How to Best Manage Your Freelance Content Team

For any online marketing strategy to be successful, it needs a frequent stream of new content that has value for the visitors. Almost 85% of consumers expect some content creation from their brands. Although it may sound like an easy job, one that only requires a basic knowledge of the English language, many companies simply do not have the necessary time and motivation to do it.  

Unless your business has a dedicated writer in its premises or your employees can contribute, you can outsource these jobs to freelance remote writers. The perks from outsourcing such jobs are many – there is a wider talent pool, no overhead costs and many writers work more creatively in their homes.

But some cons are also present, such as a challenge to find the right writer and more stress when managing freelancers. Read about the next few pieces of advice we've prepared to help you better deal with such a process.

Decide How Many Writers You Need and Find Experienced Ones

Try for a week to create content by yourself to evaluate the time required to create new content and finish the job. By knowing the amount of time needed to finish the job, you will know exactly how many writers are needed. A low amount of writers will make them overburdened and much more pressed by deadlines, while too many of them will leave too much time on their hands, and they might decide to find more work elsewhere. The right number of writers will create fresh content for your blog in a consistent and high-quality manner.

For your content strategy to reach its peak, you’ll need experienced writers to work on it. Great content raises brand awareness, builds authority and drives traffic to your website. Don’t focus your efforts into finding workers at low-quality freelance websites. Although the pricing is low, the quality of work will also be the same. Use your contact network to identify experienced writers who can create the high-quality content you need. You can also ask your business partners to recommend some skilled writers.

Set up a Structured System

In order for your writers to write consistently high-quality content, you must set up some basic rules of work. Firstly, adopt a content strategy. An effective content strategy will help you decide how many writers you need and for what kind of work. It will also help you stay concentrated on the long-term goals and not just producing content on an ad-hoc basis.

Think about what you want to achieve with your strategy and then set up several goals that complement it. Research your target audience and especially their behavior, interests, and problems. This will help you decide what your content strategy must be based upon.

Secondly, set up a payment method. This is one of the hardest parts of the system to set up. Employee income cards can be of great help here since they provide convenience and significant cost savings for businesses, while also giving employees quick access to their money. It also integrates with payroll service providers and automates the entire payroll process.

Lastly, set up a centralized communication system. Remote workers won’t come to your office every day and ask questions. Such a system will help prepare beforehand when such issues arise. You can use different chat apps such as Google Hangouts or Slack that will limit the use of emails for correspondence and allow your employees a quick and simple path for sharing data and communicating with you and each other. It will also enable you to easily set up deadlines and goals and send expectations and instructions beforehand.

Know about the Different Types of Deadlines

No one likes to be pressured. A deadline means that there is no more time left – for revisions, edits and rewrites. However, deadlines are necessary in order to maintain an organized team of editors and writers. When everyone meets deadlines frequently, the whole team produces content better, faster and in a greater amount.

When people start to miss deadlines constantly, it can create serious problems for your business. When a writer misses their deadline, the editor has less time to complete their part of the job. When both of them miss it, the content needs much more time to reach its destination or may miss it completely. This ruins the basic goal of any team management.

Strictly enforce deadlines and crack down on the members of the team who miss them. This doesn’t mean firing anyone for their first mistake, but everyone must know that missing deadlines isn’t acceptable and won’t be looked over.

Outsourcing content creation gives you the advantage of orchestrating complex marketing efforts without the need for having traditional in-house employees. However, finding experienced workers and making them work properly is still a burdensome task. Strive for consistent improvements on the job and you will end with an efficient production line that frequently creates the content that any brand that wants to call itself successful needs.

Emma Miller

A digital marketer from Sydney. Works as a blogger, Senior Editor for Bizzmark blog and a lecturer at Melbourne University. Tweets industry related articles.