Hiring a Professional Writing Service: 5 Important Questions You Should Ask
Sarah
Hiring a professional writing service for your website can provide excellent returns for your business. After all, in a world where rapidly advancing communications technologies can make or break your business, staying up to date is essential to remain competitive.
However, it’s not like you have time to update, write, and polish your own content. When managing a professional venture, you likely have more pressing concerns than updating website content, penning a blog, or posting to Twitter and Facebook.
Thankfully, you don’t need to stress about how you’re going to add writing tasks to everything else you already do. Writing services can provide the content you need to appeal to audiences and move your business forward. But how do you select the right one for your business?
Questions to Ask When Searching for the Best Content Writing Service for Your Needs
Finding the best writing service for you is no easy task. Many people will immediately say that you should consider price before anything else, but doing so can have disastrous consequences for your website and your business. As the saying goes, “you get what you pay for,” and the same holds true in online content writing.
Start by asking yourself these important questions.
1. Why Do I Need a Professional Writing Service?
Business owners and managers need to determine why they need a writing service before they actually begin to search for content writers for businesses. Doing so will help you evaluate different writing services based on your needs.
Do you want content for your website, blog, social media platforms, or all of the above? Are you interested in SEO optimization? What about topic creation? Are you interested in one-time purchases or ongoing services? And do you want a company that will collaborate with you or one that will do all the heavy lifting for you?
These are all important questions you must answer before setting up consultations to discuss plans and pricing. When you’re clear about what you want, it’s much easier to weed out candidates that simply can’t deliver what you’re looking for.
2. What Are Their Qualifications?
Professional content creation services can keep prices low in a few ways, one of the most common being to hire less qualified writers. But it’s crucial to ensure that the service you work with has writers that are qualified to deliver the high-quality content you need.
For example, some services contract with writers that are not native English speakers, have no college education, and are otherwise unqualified to provide the superior quality of material you expect.
Therefore, you want to look for a service that engages in a thorough vetting process to ensure that its writers are of the highest caliber. This will ensure that you get the best quality of work.
3. What Services Do They Offer?
Most professional writing services offer different service tiers, including ongoing plans and various packages. Consider looking for a list of services that includes writing, editing, SEO optimization, social media visibility, collaboration, and planning. If you do your due diligence, you can ensure you receive the comprehensive care needed to deliver high-quality content consistently.
You don’t want to end up with a writing service that does only blogging and nothing else. This would leave you searching for other vendors to optimize your content or offer the adjacent services needed to expand your online presence and drive business opportunities
But you also should be wary of a company that is a jack of all trades and a master of none. Thorough questioning can help you determine a service provider’s level of expertise and whether their comprehensive offerings are of a high caliber.
4. How Does Pricing Work?
Pricing may or may not be your primary concern when it comes to hiring the best content writing service, but your bottom line is always an important consideration. A good rule of thumb is to avoid services that seem too good to be true with their low prices and those that seem overpriced when compared to competitors.
Instead, look for providers that offer flexibility when it comes to scaling your services. A good vendor should offer both packaged and à la carte services and let you start and cancel ongoing memberships without penalties.
They should be willing to work with you to develop a plan that meets your content needs and budget. When you find a company that provides all of the above, you’ve found a writing service that is worth considering.
5. Are There Guarantees?
You should instantly be wary of any writing service offering specific guarantees pertaining to traffic, sales, search engine ranking, etc. In this business, there are no guarantees, at least not without employing some shady practices that could ultimately land you in hot water.
Instead, you need a writing service that considers your wants and needs when planning a comprehensive content creation strategy to build your brand, uphold your ideals, and appeal to your target audience. What you need is customized service and expert guidance.
Choose Your Professional Writing Service Carefully
Take your time when researching and interviewing content writers for businesses. This way, you can ensure that they will be able to deliver what you need to grow your brand and improve your bottom line. You’ve worked too hard to trust just any old business with something as valuable as your online content!
For a one-stop shop that can handle all your writing needs, turn to Write Collective’s team of writers, editors, and SEO experts. We can produce the content you need at scale to grow your business.
Browse the array of content marketing packages Write Collective offers and reach out to us to get started on creating a customized content plan for your brand.