Image Credit: Flickr, Creative Commons: NOGRAN s.r.o.
Guest post by Lisa Froelings
Producing effective content marketing for your small business takes courage.
Strong content marketing is basically mandatory for businesses these days, given its higher rate of return on investment (generally three times as high) than more traditional forms of marketing.
So why is developing quality content so courageous? Because companies are forced to play the long game by creating useful and valuable content as if it were a product itself rather than simply a means to engage with customers. In other words, top businesses that leverage content marketing the right way have shifted from being hunters to being “farmers.” Content marketing is all about planting the right seeds that will bear fruit down the road by starting a conversation with customers and eventually connecting them to your product.
Now that content is king, businesses are striving harder than ever to hire top-flight talent that will craft the content they need to succeed in today’s market. While standard approaches like hiring an in-house content team or working with a social media agency can provide good results, building an impressive bench of content marketing freelancers adds substantial value to your company’s inbound marketing strategy. For freelancers, content is their product, which aligns nicely with what should be your company’s goal in the era of content marketing.
With marketers witnessing significant increases in conversions when companies offer useful and relevant content to the target audience, it is critical to understand how freelancers can help you reach your goals through content marketing. Here are a few tips:
Hire top talent
The smartest companies today are expanding their talent pool by hiring more top freelancers and remote workers, creating a distributed workforce around the globe. Brand names like About.com, VMWare, and BBC Worldwide have shifted their business model to include a fleet of freelancers to better achieve their missions. To meet the increasing need for content marketing freelancers, companies like Scripted are helping businesses by offering thousands of pre-vetted writers who produce quality content based on the brand, industry, and technical requirements of your business.
Understanding freelancers’ motivation is critical to hiring and retaining top talent. There are 54 million freelancers in the US alone (one in three Americans–7% growth from the previous year) and 60% of them started freelancing by choice rather than necessity. Fifty percent of them say that they wouldn’t go back to working for anyone other than themselves. These numbers suggest that freelancing is the new normal. The best companies are recognizing this trend and responding by integrating freelancers into their workforces. If your company wants to find the top content marketing talent, it can’t afford to avoid looking at the rapidly growing freelance market.
Leverage a broader array of expertise
Assess the type of content you want to produce for your inbound marketing (as well as any gaps in expertise on your team) and let that guide your decision about the nature and depth of expertise you’ll need from your freelancers. You may want a wonk on a particular topic (say, hiring in the tech field). Or you may want a generalist who is a strong writer and can help your team of experts craft compelling content that engages users. Freelancers often come with varied skill sets that can add a unique voice or angle to your content, which is an added bonus. For example, a freelancer could come to you with B2B marketing expertise and a background in data analytics that you can leverage to introduce a more data-driven angle for your content. Using freelance content marketers allows you to bring in experts from all sorts of different fields on a short-term basis so you can have a regular succession of content from well-regarded sources that will provide value for your potential customers.
Relatedly, effective content marketing depends on strong content. The best freelancers will have deep expertise in a particular subject area. Your company may not have nor need that expertise on staff which makes turning to a content marketing freelancer the right move to fill that void on a near-term basis. Furthermore, if there is a knowledge gap on your core team, they can build their institutional knowledge working with a freelancer who is an expert on a particular topic even on a short-term basis, which will reap long-term benefits for your content marketing team.
Take advantage of greater flexibility
The research is in. Remote workers (many of whom are freelancers) are happier, more productive, and feel more valued in their roles. It only makes good sense to then hire freelancers to help drive your content marketing strategy. Freelancers allow greater flexibility in how you deploy your talent. If your website needs new copy, you can hire a freelance copywriter for a short-term project to refresh the site. Once you have that copy, you can hire a freelance review writer and get some testimonials on your homepage. This flexibility allows you to tackle multiple angles of content marketing with one stable budget because you don’t have to hire and build a full-time team.
While your core team may have strict schedules and more narrowly defined roles, your freelancers are a bit more adaptable based on your needs. This can come in handy with especially complex projects in which your core team might normally be stretched to complete within the normal constraints of their work. A carefully deployed team of freelancers could help ensure that you meet your goals for the projects without having to bring on another full-time hire or increasing your budget long-term.
In the heyday of inbound marketing, hiring freelancers to round out your content marketing team can be a wise move depending on your company’s particular needs. Use the tips above to round out your freelancer strategy as you expand your reach into a broader talent pool of content marketing professionals. Meeting your business goals will be easier with the right content marketing freelancers on your side.
Lisa Froelings is a business and productivity consultant with over 4 years of experience in human resources working for a major retailer in the country before she decided to build her own business. Her interests include technology, mindfulness as well as time management. You may connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
