It is no secret that guest posting is becoming more and more popular for businesses. While marketing the content on your own website is important, it’s also important that you have content spread out across the web by contributing guest article. Doing so offers several very large benefits:
- Your content is put in front of the eyes of a new audience interested in your industry.
- You get to show off your expertise through great articles.
- You will form connections with other companies across the web.
- Your article will likely get extra promotion if it is posted on a site with a greater following.
- You will get a backlink for your article; thus improving your SEO.
- If you create a partnership, you could likely get content from other websites. This will help cut down on the workload for you while bringing a new audience (the audience of the author or the company where the author came from) to your site.
Because contributing guest articles does offer so many features, more and more companies are starting to hire full-time writers. In the majority of cases these writers work from home and are given a certain number of articles to write per month or per quarter. It’s also important that if your company is going to hire writers you’re hiring writers that can write about topics related to your industry. This then begs that inevitable question: Am I hiring someone who is a good writer, someone who is an expert in my field, or someone who can do both?
The Writer’s Your Company Needs and Why It’s Tough to Find Them
Most company owners will tell you that hiring is one of the most stressful aspects of running a business, especially if you’re still in the startup stages. It can be tough to interview for a position that you yourself don’t know much about, and this is the boat that many companies are in when it comes time to hire writers to contribute guest posts because the professions is still fairly new.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad writers our there. Everyone wants in on the guest-posting phenomenon because it usually allows you to work from home—and writing is easy. Anybody can write a page or two about a topic because all they have to do is Google it and find some information, right? Wrong. It is this mentality that has made hiring great writers difficult for businesses.
Even if you can manage to find someone who really is creative and can really write, you need to make sue that they can write about your industry. You don’t want your writer simply spinning articles—you want your writer out there showing new audiences that your company has original ideas and can analyze top industry news.
How to Make Sure Your Writers Know What to Write and Not Just How
Below are a few steps to ensure that you have this type of writer representing your company:
1. Experience Matters When It Comes to Writers
It can be very difficult for someone right out of college to understand how to write blog content and to understand fully a subject matter, making experience important. For example, college graduates usually graduate with an English degree, making him/her a great writer, or a business (or any industry) degree, making him/her and expert in the field. However, you can absolutely take a college graduate and give them a chance to get that experience. It is highly recommended that you hire them on as an intern or freelance writer first to see if a). He/she actually likes the work or b). He/she can handle both the writing style and the content.
2. If You See a Great Article, Do Some Research on the Author
Many guest contributors don’t actually work for a company, but are simply freelancing or trying to gain visibility for his/her own personal website. Therefore, if you see an article that you think is great, spend some time doing research on the author. Read the byline to see if the writer already works for a company, and then find him/her on social media. If you see that he/she has written several articles like the one that caught your eye, reach out and make a connection!
3. Give Topics/Websites That Require a Writer to Read the News In Your Industry
As a full-time writer myself, I know that one of the most difficult aspects of the job is coming up with great topics. If you’re hiring someone new to the business and they aren’t overly familiar with your industry yet, tell him/her what you want them to write. This will force your writer to read the news and begin to find websites that offer great information. Let them know where they can find the authoritative voices online.
4. Talk With Experts In the Field about Great Writers
Any business that has gone through hiring guest contributors before will understand how difficult it can be to find good writers. Talk with them and see if they know any freelancer writers who might be interested in doing work for you. This will be a bit more difficult because companies typically don’t want their writers writing for the competition, but it’s usually worth a try!
5. Make Sure the Writer Has Experience With Internet Writing.
Internet writing is very different than other types of writing because you need to focus on SEO, promotion through social media, blog style, and target audience. Although this is not going to guarantee that a writer is an expert in your niche, it will guarantee that the writer understands how online content works.
Have you hired writers to guest post in return for backlinks to your site? How did you make sure that you had someone who could write as well as someone who understood the buzz in your industry?
About the Author: Amanda DiSilvestro is a graduate of Illinois State University. Although she graduated with an English Education degree, she found herself working as a full-time blogger at Highervisibility.com, nationally recognized as one of the top seo firms in the country. Connect with HigherVisibility on Twitter to learn more!