Does this scale? Growing Our Team of Freelance Writers

Published by Shellie Citron on Friday, August 10, 2012 in Content Marketing, Staff.

 

Be Selective- Make sure you put a process in place that enables you to walk the world confident you have the best of the best on your team. Each writer application for one of our specialties is reviewed by three expert writers. We track client reviews, timeliness and success rates over time, so we know exactly what we're offering each customer.While many things on the road to content creation can and do rely on automation for efficiency and organization, the content itself relies on a human touch. We're never going to create enough automation to reduce our need for writers. In a world where content is king, writers enable this reign, and we prioritize and treat them accordingly. The following is a glimpse into some of our best practices when working with a high volume of freelancers.

1. Respect Their Time-Working freelance can be risky and unstable for writers. We ensure our writers know we value their time by offering good rates, and compensating them a percentage of the rate for rejected pieces as well. If a writer has invested the time and effort to complete a piece of content, it should be recognized. This turned out to be so reassuring to our writers that they've written in to thank us, and tell us it motivates them to be more creative with their work.


2. Keep your Human Touch -There are a lot of ways to show your freelancers that they're not just dealing with a world of automation, and many are key to assuaging frustration. Two ways we keep the human factor in mind are: allowing for writers to let us know if they're off track with deadlines, and remaining accessible. The former relies on some automated check ins, but the latter is simply human. We answer our writer inquiries thoughtfully and quickly, so they know we're equally invested in their success.


3. Be Willing to Change - Freelancers are the best judges of what they need to do their best work. Be flexible with the tools in your system and listen to prevalent concerns. If a writer question becomes a recurring issue, we brainstorm system solutions, and make changes accordingly. In our case, this has covered everything from adding a question to the client form about a specific format, to making a functionality clearer on the writer dashboard, to even adding entirely new features.