Should I Outsource Blog Writing To A Freelancer?

Should you outsource your blog writing to a freelancer? This is a question shared by many established businesses, busy entrepreneurs and scrappy high growth startups alike.

What are you afraid of?

When you start thinking about outsourcing blog writing and content marketing, it can be difficult to know where to start. There are generally a few typical fears that put people off hiring freelancers for their blog, these are as follows:

The fear: You feel that your knowledge is irreplaceable – no one could possibly know as much as you about this subject. How could anyone else write about it?!
The reality: Blog writing isn’t always about being an absolute veteran in the subject matter, it’s about understanding a topic (via a lot of research) and then being able to write about it in a coherent way that will engage your audience, and help them. If it ticks those boxes, you’re far more likely to win your readers trust and their business. 

The fear: It’ll be too expensive to get high a quality outsourced blog writing service.
The reality: It can be expensive, but if you’re clever you can make some savings. For example if you provide a writer with the article titles you want, alongside resources they can use to find the information needed you’ll likely be able to get a better price. If you have them doing all of the leg work it may work out a little more. It’s worth noting, if someone is VERY cheap, it’s likely being done somewhere overseas or at a lower quality with minimal research. If your article costs say £15 for 1000 words, then realistically to adhere to UK minimum wages that person can only spend just over an hour on your work (researching and writing) – a good writer likely isn’t on the absolute minimum wage…

The fear: Blogging isn’t as important as paid advertising or other areas where our budget will be going.
The reality: Here’s some statistics that outline why this is wrong. 70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles rather than advertisements. Blogs can result in a 434% increase indexed pages (better google rank). Companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don’t blog. The reality is organic blog content is preferred by your customers, by google, and if done well will get you more sales. An added bonus you rank better in Google, and ensure you come across as an expert in your industry. If you spend money on anything it should be blog writing.

The fear: The quality won’t be good enough and I’ll need to re-write it
The reality: Yes this can sometimes be the case. But if you spend some time looking for the right freelancer, or a company like us (where our team of writers are vetted professionals), alongside allocating a fair budget you’ll likely get good results. If sourcing a freelancer for yourself, it may be that you have to try a few before you find a good fit, and while this can cost extra, it’s worth doing so you can present your brand in the right way.

The benefits to having a freelance outsourced blog writer

There are lots of benefits but here’s a few of the more noteworthy ones:

1. More time to focus on things outside of your blog.
2. Potentially higher quality content & writing.
3. A regular stream of content on autopilot.
4. Better ranking in Google.
5. More authority as a thought leader in your industry.
6. More sales as a result of your freelancers blogging efforts.

Risk to consider with freelancer blog writers

There are a few risks/negatives to consider when it comes to freelancers, these are as follows:

1. Time spent sourcing and managing freelancers.
2. Have plans in place to cater for freelancers being away or off sick – creating inconsistency in your blogging efforts.
3. Having to find another new freelancer if your first quits or gets overloaded with other work.
4. Having sub-par writing due to a lack of understanding on the topic or not being a native speaker of your language.
5. Delays or missed deadlines due to other work taking precedence.
6. Price changes.

It’s worth noting most of these can be negated if you put sufficient time into the hiring process to ensure you hire the best and most suitable freelancers for your job, and work to build a team of them to look after your blogging.

When a blog writing service is the best fit

While there are benefits to working directly with a single freelancer, sometimes working with a blog writing agency like ourselves is the best option. While we are bias there are a few logical reasons behind this, these include:

1. If you need to scale your content quick, you don’t need to worry about your freelancer finding more hours in the day, or the faff of hiring a remote team and managing them. We can scale as you do, whether you need 1 blog post a month or 100.
2. Sick days and holidays aren’t something you need to worry about, if your dedicated writer(s) is off for any reason, there is always a backup writer in place ready to go.
3. Everyone makes mistakes, if using an agency like us, your blog post will go through multiple people and quality checks before it goes live. With a freelancer you’re counting on one set of eyes getting it right first time.
4. Agencies like us are able to capitalise on economies of scale, this means we can have the best writers writing for you, while still keeping prices very affordable. This makes things more economical for you without skimping on quality.
5. Easy on-boarding – our on-boarding process is super simple, meaning no need to worry about hiring, and finding the best fit. We handle everything so you don’t have to.
6. Only 1% of applicants become writers for us. Our requirements are stringent to say the least, so you can ensure you’ll get the best quality first time around.

Whatever you decide to do, the one thing we do encourage you to do is produce more content. 

If you’d like us to help you in producing more content, head this way for details on our blog writing service.