Companies - Learn How to Work With Freelancers

Posted: November 06, 2013

[caption id="attachment_11631" align="alignright" width="300"]© serge01 - Fotolia.com[/caption]There is a valuable source for creating content - the freelance writer. Make sure both you and the writer understand exactly what is needed, so there's no waste of time or money, and they can provide quality work the first time around. The potential long-term relationship built might be well worth it.

Corey Eridon, inbound marketer at HupSpot, shares the steps necessary to make sure your investment in freelance writers pays off.

How to Work With Freelance Writers (and Get the Results You Want)

Freelance writers are a great way to feed your ever-hungry content machine. And if you're paying your freelancer writers well (that's good, you should), you need to ensure you're getting your money's worth from what they deliver.

One way you can screw that up is investing a ton of your time managing them, engaging in unproductive back-and-forth, and, ultimately, just redoing their work.

To help lower the overhead cost of outsourcing writing, you need to nail the process of communicating with and managing those freelance writers. And that process is a little different than what you'd use managing your own internal writers.

So, here's how I've effectively worked with freelance writers to establish long-term relationships that require low time investment and produce good results that get us our money's worth. (FWIW, I've also worked as a freelance writer myself. I appreciated this stuff when I was on the receiving end, too.)

1) Invest some time up-front.

Most productive freelancer writer engagements require up-front time investment -- but it's a good use of time. If you can get them up to speed on basics from the get-go, it's more likely you'll get what you're looking for earlier on, eliminate rounds of revisions, and decrease the back-and-forth that ends up delaying projects and burying you in email.

Taking this time to train and prepare your writer to produce content at the start of your relationship will make your life much easier as you engage the writer in future projects.

Here are the basics that you should share with them for their first project with you that'll set them up for success in future projects:

Personas

Who are the personas, and for whom are you writing this specific piece of content? Do you want it to be written so it can apply to all personas, if you have more than one? How would the writing change to accommodate different readers? Do the tone, word choice, length, and/or structure need to be altered accordingly?

You should answer all of these questions for your freelance writer before they begin their engagement.

Products, Services, and Company Background

Yes, a writer can go read your About Us and product pages (and they should), but taking a few minutes to explain who you are, what you do, what you sell, and the value proposition that backs it all up is invaluable.

For instance, we would tell our freelancer about inbound marketing, how we talk about it, what tactics we promote, how those tactics relate to the software we sell, and how our software helps enable marketers trying to implement those marketing tactics.

Remember, you get all this stuff because you live and breathe it every day. Your freelancer does not. And even if they work in your industry, every company has its own nuances. It's your job to fill them in.

Resources

Provide a few core resources they can pull from, and tell them where they can find more so they're enabled to do more research.

For example, if we were outsourcing an ebook about landing pages, we could send them 1) our State of Inbound Marketing so they can pull data about landing pages; 2) a former ebook we've written about landing pages that we consider high quality; and 3) a few blog posts that talk about landing page best practices.

Links to Exemplary Content

Provide a benchmark of what "good" looks like so your writer's expectations are properly set from the get-go. Explain what exactly is good about the content sample you provide so they can replicate the positive aspects of that piece of content in their deliverable.

Sometimes, it helps to also provide an example of what "not good" looks like and explain the core differences between the good and the bad.

Editorial Criteria and Processes

All companies have their own editorial process. Explain how you work -- and ask how they typically work -- to establish a process that makes sense. This discussion should include:

Sending along your style guide (if you don't have one, here's one you can use and customize to your own business)
Establishing the length you'd like for the piece
Agreeing on revisions (should they expect to do one revision? Two? Three?)
Agreeing on expected turnaround time for each revision
Nailing down a due date for the final piece

2) Explain the purpose of the piece of content.

Context is important. If your writer knows what your goal is, how the content will be used, and why it's important, they're empowered to use their judgment to make good decisions -- which means they won't be emailing and calling you for every little thing.

3) Work off a detailed outline.

As you get to know a freelancer writer (and they get to know you), basic bullet points will do. When you're first starting out together, however, be extremely detailed about what you want. You may find it most efficient to write the outline yourself and send it to the writer.

For instance, if you're outsourcing the writing of an ebook about landing pages, this is what a good outline would look like:

Introduction: Short (about 200 words)

Provide a short, basic definition of what a landing page is -- you can find a good definition in this blog post.
Pull data from the SoIM report to make your case about why LPs are important -- here's the report.

Chapter 1: The Anatomy of a Good Landing Page (roughly one paragraph on each bullet)

Image
Form Length
Headers
Navigation
Copy
Button Design & Copy
Value Proposition
Social Sharing

Read the entire article How to Work With Freelance Writers (and Get the Results You Want), at HubSpot.