Here's something we all know so well that no one needs to say it anymore: content is king.
We know that because we've been hit over the head with the phrase more times than you can shake a pageviews. There is no way around it: producing high quality, engaging content and unique copy is vital for SEO, brand awareness and marketing. 'affinity.
Be a few digital marketers who are not painfully aware of the challenge. When resources, time and money are (most likely) limiting factors, how do you produce large amounts of content at a level high enough to be effective?
This can be especially true if you or your client is a company with many different product lines,or in several places around the world. The potential topics are endless, red tape is a bottleneck, and copywriters can be overworked and costly.The good news is that with the growing popularity of remote working and digital nomads, coupled with a solid strategy and process, you don 't have to make the impossible choice of quality or of the quantity.
Use a network of freelancers
Maybe you have a short term project going on, or your client suddenly wants to dramatically increase the amount of content in production. What to do? Hiring a team of copywriters is expensive.
The independent market, however, is competitive and nowadays you don 't have to compromise on quality for cost reasons. Digital nomads are highly skilled, even multilingual, and are likely based in a country wherethe cost of living is low.
Of course, this might not work for you if you need writers based on your market, in which case you could use your international freelancers for other means. Do you have a killer strategist in your books, or someone who speaks four languages who could translate and localize your copy using their knowledge of your markets? Use their skills.
It goes without saying that good communication is essential to make it work with freelancers. Make yourself as available as possible to your writers and remind them over and over again that there is no such thing as a silly question. Building a personal rapport is essential. Video calls are great for this, and often much faster than trying to painfully explain something through email . Apps like Google Hangouts will become your best friend, when a simple question is needed.prompt response.
With freelancers, you have the opportunity not only to become more profitable, but also to make time zones work for you. This is the key: while you sleep, some of your freelancers will be working. Manage this efficiently and the quantity you produce will increase quickly, without compromising on quality.
Establish a process
It sounds ridiculously simple, but if you don't define a clear, defined process then you run a very real risk of not meeting the fundamental goals of the project . Common pitfalls include duplication of work (or producing the wrong content because of bad briefs), missed deadlines, and inefficient budget management.
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The setup may take a while, but it will undoubtedly pay off once it's up and running, and on its own while you focus on other tasks.
First of all, one of the most useful things you can do is spend some time sealing your briefs. Provide key details on theclient, general information for the task, such as target audience, and clearly explain how this work fits into the larger strategy. Clearly describe the deliverables and provide a step by step guide and ex examples if necessary.
Brief templates can help, especially if you are producing different types of hygiene content for the same customer. It will be worth it when you receive the job exactly the way you want it, with minimal questions in the process, and you will thank yourself for it in the future.
Second, I highly recommend setting up trackers, because let's face it: the benefit of a good Excel document cannot be underestimated. Create them so you know what stage your project is at at a glance and include pricing information and your freelance details. These trackers should basically be a one stop shop for everything you need to know son the project. This will be invaluable not only for measuring where you are in the process, but also for creating reports.
Project tracking and management services like Trello can be a godsend. Use them. At Croud, we have our own proprietary technology, Croud Control, which allows us to manage huge content projects in a flexible manner, with complete visibility and control over all aspects of each project. .
If this all sounds a bit exhausting, why not hire a trusted freelancer to handle this process for you? This way you only need to brief one person (although admittedly you will likely need to do a deep dive), and provided you have regular checks along the way, you won't need to get involved in the last step.
QA, QA and QA again
Speaking of the last step: everything checksr. Check again.
It is inevitable that your copywriters will make mistakes because they are human beings. It is also possible that your proofreaders miss the strange misspelling here or there. This is the reason why I operate at least on a two-step quality assurance process.
If your client is a multinational corporation, you may need to translate or localize your copy into several different languages. It goes without saying that native speakers should carry out quality control over this type of work, especially if the writer was not a native speaker.
Providing feedback to your freelancers is crucial to the success of content projects, besides being a decent thing to do. After all, everyone wants to do a good job and, more than likely, wants to know how they could do it better.
Tight budgets mean you may need tobe creative in the way you handle it. This quality assurance process allows me to do just that. If a potentially inexperienced new copywriter with good writing skills and a low hourly rate does the bulk of the work, the more skilled writers who are almost certainly more expensive can be lined up to proofread, tone-check, and generally get on board. ensure it is up to scratch, in half the time to write it. Just make sure they don't end up rewriting the work. Empower them to provide constructive feedback directly to your editors, and train them effectively.
If your QAs find the same repeated errors, give your writers the opportunity to review their changes. If they can actually see the corrections they are more likely to keep them in mind when writing for you again. If less modificationions are needed, congratulations, you have made the process even more efficient and profitable.
Summary
Creating high quality single copy and large scale content will never be easy, but it doesn't have to be painful. With a little work early on to establish a well-constructed process, and making the most of a network of freelancers, this has the potential to be a snap.
Not only that, but you and your customers will undoubtedly reap the commercial rewards of your hard work. Using exactly this process, with our global network of over 1,700 freelancers known as 'Croudies', we were able to produce a city-specific landing page for a client with hundreds of of Locations. This work led to a 113% increase in organic traffic, coupled with a 124% increase in domain visibility.
And the key to success? Hire your copywriters whenever available, so they don't feel like a cog in a machine. Give them valuable feedback and help them out whenever you can. This will probably not only improve your enjoyment of the project, but you will also likely find that they are more willing to help you with future work. And when the whole project goes off without a hitch and you receive some fantastic reviews (because why not you), tell them the good news and allow them to share your success.
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