Ready to order content articles for your website? The world of freelance writers is at your fingertips, but making your writers a real part of your team, allowing them to add insight and teaching them how to surpass your goals will help you succeed in your mission.
A Purpose Driven Article
You know what you want and why you want it. One way to get creative juices flowing for your author and help them get on board is to spell out the article use. By explaining whether you are looking for engaging website copy, a SEO oriented blog post, serious product descriptions or another form of writing, you will help your freelance author have the right kind of bias towards your assignment.
Your instructions will be read in an entirely different way once an author understands the end goal of the project. Giving example articles and the eventual place where this project will end up is also helpful in this process. There is certainly such a thing as being too detailed in your article instructions, but when it comes to your vision for the piece, don’t skimp out—you may end up with a writer accidentally heading the wrong direction, thinking you are looking for one thing when, in reality, your purpose is drastically different.
Creating a Connection
Creating a writer-client connection and building a healthy relationship with your freelance writers is key in receiving spot-on articles. When you submit an assignment to hire a copywriter, how you write instructions is all they have to go off of.
If you sound disgruntled and hard to please, then a good writer will take it as a warning to stay away. Any professional writer is invested in their work, takes it very seriously and doesn’t want to work with a client who is going to be rude or end up unhappy. Writing out aggressive instructions or being overly-specific in what you are looking for is usually unnecessary and discouraging to the writers considering your assignment.
The majority of writers understand the seriousness of instructions, how to follow them and what kind of assignments they are qualified to pick up. By over-explaining every detail of your project, you take away the writer’s room for creativity and they have to spend a lot of time sorting through lengthy instructions. By further emphasizing how unhappy you will be if they don’t properly do their job, you sound harder to please than the average client. This might result in narrowing down the authors who will be willing to pick up your piece and try their hand at pleasing you.
Happily Ever After
Leaving a comment on the assignment when you accept it will encourage a good writer to look for your pieces to pick up in the future; they will be happy to have a honest and reliable client who gives constructive feedback on how they feel about assignments. Your writers want to please you. Make them a part of your team by clueing them in, forming an instantaneous bond, maintaining that bond, and providing helpful follow-up.
Alethea M is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.
