How You Know if a Content Writer Is Worth the Investment, Part 1

Your company needs content. Period.

Content helps you speed up the sales process, build trust and credibility, establish your expertise, and rank higher on the search engines. In other words, content helps you make more money.

Content needs to be created and shared on a regular basis, and it better be relevant, valuable and helpful to your target audience.

Investing in a content writer is just like any other business investment. You need to make sure you’re getting the highest possible value with the least amount of risk in order to maximize the return.

It goes without saying that the person who writes your marketing content has to have writing talent. A good content writer can tell a story so it flows naturally and effortlessly.

A good content writer also has to know the basic rules of grammar and punctuation. And when to break those rules. Like I just did.

But when it comes to marketing, the content writer needs to bring more to the table than writing ability. Here are a few important things to look for that make a content writer worth the investment.

The content writer puts sound marketing strategy behind the words.

There are a lot of great writers in the world. As a matter of fact, my four-year-old daughter is the next great one.

But if you’re going to invest in a content writer, you need more to show for it than beautiful words poetically strung together. The goal is to make money.

There are different types of writers. For example, I can spin a hell of a story, but I can’t write a novel or poetry. And I would venture to say that most novelists and poets don’t have a marketing background.

A content writer is only worth the investment if they know how to motivate people to buy something. The most brilliant writing in the world is useless from a marketing perspective if it doesn’t somehow contribute to a sale.

The content writer asks a lot of questions – and knows what questions to ask.

When you’re working with a content writer for the first time, you should expect to have a long conversation.

Content writers who feel communication is unnecessary and tell you to just email them some information aren’t worth the investment.

If you only care about having the content done quickly and cheaply, that’s a different story. In that case, there are plenty of content writing sweat shops waiting to plug your company name into their content templates.

Great content writers are great interviewers. They know what questions will provide them with the information they need to write content that people like and remember.

And they know how to get beyond clichés and textbook answers to uncover the stories that really matter to readers.

The content writer can capture your voice.

Hundreds of companies within the same business category are capable of providing the exact same information as yours.

Content becomes unique when it conveys a style, personality and point of view that are difficult if not impossible to copy, whether the content is attributed to a company or an individual within that company.

Every piece of content should bring this unique voice to life. Otherwise, it’s not authentic. And as I’ve said over and over, nobody likes a phony.

Every good writer has a strong voice. But only a marketing content writer who can adapt their style to capture your voice is worth the investment.

This can only be accomplished by having actual conversations to understand what that voice is, not by telling someone to email some information.

To be continued in Part 2