When marketing agencies decide to hire content writers, they have a choice between recruiting a large pool of available writers to have on hand or cultivating a small, specialized group of writers. While each approach has its benefits and drawbacks, one may work better for your particular agency than the other. Content marketing simply doesn’t work with a “one size fits all” approach, so figuring out how deep you want to roll is a key part of putting an efficient, high-quality content creation and delivery system in place.
Casting a Wide Net: Pros and Cons to the Cattle Call Approach
If you’re just beginning to curate a group of content writers to use for your projects, you should probably cast your net as wide as possible in order to ensure that each assignment gets picked up and completed quickly. Some agencies choose to use a combination of approaches, from combing Craigslist to using a third party platform, but no matter which method you choose, you’ll eventually need to screen and vet the writers you decide to work with. Third party platforms do much of this screening work for you, so you can easily have a group of 50-100 writers on call who are all the same general quality and price range.
The benefits of posting your work to a large group means that the assignment will typically get picked up quickly since writers are eager to stand out from the pack. On the other hand, some writers may be less interested in your offerings if they assume another writer will pick it up and respond better to feeling like they’re part of your elite team of hand selected writers.
Lean, Mean Content Machine
Once you’ve had several writing projects completed by your team of content writers, you can take a look at the quality of the work being produced and consider winnowing down your list to the few writers who really seem to “get it.” Many business leaders advocate creating a strong workplace culture that attracts the type of “rockstar employees” that are right for your business. This means being totally transparent about your needs, recognizing and celebrating when your employees do the right thing, and being unafraid to let go of those who aren’t aligned with your company’s culture. In other words, if you’re finding yourself constantly going back and forth with a writer over revisions and feeling like you have to do too much editorial prodding to get the voice and style your agency needs, then it might be time to let that writer go so you can both find better matches in the future.
Keeping a smaller crew of available writers means that your assignments may sit a bit longer, but by cultivating the talents of a “happy few,” you stand to build relationships with writers and work with their capacities to get your content written right the first time around.
Caitlin C is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.
