You’ve decided.
After molding and shaping the written content on your website you’re going to trust someone else to help you with the writing.
This makes sense because, after all, you’re the leader of the business and you should be planning and strategizing to move things forward and grow, not be stuck tapping away on the keyboard into the late night to publish yet another article on your blog.
Now, when it comes to outsourcing your content writing there are many things to think about:
- Do you outsource it to someone in your own country?
- Will they all be native English speakers/writers?
- How can I be sure of the quality?
- Are they going to be reliable or ghost me?
These questions should be covered by the writing agency before you even think about ordering from them (check their FAQs section), but if they aren’t then contact them.
Pros of outsourcing your writing
When you think about outsourcing it doesn’t need to be to some distant country where they don’t speak the same language. Content writing agencies nowadays tend to have native writers, editors, and a quality team to review the projects. By outsourcing you’ve also got the added effect that you’ll gain a number of benefits that (should) outweigh the not so great points.
Save Time
There’s no need to write all of that content anymore and you definitely don’t need to do the research to ensure what you’re writing about is accurate. You don’t need to manage anyone either because you’ll have one point of contact with your project manager at the agency who will answer any questions and manage the whole process.
All you need to do is think about what content you want, place the order and provide all of the information requested, and everything else is taken care of.
Save Money
Rather than having a content team that requires holiday pay, insurance, sickness provision and so on, an outsourced agency does not. They can work out to be a lot less costly than having an in-house team and you can save on other costs of having to dedicate your time managing writers.
There’s no need if you outsource to an agency and it helps to lower costs.
Strengthens Marketing Strategy
By talking through ideas and the direction of your company’s content marketing plan with the project lead you can strengthen your overall marketing strategy. You’ll be able to concentrate on the clear direction of your company and bring in other partners to fully execute your marketing strategy.
That means it’s time to grow your business to the potential you saw when you first started.
Potential Future Networks
The owners of content writing agencies are business owners just like you. They want to help their clients achieve their goals while at the same time making some profit along the way (we’re all in business to earn money, right?).
Any good business owner or entrepreneur connects with other like-minded business owners and entrepreneurs through networking and masterminds. Outsourcing your writing to a credible content writing agency has the effect that you can grow your network of connections too.
Cons of outsourcing your writing
There are many different advantages to using a content writing agency, but there are also some pitfalls. Those disadvantages need to be thought through carefully as they could have the potential to affect your business’s/brand’s reputation and overall profitability should something go wrong.
Will they happen? Maybe, but it’s the potential of them happening that you should be ready for.
Time Delays
Whilst you’ll save time by not writing the content yourself, some agencies tend to deliver written content (and packages) late. In general, these companies stretch themselves too much and offer rock-bottom prices to entice orders. Low prices are great for future profits, but sometimes this has a negative effect on your moving your business forward and can cause delays.
Hidden Costs
On the whole, it will be cheaper to outsource content writing. But, you’ve got the added effect that sometimes things can be added on to the overall prices. If you don’t choose a monthly content writing package from the agency and choose their “a la carte” option instead, you might find they’ll add on some extra fees if you later decide that you’d like them to post the content to your WordPress website.
“Extras” that pop up later are avoidable.
Reliability
When outsourcing you should ensure you’ve done all of the due diligence in the company you are entrusting content creation to.
They may not have access to your clients’ personal data or websites (as long as they’re only writing your content and not publishing on the back end of your website), but having pieces of content delivered to you in a timely manner is important.
As your relationship grows, there could also be a reduction in the quality level of the writing, so keep in mind to review all content receive and to feed back to them when you notice a dip.
Confusion
Outsourcing is a business transaction between you and the content agency. As the buyer, you have some say in what you want and when you want it by.
However, micro managing them and having them keep you constantly updated is destined to make everyone unhappy. But, you’ll want to be clear on what you want: providing detailed instructions that can’t be lost through miscommunication is vital to getting what you want from an agency.
Not good for controllers
If you tend to want to control most things that happen in your business (and don’t delegate as much as you should) then you’ll find things a little uncomfortable. You won’t be able to supervise things and you’ll have limited contact with the project lead.
Sometimes, controllers receive their first bits of content back and aren’t too impressed. They start tweaking and editing, and eventually change the voice, scope and overall story. This is usually because they have a lack of trust, but a better way to handle this would be to ask for revisions and feel a bit of awkwardness until the content agency understands your standards.
When you’re outsourcing your content writing to an external agency it’s important to look at the benefits and the disadvantages. You’ll discover a lot of benefit if you’re wasting time writing your own content or having to manage a team of writers, but that will come at a cost.
The prices you pay for written English content aren’t going to be astronomical and they should pay for themselves in a short period of time, but it’s important to make that first step and place your first order.
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