Hiring Authors For Your Web Business: 5 Considerations

Anyone who has been in Internet marketing for more than a month knows that the Internet consumes content in a hurry. A great deal of the success of online ventures eventually depends upon the quantity and quality of the output of the writers. Regardless of the medium through which the content is presented, it first needs to be written! That is as true of video as it is true of an article on your website.

Your site is often the first contact a prospect has with your company. While website design and your actual product or service are essential, the quality of the expression of your words will have a huge impact upon the perceptions that your prospects have of your company. Therefore, you must be certain that the writers who are doing the work are the best that you are able to afford. This is no place to pinch pennies.

Some businesses are large and diverse operations that choose to handle almost every task within one of the company’s departments. Many of us, on the other hand, do not have the time or, perhaps the in-house talent to meet all of the writing needs that we have. A great many Internet marketers choose to out-source the authoring to professionals–or to whom they hope will be professionals. There are many free lance authors and web article writing services available.

Out-sourcing writing can be a wise investment for many firms. Before you accept a writing service or individual free lance writer, however, take time to be sure that they have some reasonable understanding of the special requirements of Internet businesses. Here are a few things to check:

1) Any writer should be properly trained, of course. Equally important is that the author is naturally fluent in the language of your target market. For example, I grew up primarily in the United States. I speak a couple of other languages, however, I would hire a British writer to at least edit my work if I were writing exclusively for a target market in the U.K. While we write (and speak) the same language, the idioms, slang and many casual expressions are very different.

2) Unless you narrow your search to only writers who are part of your industry, you will not find someone who is an expert in your field. In most cases, that is not a problem. However you do need to be certain that the writer has the research skills and the research ethic to be able to quickly learn what is necessary to learn to be able to communicate credibly with your prospects.

3) They must be able to write conversationally for the web. Writing for most Internet venues is very different from writing for an academic journal or composing a report for school.

4) They must undertand the purposes of the article. If it will be published on your website, the article may have a very different purpose than if it is to be distributed for article marketing purposes. The former deals with a reader who has already found your site, while the latter is designed to attract visitors to your site.

5) Finally, the writers should not be confounded if you mention that they should optimize for a specific long tail key phrase. They ought to have some understanding of what SEO actually is.

All of these concerns are more important to consider than whether an article costs you $10, $30 or even $100. Ten weak articles do not have the impact on your long term profits that one very good piece of prose will have.