Too Busy to Create Articles for Content Marketing? Try Outsourcing

Even the most amazing content marketing plan won’t do much good if it never gets executed. However, it takes a lot of time to run a business, and you may find yourself wondering when and how you’ll publish all of your content.

In these situations, outsourcing the creation of your content can be a lifesaver. Hiring elsewhere ensures that your content gets written in the first place, giving you a foundation to build on and improve over time, and enabling you to focus your abilities elsewhere.

If this sounds like it may work for you and your business, you have a few options. In this post, we’ll firstly look at why you should outsource your content, then walk you through some options to do so. Let’s get started!

Key Takeaways

1. Outsourcing your content helps you quickly mobilize your content marketing strategy no matter how busy you are.
2. You can work with agencies or individuals to outsource your content.
3. It is important to evaluate your priorities and budget when choosing which route to choose for outsourcing.

Why You Should Outsource Your Content

First off, whether your content is created in-house or outsourced, you’re the one in charge of creating and managing an effective marketing strategy. Rather than use the tips provided here to hire a dedicated strategist, we’re hoping you’ll use them to outsource the creation of each individual article.

[Tweet “Hiring someone for content creation helps mobilize your inbound marketing strategy.”]

While there are drawbacks to outsourcing, the numerous benefits far outweigh them, such as:

1. Being able to up or downscale your content needs depending on your requirements.
2. Saving money on employing a permanent staff member to create your content.
3. Having a wider ‘brain trust’ to pull content ideas from.

Ultimately, outsourcing works well for those with a small marketing budget and fast deadlines, and you have a few options depending on your top priorities and needs. Let’s jump into what those are!

2 Options for Outsourcing Your Content

When hiring someone else to create content for you, it’s important to consider what their focus is. Some agencies will focus on your end goal—high-ranking pages in search results. Others focus on the article itself, without taking the bigger picture into consideration.

Both can net positive results, but it all depends on your situation and how hands on you’d like to be during the editing process. Let’s look at both options.

Option #1: SEO-Focused Content Production

SEO-focused content may be the prime choice, because with it comes the knowledge you’re looking for when outsourcing content specifically to rank in search engines. Going down this route means your writers will understand keyword research and your long-term vision for the content. This will help them expertly include your target keywords in a way that doesn’t make it sound forced.

Of course, such expertise comes with a premium price tag, but it’s worth every penny when you can fit it into your budget.

Where to Find SEO-Focused Content

Because this is such an excellent way to go, it’s the option we’ve decided to feature in the Clickx App. This is a powerful tool for managing your inbound marketing strategy, so offering a way to build up your foundation of content within the app is a no-brainer.

The ordering process for new content is powerful yet simple, and it all happens under the Content icon on your Clickx App dashboard:

Within the section, you fill out the fields (including the word count, quality, and description), and we’ll do the rest. Simple!

Option #2: Word Count Focused Services

In contrast to SEO-focused writers, you have those who focus on word count to provide a quality article. For these, the price fluctuates based on how polished they are, so a quick draft might come out at $0.02 per word – along with all of the drawbacks this provides – whereas an expert article would be much higher.

For example, you could order a cheap article because you already know you’ll spend a lot of time adding in personal anecdotes or advanced information during the editing phase. However, when you need a complete, ready-to-publish article, you’ll definitely want to cough up the extra.

[Tweet “Word count based writing services allow you to dictate how much you spend per article.”]

This gives you the flexibility to choose a budget, and ultimately decide on the quality you’ll get back. Word count focused services are most concerned with the rating of quality per word, over how effective those words will be in relation to the rest of your marketing strategy.

You may get lucky and be assigned a writer who understands SEO really well, but usually this approach doesn’t come with the same level of web-specific expertise.

Where to Find Word Count Based Services

Crowd Content is a great example of a ‘set your own’ pricing provider:

The process is simple: choose your quality level, how advanced the topic is, explain the topic briefly, then wait until a writer is assigned to your piece! Of course, there’s also a middle ground between outsourcing to an SEO-focused service, and a word count focused one—hiring an independent contractor.

Bonus Option: Independent Contractors

Working with an agency is a safe bet, but every once in a while it makes sense to work with an individual instead—i.e. the independent contractor. Choosing this option means you have the flexibility to define your own terms, set your own pricing, and choose the right person for the job.

However, there is a major pitfall here, because finding a reliable contractor that fits your needs (and budget) is a serious challenge. In fact, finding one in the first place is hard enough, but landing one who sticks around long-term is even tougher.

Where to Find Independent Contractors

Independent contractors are plentiful—they’re all over the web, and based in all parts of the world! Because of this, you can find a wide range of both professionalism and pricing. One example is Fiverr, where you can get barebones services starting from only $5 a gig. Of course, this probably isn’t going to be where you find your ideal, long-term freelancer.

A more traditional approach is to headhunt talent using sites such as Upwork, where freelancers gather to find gigs:

Here, you can post your specific job requirements, and any interested freelancers will apply. You can then sort through applicants until you find one that fits the bill. This opens the door to mutually beneficial, reliable independent contracts.

Of course, learning how to hire writers is an art in itself. However, when you’ve found the right one, working with them is arguably much nicer than an agency. You get to deal directly with them, rather than a middleman, and they’re free to involve themselves in any aspect of the work as both you and they see fit.

Regardless of the option you choose, it’s imperative you don’t settle for second best. After all, it’s your reputation at stake.

Conclusion

It’s not always possible to produce the content for your inbound marketing strategy completely in-house. Thankfully, outsourcing can be a solid option no matter what your needs are.

In this post, we’ve took a look at three options for hiring externally. Let’s recap:

1. SEO-focused content production, such as the Clickx App.
2. Word count focused services, such as Crowd Content.
3. Independent contractors, from sites such as Upwork.

Which of these outsourcing options makes the most sense for your company? Let us know in the comments section below!