Pretty much every SEO guide says that quality content is a key component to success. That’s great, but if your writing skills are a little bit lacking, that usually means getting someone else on board.
Hiring freelancers has been covered a fair bit on this site, but not too much has been said about how to get the best out of those who deal with copy. This post should hopefully provide some helpful tips, as well as some resources to get you start
There’s never too much information
When I first started out I got a job writing for a well-known business magazine. One of my earliest features was on a company that manufactured boxes. However, the person I was due to interview pulled out at the last minute, leaving a two-page gap in the issue. This wouldn’t normally matter but several adverts had been sold on the back of the feature, meaning that if it was scrapped then thousands of pounds would have been lost.
So I went ahead and wrote it anyway
All the information I had to go on was an Belarus Phone Number List out-of-date website. No media pack, press releases, interviews with other publications – nothing. Needless to say, my feature was terrible. No matter how hard I tried to make it interesting, there were no details or facts to back it up.
Writing the brief
The next day, I interviewed the head of a different firm. We spent ten minutes on the phone, I got a few great quotes and wrote up a piece in half the time the DD Leads last piece had taken.
The thing to learn from this is that the more information you can give your writers, the better the copy they’ll produce. If they are putting together content for a new homepage, a few minutes on the phone and a few links to competitors will make all the difference. If you’re commissioning an article, explaining why, who it’s for and what you hope to achieve is on the same page right from the beginning.