Leveraging Freelancers to Ride the Content Creation Wave

Quotes

• “In every industry you are going to get asked, ‘Who is your main competition?’ As an outsource writing company, we like to think of ourselves as a marketplace plus a SaaS company as far as how we deliver our content creation but in general, people are outsourcing content creation to us.” -Steve“The vast majority of our competition is in-house writers, people who are doing the content themselves or just not doing it all. That’s the main part of the market.” -Steve“You bring up a good point here that people are outsourcing their content production because either they don’t have the ability to produce the content or they are having trouble with scale.” -Ben “The main categories that you are evaluating are your own time, the quality of the writing, affordability, and then also the ability of the writers or what you can do with those writers.” -Steve“When you work with in-house writers you have total command and control and that means they are going to get your voice, they are going to repeat what you have, and you can make them subject matter experts because they work full-time. If you are concerned about having your own voice, that’s great. But the negatives of that is it is the most expensive route, and you’re basically creating the amount of content that you can write as opposed as what you should write.” -Steve“It seems like the tradeoff when you’re bringing somebody in-house as opposed to finding a freelancer or managed services to create your content is authenticity. If you need something to be from a specific tone of voice like describing your products and services, you need a sense of knowledge and authenticity. But if you are writing a blog post that covers an industry topic, it does not necessarily mean it had to be written by an in-house.” -Ben“There are two types of freelancer option. The most prevalent type in people’s mind is those that come from Upwork, Craigslist. A talent marketplace you see profiles and they have the advantage of being flexible and can get the longtail as far as expertise and the negatives are they might not be there when you need them to and you might be retraining them again and again.” -Steve“The second type is the new movement that we are a part of, creating a platform that really delivers content writers as a service which is a combination of sourcing those writers for you and also delivering it as a platform so that we are part of your management experience which means we are delivering your content as a solution.” -Steve“There are different types of content. You have your Ferrari content. This is your clear thought leadership piece that only you can write or you have to hire a super high-end writer to do it. The majority of most companies’ content is what I call, Toyota content. It’s consistent, it’s deliverable, it’s always on-time, and it’s meeting a very specific purpose.” -Steve“The idea is you earn your traffic and your organic growth and it stays with your forever. Advertising is paid, it’s rented and goes away. It is so much more than just driving the organic traffic as it builds that funnel, there is a certain amount of collateral that every company needs in order just to move through your funnel.” -Steve“At least create your core pieces of content around 30 to 40 perhaps so you are giving authenticity and authority to the clients that are coming to you or to the audience and you can move them to becoming clients.” -Steve“The next-level is the content blogs and things of that nature. This includes writing show notes and summaries on a consistent basis and the tone. Then you have, making content as a competitive advantage which I think is the most unique, interesting opportunity for leveraging platform like ours for key marketers.” -Steve“Another one that is less obvious is how much it makes to have to think about your business or audience. It is basically a force in function to think more about your clients and audience and what is available to them and what they are looking for. You are constantly trying to answer their questions and if creating consistent content is part of your strategy, I think it gives you a deeper connection to whatyour audience is thinking about.” -Steve“I think you hit the nail on the head and yes, when you are running a content business or using content as a marketing channel, organic ranking in SEO, filling search demand, is a very valuable channel. It takes time to cultivate and generally can be very expensive because you need to have a brand authority and a fair amount of content to actually make it meaningful.” -Ben “I also think there is another component here which is having content supports your paid advertising efforts and from what I have seen, nobody wants to be advertised to anymore. You can use your performance marketing channels to circulate your content which even though it’s a sponsored piece of content is still seen as a piece of content as opposed to an ad.” -Ben