
Increase brand authority Drive traffic to specific landing pages Generate new leads Increase conversions Improve retention rate What few marketers realize is that
a freelance writer can help you achieve all of these.For example, what’s a good way to increase lead generation? Typically, marketers turn to white papers because they give clients an unbiased, big-picture perspective of their industry and offer viable solutions to industry-specific issues.Interesting and well-written white papers are often circulated between B2B buyers, which increases organic traffic and creates new leads. This, in turn, increases brand authority by developing a sense of trust with your readership.However, because white papers deal with subject matter that demands an in-depth knowledge of a product or service relative to its industry, many companies expect their product managers or developers to write them.While this may seem like a logical idea, it’s really a misuse of resources: product managers and developers lack the sophistication to write persuasive, interesting, and informative white papers that grapple the reader’s attention.So, instead of weighing down employees with tasks outside of their wheelhouse, why not hire a freelancer to do it?The same reasoning applies to other areas of your content marketing strategy: if you have time-sensitive projects that you simply can’t get to, you should hire a freelancer.The flexible nature of the freelance market is in your favor here: divvy out tasks as they are needed, and watch as you advance toward your marketing goals with each piece they complete.
3. You Can Establish An Agreeable Price That Saves You Money
The biggest incentive to hire freelance writers is that it is affordable. According to
CNN Money, hiring a full-time employee costs anywhere from
18%-26% more than their base pay salarywhen you include their Social Security tax, Medicare tax, state unemployment insurance, healthcare insurance benefits, and 401(k) benefits. So if you hire someone at $50,000 a year, you’re realistically paying $66,000.To put this in perspective, a small to medium business with an in-house team of, say, 10 writers would be paying around $660,000 a year.Whatever your budget may be, it’s likely that, at some point, you will need to produce more content than you are capable of without sacrificing quality.Instead of hiring a new staff writer, why not allocate that work to a freelance writer? It’s cheaper, and it will save you time and effort.
So how much does a freelance writer cost? That depends on several factors.Price points are usually determined by project duration or word count. For example, a long-term project will pay a writer a lump sum, whereas one-off tasks, like blog posts or articles, would pay a smaller set price or per word.To help you gauge what’s appropriate, here’s a list of realistic freelance rates:
Ghostwriting: $50-60 hr/ .26-.50 per word PR/Sales: $50-60 hr/ .30-.95 per word Technical/Trade: $50-60 hr/ .45-.55 per word Copywriting: $50-$60 hr/ $100-$400 per project Blog Article: $39-$50 per article / .15-.25 per wordFor tasks like website copy or email newsletters, anywhere between $39-$50 per assignment is suitable, whereas something more extensive, like a white paper, would go for around $100 or more.Once you’ve determined which writers are a good fit, reward them with ongoing work and pay them well. This will prevent you from overexerting yourself, and it will save you money.A reliable freelance writer is an asset to any digital marketing team. Next time you are feeling overwhelmed, let a freelancer handle the work so you can focus on what counts.
Sources: The Editorial Freelancers Association,
American Writers and Artists Inc.,
Men With Pens
