Last updated on July 11th, 2023
With the rise of freelance writers who advertise their services online, business owners these days are spoiled for choice. Hiring someone to write (or perform any task) has never been simpler.
However, the convenience felt when hiring freelance content writers comes at a cost. Ordering content is easy, but how often are we really satisfied with the delivery?
Some things get lost in translation. Writers may not understand what is expected of them and this leads to you ending up with a piece that does not meet your content requirements.
Of course, there’s nothing like sitting someone down and explaining exactly what you need to them point-by-point. But since most freelancers work remotely, face-to-face interactions (although ideal) are not always possible.
Working with freelancers is an entirely different ballgame than working with your regular, full-time employee.
Don’t fret, though. This article will walk you through ways by which you can ensure that the content you receive portrays your vision to the fullest and will reduce the confusion, explanations and rewriting that comes with working with freelancers.
This includes on boarding tips that can be applied to the process of hiring freelance content writers so that the overall process runs smoothly.
Here are some things you can do on your part so you can get the best of freelance content writing (or at the very least, get much better first drafts).
How to Get the Best Results When Hiring Freelance Content Writers
1. Specify Your Content Requirements
While hiring freelance content writers, it is important to mention whether the content is for a blog, social media platform, a company website or an e-commerce website (as a product description). This will determine the length of the article and the type of language it will contain.
For e.g.: A company website article will tend to be lengthy, formal, and detailed. However, a social media post will be brief, informal, and contain attention-grabbing slang, buzzwords, or SEO language. Broadly classify the content you need into genres or topics, e.g. entertainment, food & beverage, lifestyle, business, software & technology, etc. Adding these domains will let writers know whether they are suited to the task or not. You will be more likely to receive candidates who have more knowledge about the subject and the genre of writing.
As for you, by looking at writing samples and areas of specialisation and interest listed by the candidates, you will know if the person is right for the task at hand.
2. Brand Guidelines and Other Details
Don’t hesitate to go into great detail while describing content requirements and brand guidelines. After all, you deserve to get your money’s worth! At the same time, make sure you don’t go off on a tangent.
Ensure that all relevant points are covered and that what you mention can be used by the writers to build on the piece.
E.g. If the task is to write for the ‘About’ page of a company website, you would need to provide details such as the services offered by the company, names and backgrounds of founders, objectives of the organization, etc.
Remember, freelance writers don’t know your ideas the way you do. You may know your website, services, and products like the back of your hand but the writers you hire are completely new to these things. So, be sure to provide them with enough information and proper brand guidelines to work with and avoid any ambiguity. Ensure your requirements are put down in a way that will not elicit a large number of doubts and follow-up questions. They should be straightforward and not open to subjective interpretations to make the overall process of hiring freelance content writers easier.
3. Provide Examples
When freelancers join a particular project, it is important to give them a feel of the content that has proved to be successful in the past and set them on the right track to creating more such content. Rather than arbitrarily coming up with a framework (which is not advisable because it’s always possible that you realise that certain points should be added or deleted), a better way to do this is provide sample articles for the freelancers to go through.
These could either be work that writers have done for you in the past that you feel are suitable prototypes or articles on other websites whose writing style you would want them to emulate and derive inspiration from. Provide them with inputs on how they can use these pieces for inspiration and suggestions about new material they could add.
After taking all of these measures to put forth your requirements, an additional measure that can be taken is asking for a writing sample on a topic relevant to the project undertaken by you. This will tell you if the candidate is able to meet your needs and is covering the topic and its aspects in a manner that is up to your expectations and does justice to the subject.
After reading all of this, your views on the world of freelance writers must have changed quite a bit. Who knew that something that on the surface seemed so easy, convenient, and straightforward could be so time-consuming?
Then there’s the question of payments. Since they’re freelancers, they’re not exactly on your usual payroll. Their payments are according to specific tasks and projects and need to be kept track of separately. How much does one pay freelancers anyway?
When you hire freelancers, it creates a whole new list of things that you suddenly need to micro-manage.
You’re probably thinking, how’s this any less time-consuming than managing one of your full-time team members?
And the truth is, it’s not. Unless you’ve got help, that is.
WittyPen makes sure you can enjoy all the benefits of hiring freelancers without having to worry about the hassles of on boarding them, providing brand guidelines,and tracking progress.
Our platform allows freelancers to register as writers and submit sample articles in domains of their choice. We select them on the basis of their writer applications and then assign them tasks and projects according to how competent we deem them to be to write about various subjects.
Once tasks are assigned, the full information (as provided by business owners) is conveyed to the writers by the WittyPen team members. We track progress by setting deadlines and allowing writers to save drafts where we keep a record of the word count achieved for a particular task.
We also help with SEO management and run plagiarism checks on each piece written.
Apart from that, we strive to pay safely and in a timely manner.
Payments are released to writers every week and are only done once the sample is approved, ensuring that you are fully satisfied with what you have received. We provide 2 revisions per content piece in case we missed something or you want any changes made. Your complete satisfaction with the content is of utmost importance to us.
As a platform, we bring order to the chaos that is inevitable when you hire freelancers and strive to make it the best possible experience for both freelancers as well as business-owners.
Seems too good to be true, doesn’t it?
It’s a win-win situation. We act as the buffer between freelancers and business-owners, with both parties having a number of benefits.
We ensure maximum benefits for both freelancers, as well as business-owners. The writers are constantly given work and it is ensured that you get the best content available for your brand from writers who are best suited to your needs.
Ordering content has never been easier. We ensure that all deadlines are abided by and that your content reaches you within 5 business days.
Sounds good? It functions even better.
