Content marketing is the key to creating and maintaining your business’s online presence. Without it, your website, blog, or social media channels are like single grains of sand on an endless beach.
At the heart of content marketing is content creation.
You can’t have a successful content marketing strategy without the right, quality content, served to your audience at the right time.
Content not only ensures that the right people find your website, but that they also find value in returning again and again.
To provide your audience with a high-value return on the time they spend engaging with you, it’s essential to publish high-quality content consistently.
However, generating a continuous stream of inspired topics and then actually writing the content requires a significant amount of time and energy.
As much as you might love creating and writing, your time and energy are better spent on more important tasks like research and development, management, financial reports, operations, and business strategy.
Someone has to call the shots, right?
In this post, you will learn:
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Outsource Content Marketing vs. Outsourcing Content Creation
If you’re trying to outsource content marketing as a whole, you could find it difficult or certainly expensive.
Content marketing isn’t just content creation.
It also involves creating a content strategy and a content schedule and updating them as needed.
It also involves search engine optimization, keeping an eye on your competition, co-marketing, generating reports, analyzing statistics, implementing updates to suit the new information, publishing, and so much more.
There are so many moving parts to content marketing that you’d likely need a specialist agency to take it all on.
The problem with that is likely to be two-fold: Firstly, as we’ve mentioned, it could get expensive, and secondly, you really need to be involved in your content marketing at some level.
It’s your business, and you don’t want to simply hand off the very thing that brings in leads and adds to your ROI to someone else and forget it.
It’s so much harder to outsource all of that.
However, you can hire freelancers and expert writers to enjoy the benefits of outsourcing content creation.
Outsourcing content has become an increasingly popular choice for business owners.
Whether you run a small business, manage a marketing team or department, or are an independent entrepreneur, outsourcing content allows you to save countless resources while reaping the benefits of a killer content strategy.
Why Outsource Content Creation? Top 13 Benefits of Outsourcing Content
Let’s go over 13 of the most important and impactful ways that outsourcing content creation can help your business benefit:
1. Save Time and Money
If you’ve been trying to maintain a blog or social media presence by publishing regular posts, then you already know how much time it takes to write high-quality content and produce it consistently.
When you try to save a little by avoiding the expense of outsourced talent, you end up handling content writing yourself.
As a business owner or manager, your time is often pricier than a freelance content creator’s hourly rate.
That means you end up spending more writing the content yourself if you consider your hourly rate.
Plus, freelancers are less expensive than full-time employees and way less expensive than in-house marketing departments.
They’re paid as contractors and earn 1099 income rather than W-2 income, which means your business is not responsible for payroll tax, unemployment insurance, benefits, or any other overhead expenses associated with in-house personnel.
In fact, you’ll probably be able to deduct the cost of writing services as a tax write-off against your company’s earnings.
2. Focus on Your Core Business Functions
If writing content is your favorite part of your job, you might be in the wrong business.
Let’s face it, if you were a writer at heart, you would have chosen to become a professional writer instead of running your own business.
Outsourcing your blog posts, emails, social media posts, e-books, and more to a content writer frees up your time.
That means you’ll have more time to research new products, services, and avenues for expansion.
Most importantly, you’ll have the time and energy to follow your true entrepreneurial spirit.
3. Improve Your Brand Voice and Messaging
Since we agree that writing is not your forte (business is your forte), let’s also discuss how much your brand voice and messaging stand to improve with the finesse of a professional writer’s touch.
Whether you want to capture a funny, playful, sincere, fashionable, contemporary, or professional tone, you can achieve exactly the voice you’re looking for with targeted messaging created by an outsourced professional.
Professional content writers or content creators specialize in style-flexing or adopting the brand’s style, tone, and voice when developing content.
Whether you have an established style and tone or you’re still looking for your brand’s voice, you can benefit from working with a professional writer who understands the importance of creating content that is uniquely yours.
4. Find Experts Who Can Write
Hiring a professional writer outside your business doesn’t mean you have to settle for someone who is not an expert in your industry.
Whether you’re a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, B2B business, lawyer, carpenter, doctor, perfume purveyor, or IT specialist, there are plenty of writers available who specialize in creating niche content for high-level audiences.
Finding a subject-matter expert who is also a talented writer is not impossible.
You can outsource your writing work to someone who understands your industry and niche and can also talk about your products or services in a way that appeals to your ideal audience.
5. Stick to a Schedule
When you’re creating your own content, it can be easy to get caught up in other business matters and completely forget about your blog, social media accounts, or other content marketing avenues.
Outsourcing your content creation helps you avoid this issue as you have an expert content creator who is dedicated to creating content for your business and publishing it on time.
With an outsourced writer, you can easily agree on deadlines to effortlessly stick to a consistent publishing schedule.
While an in-house writer may be likely to get caught up in the busy nature of your business, a freelance writer doesn’t have those same distractions.
Good freelance writers are excellent at juggling multiple deadlines, as their work often comes from many different sources.
6. Publish Different Types of Content
When you’re struggling to create good content on your own, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut with your content production when it comes to variety.
You may not have time to research or test different content types to see what resonates best with your audience.
Many business owners also just don’t have the experience or knowledge to change their tone, style, and messaging to fit a specific content type.
When you outsource your content creation process to talented freelancers, your business will have much more flexibility to publish a variety of content types.
To reach a larger audience, you’ll be able to convert blog posts into social media posts into video transcripts, and more.
7. Grow Your Content Strategy with Your Business
Outsourcing content creation allows you to scale your content marketing strategy along with your business.
You’ll have the flexibility to select the services and volume of content that’s right for your business now and decide to scale back or add more when the time is right for you.
8. Achieve Consistency
Consistency isn’t just about sticking to a regular publishing schedule; it’s also about achieving a consistent voice, tone, message, style, and syntax.
Your brand should always sound like your brand so that it’s immediately recognizable to customers.
A professional writer (or a talented writing team) can help you establish a high level of consistency to achieve strong brand recognition.
This consistency in your content marketing efforts will have a big payoff when you start to see more leads coming in through your content.
9. Benefit from Several Perspectives
Even if, at first, you team up with only one outsourced writer, your business will benefit from having an outside perspective.
A writer’s fresh voice will renew your creative energy, help you come up with original content marketing ideas, and might even make it possible for you to reach a broader, more diverse audience.
10. Increase Lead Generation and Conversions
Arguably, generating leads and increasing conversions are the reasons why we do content marketing, and better content means a bigger return on investment.
Plus, didn’t we already mention that investing in outsourced content is much cheaper than doing it yourself?
11. Add more value to your brand
Excellent content written in your brand voice will always reflect well on your brand.
You can become known for thought leadership and expertise in your field, which, of course, builds your business reputation and the reputation of your brand.
Professional content writers are the experts in writing to best practices and creating beautifully written content for your website, blog, and social media that enhances your brand and adds value.
12. Improve your SEO
With highly targeted professionally written and SEO-optimized content, you can improve your results in the search engines and rank higher by having the right content available for your audience.
Done well, you can use professional content to gain an advantage over your competitors and beat them in the SERPs.
13. Gain flexibility
You can alter how many posts you want or need each month according to what’s happening with your business and to suit your budget.
And you can also plan ahead and write more posts when you want to take a vacation or plan for occasions such as Christmas and Thanksgiving.
That way, you can schedule your content in advance with automation and be done with content creation when having well-deserved time off.
When to Start Outsourcing Content
As a business owner or marketing manager, you might be wondering when is the best time to outsource content creation.
Knowing when to outsource content marketing can save you the headache of writing content yourself, wasting time with different in-house marketing strategies, and wasting valuable resources and effort on subpar content.
Below are some signs you might need to leave the content creation to the pros.
No Experts Available In-House
High-quality and authoritative content is written by experts in the field who can help customers understand different products and services.
For instance, someone with automotive industry experience might work part-time as a writer creating content that’s engaging and updated on the latest trends and technology. At the same time, their content is also optimized and can help boost search engine results and rankings.
However, these experts have time available to dedicate to your content. But, what if you don’t have any in-house experts available to create content?
As a marketing strategist, you might be very skilled in marketing or running a business, but not so much in niche and specific content. If you find it difficult to write content that’s engaging and thorough, it’s time to outsource content creation with help from an expert.
Lack of Time to Focus on Content Creation
Creating content takes time, and if you’re already busy with other marketing strategies or ad campaigns, you might not be able to focus your attention on content creation.
While you can make starter blogs and service pages, you’ll eventually struggle when it comes time to scale, market and edit for further optimization.
Don’t waste time trying to squeeze in content creation when you already have a full plate. Instead, outsource your content to companies with dedicated teams and strategies that can help your content rank higher and boost your expertise.
You’ll also have more time to dedicate to other campaigns and sales initiatives.
Need an Extra Boost for SEO Results
Quality content is the best way to get your website on top of search engine rankings.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to know how to use SEO to optimize your content without expert help. SEO integration is a vital part of any marketing strategy plan. It integrates keywords that help customers find your content online and, ultimately, turn leads into sales.
However, knowing which keywords to use and how to create optimized content can be challenging for non-professional writers. Fortunately, outsourcing content marketing and creation is the easiest way to integrate SEO for a more optimized website.
9 Platforms You Can Use to Outsource Content Creation
1. WriterAccess
WriterAccess can help streamline and scale your content production process, so you can focus on other aspects of your business.
This platform offers help from expert writers who are leaders in their industry. You can get paired with a writer in seconds using the power of AI. Fast turnaround times, easy communication, and ready-made love lists of writers make it easy to create content that’s up and running in no time.
You can also look for new talent by creating crowd announcements, making it easy to have writers come to you instead of wasting time doing outreach for potential talent.
All this, plus WriterAccess’s new AI-generated content detector ensures you’re getting only high-quality, human-produced content every time. WriterAccess’s team makes it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for.
2. Contently
Contently offers over 160,000 content creators, acting as one of the largest platforms to find talent for content marketing creation.
Contently has a thorough vetting process, and it’s used by large brand names, including CarMax, Bank of the West, and even the American Kennel Club.
These success stories show just how varied Contently’s experts are, and how many big businesses depend on their strategies for help.
3. Zerys Content Marketplace
From white papers to ebooks and blogs, there’s virtually no content that you can’t find at Zerys.
Most content marketing managers prefer Zerys due to the low cost (as low as $15 per document) and the ease with which you can organize multiple clients and their content.
If you’re a content marketer who needs help with white-labeling content and juggling multiple clients, Zerys is a great place to start.
4. Verblio
Verblio is a bit smaller than other platforms, with just 3,000 writers to their name. However, these writers have diverse professional portfolios and create high-quality, human-generated content.
The platform uses AI detection tools, as well as a unique feature: You only need to pay for the content you like, instead of sifting through resumes and wasting time finding a writer.
5. Crowd Content
You can use Crowd Content to find writers and also for content management. It’s one thing to find a writer to create content, but another to ensure it’s high-quality and scalable.
Crowd Content’s managing services make marketing easier, and it can help you optimize your content for better engagement.
6. SEMrush Content Marketplace
SEMrush is already a well-known name in SEO research and keyword generation. However, their content marketplace now offers SEMrush’s SEO tools combined with the power of high-quality writers and content creators.
SEMrush will instantly pair you with a writer who can produce the content you need in a short period of time.
7. Brafton
Brafton doesn’t just focus on content creation. Instead, Brafton crafts all content with SEO and optimization in mind.
All content is written with the best SEO and keywords, using the latest data analytics to improve your website’s rankings.
8. Copify
From SEO travel content to small business site landing pages, you can find what you need at Copify.
All content goes through strict quality assurance and editing, ensuring you get a finished product that’s ready to publish. Copify also offers an app for easy ordering.
9. Content Writers
If you need help with brand creation, Content Writers is one of the best options to choose.
They can help create a new tone for your content that ensures you’re an expert in your field. Content Writers also offers niche content for e-commerce businesses, including product descriptions, landing pages, and more.
How to Outsource Content Creation
You want to make the most of outsourcing and enjoy outsourcing content creation benefits, but you need to know the steps to outsource successfully.
1. Know your goals
Start by establishing what you aim to achieve with your content outsourcing and how it will fit in with your overall content marketing strategy.
Think about your business goals, your metrics, and how your new content can help get you there. For instance, a good goal to have in mind is to use SEO to optimize your site.
Whether your goal is to expand on your services, be seen as an authority figure, or boost local sales, keep this in mind, so you know what to tell your writers.
2. Know your budget
If money is tight and even if it isn’t, you need to keep an eye on your budget.
Your content creation has to come out of your full marketing budget, and you need to be aware of how much you intend to spend and how much it’s actually costing you.
Fortunately, most reputable sites have easy-to-understand pricing options, such as cents per word, and they offer affordable prices for repeat customers. Have a budget in mind so you know when to scale your content.
3. Write good content briefs
The best way to get the most out of your content writers is to give them an excellent content brief when ordering what you want.
Be specific and clear, but keep it as short as you can, unless you also want to pay for your writer to spend hours reading through long instructions and a laundry list of other blog posts for additional information.
Describe your audience, add your desired keywords, define your tone, and either give them the content scope or provide an outline. You can also give them references, directions for further research, and any other instructions you need.
4. Test out different writing platforms
There are a number of different writing platforms out there, and it can be worth trying different ones to see which one suits you best. Look for functionality, ease of use, pricing, quality of the work, and more to get the right platform for you.
The best platform will pair you with expert writers, have fast turnaround times, and allow you to edit and pay only for the content you want. Taking the time to explore different platforms can save you the headache of lost costs in the future.
5. Learn how to use your chosen writing platform
Some writing platforms offer a lot to their members, WriterAccess included, and it can take time to work your way through everything you have access to.
Take your time and learn the main things you really need to know first. Start getting your content ordered and learning how to do tasks related to that and communicating with your writers. You can add other options later.
Some helpful things to learn ahead of time are how to post briefs, how to communicate with writers, and how to approve or reject pieces that have been submitted. Knowing these key tasks will help you outsource content more efficiently.
6. Get to know your writers
You’ll probably find that you use some of the same writers more than once, and you will develop your favorites.
WriterAccess has a handy Love List through which you can save writers that you want to work with again. The more you get to know your writers, and they get to know you, the better work you’ll get that really suits your brand, voice and business.
To help, consider having a conversation with your writer about any additional questions you may have for them, such as their writing style, the types of topics they write about, and if they have any specific experience in the field you’re asking them to write about.
Additionally, getting to know your writers will help them become more inspired to write great content for you and help make the process smoother.
7. Let your writers get to know your business.
Writers generally love to find out more about the companies they are working for and how they can help.
Provide helpful links, mission values, statements, and other information that can help writers create content for you. You can even provide information about your company’s buyer persona, analytics, and other insights to make writing content even easier and more effective.
Give them information that’s useful about your products and services, the personality of your business, your requirements, and more, and you will benefit from the relationship greatly.
WriterAccess can help you scale your content production with our expert help. You can get a 14-day WriterAccess trial to feel how it works.
Ready to Start Outsourcing Content?
In this post, you learned that:
First, you’ll need to think about establishing a process for working with outsourced freelance writers that can be incorporated into your existing workflow and also generate desirable results.
Next, begin the search for the perfect freelancer. When it comes to outsourcing your content creation, not just any writer will do it.
You need to find the best writers who also have sharp business sense and professional discipline to generate high-quality content on a consistent basis.
You can look for freelancers working independently or go to a freelance talent marketplace, like WriterAccess, to search from a pool of highly recommended pre-vetted writers.
However, if you choose to outsource your content creation, you’ll love having more time, energy, and money to invest in achieving your entrepreneurial dreams.
A full-time freelance writer and editor, Jennifer G. believes that understanding each client’s unique business, brand, voice, passions, and goals is the true challenge of content creation. With every new client and project, she loves diving in, getting acquainted, and developing long-lasting relationships. Jennifer is also the author of our weekly content marketing trends report that hits the blog each Friday.
