"Before you start waving wads of notes at anyone, it might be worth running a DIY trial... You may be able to take care of the whole thing without outsourcing at all."
Content marketing has become an incredibly popular way for businesses to make promotional matter widely visible in the long term, without any display fees. It can comprise text and/or rich media, but it most typically harnesses the medium of a blog to build an ever-increasing library of useful and engaging reading, which will serve as a series of potential responses to Web-surfers' queries. When interested parties search Google and other search engines, they find the content, and then visit the source business's site. That's the goal.
Whilst the function of content marketing is promotional, its format is editorial. If it looks or reads like an advert, it's an amateur job, and it almost certainly won't work. Professional content marketing fulfils four roles…
- Successfully responds to a search query, and appears prominently in the search results.
- Entices the Web-surfer into selecting that search result - most commonly through the use of an intriguing or closely needs-matched title.
- Provides engagement throughout the body of the article, maintaining the reader's attention, giving them value, and encouraging them to trust and be guided by the author.
- Incorporates a call to action, which converts the read into a potential sale.
All of this takes research, market-empathy, a thorough knowledge of how search engines work, experience, and possibly also considerable writing skill. A lot of writers and agencies will assure you that the latter is essential, but for some types of text-based content marketing it really isn't.
Pretty much anyone who's been playing the SEO game for a few years can throw together a "Top Ten Free Apps" listicle, with an affiliate referral heading the list as a 'highly recommended exception'. This type of content marketing is often prone to poor grammar, spelling errors and mechanical delivery, but it undeniably still works. Whether your brand would want to be associated with poor grammar, spelling and delivery, however, is of course another matter.
The primary benefits of content marketing lie in two main areas:
- The business connects with potential customers at a time when their interest is at its highest. Visitors viewing the content are so enthusiastic that they've taken the trouble to search for the information it provides. That's very different from social media advertising, where companies are trying to persuade an audience to be interested.
- Organic search results have no expiry date. The content performs the same role as targeted advertising, but once established in search, it remains visible indefinitely, without any further spending. That makes it pretty spectacularly cost-effective. The cost effectiveness is, however, tempered by the lack of any guarantee that a given piece of content will gain sufficient visibility in search. That's one of the reasons content marketing is so routinely considered a campaign. A collection of content rather than a one-off. And it's also one of the reasons that, for smaller businesses, keeping the per-article cost down is so important. The problem is, the harder you drive down the article cost, the less likely it is statistically that the work will be fit for purpose. I'll come back to this.
There are also some less obvious benefits to content marketing, such as…
- More and more people are blocking conventional adverts in their browsers. But no one blocks organic content. You reach the people conventional advertising can't.
- If you own the copyright, you can repurpose the content for offline use, as and when you wish.
- Content marketing doesn't just attract new customers - it keeps your existing customers engaged, and appreciative of what your online resources provide for them. You'll probably also find it's much easier to get them signed up to your subscription list.
- You can cross-sell to closely-related markets.
SO WE NEED A BLOG THEN?
A blog isn't essential for content marketing, but for modestly-sized to mid-sized businesses (i.e. those who don't have massive social media followings) it's highly likely to be the best option. Search engines love blogs, and the dynamically-expanding blog format means you never encounter any content-management issues.
If you already have a blog, you're ready to go. You now need someone to write content that is simultaneously engaging, useful, promotional, and optimised to gain search visibility. You'll probably also need to attend to some other things that assist the content in being found. Overwhelmingly most important among these is getting outside parties to link to the articles from reputable websites. Known as building backlinks, this is considered a key indicator by search engines that the content is worthy of priority visibility. Experienced marketing copywriters can frequently still make content moderately visible without it, but it's hugely important.
If you have a website without a blog, adding a blog is often a simple task in your site settings.
And if a blog is hard or impossible to integrate into your existing site, you could still set one up for free using Google's Blogger (.blogspot) platform. That's where you are now. Blogger is almost infinitely customisable and it serves no ads unless you purposely choose to paste in some ad code. Anyone can set up a Blogger blog. Even those with no existing web presence at all. You can use it with your own domain name too. You don't have to keep the "myblog.blogspot.com" URL.
The blogging platform WordPress.com is also free, and has a much bigger and wider range of design themes than Blogger out of the box. But WordPress.com is far less customisable, and it will serve low-integrity third party ads unless you pay for a premium plan. Basic plans are not expensive, but you still get far less than Blogger gives you for free.
GREAT. SO HOW MUCH DOES THE CONTENT COST?
The cost of blog content varies hugely.
But before you start waving wads of notes at anyone, it might be worth running a DIY trial. If there's someone within your business who can write competently and has a little imagination, you may be able to take care of the whole thing without outsourcing at all. Here's what you have to bear in mind…
The basic dynamics of being found on search engines centre around questions and answers. Your potential customer types a query (the question) into Google, and you provide the answer in the form of a blog post title. For example, if someone searches for "how to de-grease a bicycle chain", and they see a result titled "How To De-Grease a Bicycle Chain", it's almost certain that they'll visit that link.
The amount of people seeking an answer to the question, versus the prevalence of existing answers already indexed in search, determines how great a chance you have of connecting with Web surfers via the search engines. There are keyword research tools that enable you to explore this in detail. But at root, all you're really trying to do is determine where your industry's online information gaps are, and then provide the missing information.
As a business insider, you'll probably find it a lot easier to take your ideas from incoming phone enquiries than to mess about with keyword research tools. If customers are asking a particular question a lot, it's likely they've struggled to find the answer online. Just answer those repeated questions with blog articles, whose titles closely reflect the questions being asked. Build a sales hand-off into each article, and that's content marketing in its most basic form. A lot of people will tell you content marketing is way more complicated than that, but it needn't be.
Okay, so you get that, but you don't have the time, and you need your staff focused on their core duties?… It's time to consider external copywriting…
Assuming you've ruled out recognised bloggers who write for big name sites and charge upwards of £1 per word - up front - the high end of the price range is likely to be dominated by the traditional "creatives" agencies. These are providers who normally want to do a lot more than simply supply blog articles. They archetypally come with graduate writers, art directors, account/campaign managers and very possibly a range of other personnel with administrative roles. If you only want blog posts, paying for a complete digital marketing team is going to be a very costly way of getting them.
That's not to say a full digital marketing campaign won't boost the visibility of your posts. It almost inevitably will. But to blow £10,000 before you've at least dipped your toes into the water could be a monumental mistake. You may not be the sort of business that has enough competition on the search engines to justify that kind of commitment. If you're in a fairly small niche, big SEO drives can be overkill. And you also have to remember that staff-writers are unlikely to be familiar with obscure niches. So you'd probably end up devising all the content for them anyway.
Next, you come to the freelancer agencies. These operations seek to compete in a much lower price ballpark - often delivering only the blog posts, at somewhere between 3p and 15p per word, and sourcing writers from a large pool with pretty transient availability. You may get one or two revision options thrown in with the deal, but beyond that there are no assurances at all, and the standard of writing and marketing instinct can be very erratic indeed. Clearly, at 3p per word an agency is not going to reliably deliver high quality, even if they promise to.
Then there are the direct freelancers. Their rates vary enormously. Some will give you three posts for ten quid. Others will want £800 for the same unit and word count. You'd expect a profound difference in quality, but the setting of prices in creative industries can often be more a matter of personal entitlement than a measure of talent. There are some incredibly talented people who will work for next to nothing. And at the other extreme, some decidedly mediocre writers who have very high self esteem and will deem the value of their time to be roughly on a par with that of a brain surgeon. Well, almost. This is one area where you can't reliably say: "You get what you pay for". Statistically speaking, paying more will get you better content, but there are a lot of exceptions to that rule.
A BETTER ALTERNATIVE
So is there not a better way to find the right content marketing copywriter?
One lesser-explored option is to proactively approach a blogging enthusiast. Blogging enthusiasts are people who blog for themselves, regardless of whether or not they get paid.
You can find them by searching relevant terms within platforms such as Medium.com or WordPress.com. But rather than doing this on the actual platforms, do it from Google - entering the site: prefix before your search term. For example, to find people blogging about audio cassettes on WordPress.com, you simply open up Google search and enter…
site:wordpress.com audio cassettes
Then you check out some of the top posts, and when you find a blogger who writes in a style you like, you hit their contact page and ask if they do any work for third parties. You need to be a good judge of content quality. Definitely not the sort of person who has to look at a list of previous clients before making a decision on whether or not a writer can write. But if you can judge on merit, go for it. There are numerous advantages with this approach, and I know some big players, with vastly successful businesses, who use this strategy to find their bloggers.
Even before you approach a blogging enthusiast you have a lot of known quantities. You can readily see and judge the quality of their work over a volume of articles - not just one or two "showpieces" they put together to impress you.
You can see from the fact that you easily found them via Google that they know how to make friends with the search engines.
You know they care about your field, because they're writing about it of their own volition.
You can check that their work is original, and that they don't "borrow" from other sources. Incredibly important in content marketing.
PAYMENT EXPECTATIONS
The payment dynamics work differently with blogging enthusiasts. These are people who may not even have considered writing for third parties. If they haven't (and they may not even want to), they probably won't be able to give you a quote.
You might find some who will work for nothing, perhaps for the prestige, or experience. But this isn't really a fair expectation.
You're essentially asking someone to prioritise your blog above their own. They might be prepared to do that once, just to say they worked for you. But it doesn't make sense for them to keep writing for third parties for free, when they can write for themselves.
So I recommend not only preparing to strike a paid deal when approaching a blogging enthusiast, but setting an ethical minimum below which you will not under any circumstances go.
Keep in mind that a lot of people producing creative work on free publishing platforms have anxieties and self-esteem issues. They may not tell you when they find a proposal insulting, but that doesn't mean they don't feel insulted by it. The fact that they won't haggle should not be taken to mean they think they're getting a good deal. Sometimes, even if people with anxieties or low self-esteem say they're happy with a deal, they're not. Look at the deal from their side. Be honest with yourself about how much of their time you're using up. On that basis, is what you're projecting to pay really fair?
APPROACHING A BLOGGING ENTHUSIAST
The first rule when speculatively approaching a blogger is to be clear. Don't pretend you're offering a spectacular deal if you're not, and don't be evasive if the blogger asks what you pay.
The best way to broach the issue of payment is to open with it at the word go. This tells the blogger you respect them, and are not expecting them to work for free. In your approach message, ask whether they write for third parties, give them an idea of what you're looking for, and ask how much they'd charge for that work in the event that they were interested in doing it. If they don't have a clue what to say and ask you what you'd pay, just tell them.
The vast majority of content-seekers who speculatively approach blogging enthusiasts don't do this, because they're hoping to get the work done for nothing. They think that if they don't mention money, the subject of money won't even enter the blogger's head.
But life is not a fairytale. And the subject of money enters everyone's head. The best way to think about it is like this… Although most won't, a blogging enthusiast may do an article for you for nothing, or for a link. But how long is it going to be before the novelty of that wears off, and they realise they're just being used? They're probably not going to get as far as a second article, and even with the first they'll have no real motivation to do a great job. What you're not seeing is the picture in their mind. The picture that tells them their blog is the priority, and you're just getting the seconds, when they have the time. Striking a paid deal changes those dynamics on the spot.
Many hand-picked enthusiast bloggers will be much better suited to your niche content marketing needs than the cover-all jobbers you'll get from freelancing sites. And you wouldn't expect a freelancer to work for nothing. So why throw away an opportunity to form a working relationship with someone who best serves your needs, and may well be the best value long term solution you can find, by greeting them with a message that they have no value? They won't forget that you valued their skills at £zero. Ever.
So I'd say definitely go in on the basis that you're paying. Indeed, check that the blogger is purely an enthusiast before you approach them. In some fields, even on the free platforms, some of the bloggers showing up at the top end of the Google results are professionals who make a LOT of money. They won't take kindly to an offer of £40 for 800 words.
The other main tenet of good practice is to remember that you are approaching them, and you already know what they can do. You shouldn't be asking them to prove themselves to you. They don't owe you a free trial run. You should see a good blogging enthusiast not as a fingers-crossed-free option, but as a potential long-term ally who shares your interests, is a known quantity, and takes much of the risk out of hiring a blogger. Treating an obvious good match as a freebie will lose you money in the long term.
WHAT IF I FIND, ON COMPLETION, THAT THE WORK IS WAY OFF THE BRIEF?
That's a really good question. I'd advise establishing a brief, per article, and basing it on the principle of answering one question your customers commonly ask, as I previously discussed. Make sure the question is not already well covered by the search engines, and your brief should be highly viable. It's then just down to the blogger to turn it into a great, engaging post. Be aware also that higher word counts tend to perform better in search. a) because they're considered "substantial/authoritative content", and b) because they net more long-tail search terms. Once you've set out a well-defined brief, it's the writer's responsibility to deliver. But what if they don't?…
To help avoid this problem I would recommend breaking the payment down into two portions - one of which is paid on completion, and the other of which is paid on acceptance or publication. Let's say you've agreed a fee of £60 per article of a given length. You could break this down so the blogger is paid £15 on completion, and the other £45 when you accept that you're definitely going to publish the post. It's a good compromise, because the blogger is not going to want to settle for the £15 and will therfore make every effort to write a piece you'll accept.
But from the other side of the fence, the blogger can't accuse you of wringing them for cherries (i.e. sitting there with nothing to lose while they slog away trying to produce an unrealistically spectacular work of genius). If an article isn't suitable, you lose out as well as them, so if you don't accept a piece, they won't feel exploited.
WHAT IF THE BLOGGER WANTS PAYMENT UP FRONT?
If you're a reputable, registered business in the same country as the blogger, it's going to be much easier for them to do a bunk with your money than for you to do a bunk with their work. A blogger is entitled to insist on payment up front, but you're entitled to decline that deal and hire someone else. These questions about payment highlight how difficult it can be to establish trust over the Internet, and we shouldn't underestimate the impact of that problem. It doesn't help that big name bloggers write fanfare posts telling unknowns they should always demand their full fee in advance. The big names know that's totally unrealistic and will lose unknown or little known bloggers masses of work. But they don't care. It's competitive. They want other bloggers to lose work. All the more work for them.
So no, even speaking as a blogger, I wouldn't recommend businesses pay unknown writers their full fees in advance. Pay promptly, and pay fairly, but don't pay before they've pressed a single key.
NOW GIVE IT A GO...
And that's pretty much it. You're likely to get the best value if you take ownership of as much of the process as you possibly can. Why? Because you know your business better than anyone else. If you can generate your own content briefs from the question and answer concept, and find just one great blogger who can produce quality, enthusiastic copy without breaking the bank, the only thing you'll have left to do is build those backlinks. Manage that as well, and you'll probably achieve virtually everything an expensive agency's "full service" marketing campaign would achieve, at a fraction of the price.