Why Your Freelance Content Marketer is Letting You Down

Red Adair once said, “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” You wouldn’t let an amateur mechanic tinker with your engine, an inexperienced accountant file your taxes or an uneducated surgeon operate on your heart, so why would you want an unqualified content marketer in charge of building your business? Most business owners have spent many years, thousands of dollars and endless energy building their company. Hiring a content marketer is a smart move that can pay off handsomely in customer acquisition and brand exposure, so leaving that aspect of your company’s future in incapable hands is ludicrous.

If you’ve found yourself experiencing these situations with a content marketer that is not contributing to your company’s growth like you expected, it may be time to search for a new team. This is also a useful list to use if you are in search of a content marketer and want to know what to watch out for.

1. You Can’t Get Help When You Need It

Running your own business usually means being ready for anything, 24/7. Deadlines are always looming and emergencies are always popping up, making it necessary to be on call all the time. When you have an urgent topic arise or press release to make, you’ll rest easier knowing you’ll have the support of your content manager for any last-minute needs. If you’ve chosen to put your faith in a freelance marketer, you may find that he or she is less available than you would like. If they work from home, they’ll likely have other responsibilities, other clients and other things they want to do with their time, which means you need to look at other options.

Working with a content marketing agency means there are more people to pitch in when you want something up and running right away. With the ability to order from BKA Content’s content shop at any time, you’ll be able to request new content with or without working with a personal account manager.

2. You’re Missing Opportunities

One of the greatest things about online content is that it can be used over and over. Once you’ve received a piece, it can periodically be refreshed, repurposed, recycled and reinvigorated to bring new eyes to your site. In order for this to work, it has to be a great piece to begin with. We hand pick high-quality American writers for every job and require that they go through a selective hiring process and receive thorough training before joining the team.

When you contract with an entire agency, you will literally have an entire team at your disposal. Do you want to pursue a few different campaigns at the same time? No problem. Feel like increasing your order to bi-weekly, weekly or daily blog posts? Sounds great. When you have access to literally hundreds of professional writers, editors and marketing strategists, there’s no limit to what you can do.

Your current content needs may not be a good indicator of what opportunities you’ll want to take advantage of in the future. Some companies decide to create manuals, e-books and other large products that they may not have initially planned on. If you have a single content marketer, there is a good chance he or she won’t have the capacity to take on such a time-consuming project. An agency will not only be able to tackle big assignments, but also continue on with your regular campaigns, making it simple and easy to adjust and scale your orders depending on your company’s current needs.

If you already have a content writer that you are happy with but you want to grow your marketing beyond his or her abilities, it’s completely acceptable to retain that writer for certain projects while contracting with an agency for the additional work you want to pursue.

3. Industry Inexperience

You can have the most experienced writer in the world at your disposal, but that doesn’t mean he or she will have the right kind of experience. Even an amazing writer may not know anything about logging or what a newly pregnant mother wants to read. For this reason, it’s smart to work with an agency with several writers to increase the chances that you’ll find at least one who understands the ins and outs of your industry and can create authoritative content. The last thing you want is for your customers and fellow professionals to judge you as inexperienced because of your content.

4. Lack of Direction

Your content marketing team can be pumping out pages of fantastic content, but without directing goals in place, you’ll be missing out on the growth your company could be experiencing. One of the benefits of having an expert content marketing manager at your disposal is that he or she will not only have great writing experience, but also the ability to offer guidance as you set goals for your campaign. Consider what sort of specific growth you’re looking for, such as:

• An increase in traffic
• More brand awareness
• A higher conversion of leads to customers
• Increased lead generation
• Improved retention

Once you have concrete goals in place to guide the direction of your marketing, it will be easier to create a strategy for your campaign. This can also help businesses who aren’t sure what type of content to create. You’ll want a good mix of educational and entertaining pieces, not just one or the other.

Your marketing manager can do much more than deliver amazing content; he or she should also be able to offer tips about which pieces will best help you reach your goals and how to market them. If you need help with tools for measuring success, they should be able to offer some insight in that area as well.

5. Your Content is Not Being Found

One of the saddest things that can happen to a great piece of content is for it to sit unread on a page. If it’s not SEO optimized, nobody is going to find it. When you choose a content marketing manager, make sure they have a thorough understanding of how to use keywords, meta data, links and formatting to move your site up Google’s rankings. At BKA, all of our writers are trained on SEO best practices so that every piece of content we produce is optimized.

Another factor that will affect how likely your content is to be found is the title of the piece. This is something you want to be shared, linked to and read, but if the title is boring or unrelated, that’s probably not going to happen. Good content has catchy titles that are also easily found by Google. If your content is not being clicked on, it may not have titles that motivate viewers to read.

6. Promotion and Distribution Are Suffering

Not only do successful content marketers need to have enough business savvy to know how to create content that achieves your goals, they also need excellent writing skills, experience making those pieces SEO optimized and expertise in many areas (or fellow writers that do). Basically, you’re looking for a unicorn.

Unicorns of the content marketing world know that fantastic content won’t get anywhere if it’s not marketed through the right channels. Using influencers and tools for promotion are just a few ways to achieve your goals. Your target audience will have a big effect on which channels you pursue for distribution, so ask your content marketing manager for any advice on the best places to get help with promotion.

If you’ve had any of these problems with your content marketer or you’re just preparing to launch your marketing campaign, consider these points about what makes a great team. By having experienced professionals on your side, you’ll be able to get the exposure you’re looking for and have a return on your investment that you can be proud of.