How To Hire and Work With Content Writers for Your Blog

If you are running a blog and you’re set on growing it, then you need to post consistent, valuable content that keeps your readers engaged and wanting to come back for more. However, the main challenge you may face is needing more content for your blog than you can handle creating on your own. Hiring content writers can solve this problem for you.

Even though you are the expert on the topic of your blog, and you may even be a great writer, writing blog posts is time-consuming. As a business owner, you may not have enough time to dedicate to typing away on your keyboard for hours a few times per week, on top of all the promoting, selling, bookkeeping, and client-handling. That’s when you know it’s time to reach out for help! 

Hiring freelance content writers to help you post on your blog regularly is the best way to grow your blog without stretching yourself to write more content than you can handle. However, it may seem intimidating at first, and you may not even know where to start. So, in this article, I will share with you my best tips on how to hire and work with content writers for your blog based on my experience. 

When To Hire Content Writers for Your Blog 

You can hire content writers for your blog at any stage. It doesn’t matter if you want to start a blog or if you are already running a successful one. However, if you’re just starting out as a blogger, it might be a good idea to test the waters first on your own before you delegate content writing to someone else. 

With that said, if you’re experiencing any of the following signs, then hiring a content writer may be the next necessary step for you: 

• You don’t have time to produce as much content as your blog requires. 
• You don’t enjoy writing, or you’re simply not a good writer (and that’s ok).
• You don’t know how to write blog posts that engage your readers. 
• You’ve lost passion for your blog.
• You struggle to come up with new blog post ideas. 

Apart from the above situations, another factor that you should consider is the cost of hiring a content writer. Is your blog making you enough money to be able to pay your writers? Based on your current business model and profits, determine how profitable it’ll be for you to hire one or more content writers. If you hiring a content writer is above your budget, it may not be a good idea. 

5 Tips to Hire Content Writers for Your Blog Posts 

There are a few places you can go to hire freelance content writers for your blog. However, remember that it’s not just about finding a writer. It’s about finding a writer who meets your expectations and can deliver high-quality content for your blog. This is why it is essential to choose who you hire carefully. 

Here are my best tips to help you hire the right content writers for your blog: 

1. Post a Job on Upwork or ProBlogger

Upwork

UpWork is one of the best places to hire freelance content writers. It is one of the largest and most popular freelancing platforms out there, where you can find freelancers offering services in literally any niche. UpWork is also very safe to use and minimizes the risk of running into scammers and fake writers (although it’s always a possibility, so you need to be careful).  

UpWork functions based on job posts: you, as an employer, post a job, and freelancers interested in it apply to work with you. Out of everyone who applies, you can then choose the person who you believe is the best fit for the job. 

The best way to hire a content writer through UpWork is to create a featured job post. To do that, you’ll need to create your client account. Then, create a job post explaining what you’re looking for. The next step is to choose freelancers to invite for your job. By featuring your job, you will be able to invite up to 100 freelancers. 

To increase your chances of finding the most suitable person for the job, you can apply specific filters to sort through freelancers that best fit your requirements, such as native speakers based in a particular country or freelancers above a specific job success rate. 

ProBlogger

Another great way to find content writers is by posting a job on ProBlogger.com. ProBlogger is a job board specifically created to match bloggers and site owners with content writers. So if you are looking for a writer for your job, whether it’s for a one-time assignment or full time, you can post your job on the platform and put it in front of the eyes of thousands of blog writers. 

However, posting a job ad on ProBlogger is not free – it costs $75 to post a standard listing which will stay live on the platform for 15 days. If you want to post multiple jobs, either at once or separately, you may want to subscribe to ProBlogger’s membership.  

2. Look for Writers in Relevant Online Communities 

Another way to find content writers for your blog is to look for them in relevant online communities, such as Facebook, Linkedin, Reddit, or even on less obvious platforms like Slack. 

For example, on Facebook, there are plenty of groups that gather freelance content writers who are looking for clients. You can join those groups as an employer and create a Facebook post explaining what you’re looking for. Linkedin is another great platform to look for freelance writers. It is, after all, a platform dedicated to professional networking! 

3. Ask for their Portfolio

No matter where you look, there are lots of content writers. When hiring the right one for you, you want to ensure that their writing skills match the writing quality you’re looking for. This is why you should always ask all potential candidates for their writing portfolio or writing samples. Reading through some of the blog posts they’ve written for their previous clients will help you determine their skill level, fluency, and writing style. 

Apart from looking at your potential writer’s portfolio, you can also see whether they are the right fit for you by assigning them a test article. Test articles are a great way to test not only their writing skills but also their dedication, attitude, and grit while working on a real assignment!

If you’re unsure whether or not your potential writer’s work is of high quality, you may hire a proofreader to give you their opinion. A proofreader’s job is to spot any grammar, spelling, punctuation, or structure mistakes in the text. They can also professionally evaluate a writer’s skills, so they can be very helpful if you’re unsure how to qualify someone else’s writing. 

4. Check Your Writer’s Social Media 

When looking for writers on job boards, online communities, or even on UpWork, make sure that you hire a professional with legitimate credentials and an authentic portfolio. The fact is that there are lots of scammers out there posing as real writers or even stealing other writers’ work and passing it on as their own. 

Freelance job boards like UpWork prevent scamming by asking freelancers to get verified. You can also read the reviews from past clients on their profiles. However, a person’s authenticity may not be so easy to verify when hiring people from job boards like ProBlogger, where everyone on the Internet can apply for the job you posted. In this case, to ensure that the writer you plan on hiring is legit, you can check their social media platforms, their Linkedin profile, or even perform a reverse image search to find more information about them. 

5. Send Potential Candidates a Pre-Screen Test

When hiring writers outside of vetted marketplaces like UpWork, you likely will need a more thorough vetting process.  In the worst case scenario, the portfolio may be fake.

In the best case, writers will provide you with published portfolio content, and it’s never clear how much editing that content went through before it went live. An applicant tracking system like Workello can help you sort, manage, and send pre-screen writing tests to filter our bad candidates with good portfolios. 

5 Tips to Work with Content Writers 

After hiring the right content writer for your blog, the next step is to establish an efficient client-writer relationship. If this is the first time that you’re working with a content writer, then the entire process might be an enigma for you. So how do you make sure that your writer delivers blog articles that fully satisfy your criteria? There are a few things you can do to make that happen. 

Here are my best tips on how to work efficiently with your new content writer:

1. Do Keyword Research 

Together with valuable and engaging content, keywords are the foundation of every blog. If you want your blog to grow and attract more readers, you need to make sure that people are searching for what you’re writing about. This is where SEO comes in. If you’re not familiar with this term, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is a set of practices meant to improve the positioning of your website in Google’s search results. Each article that you publish on your blog should be SEO-optimized for well-researched keywords to guarantee that you’ll receive traffic from Google search results. 

Before you assign an article to your content writer, do keyword research to figure out the best keywords you want them to optimize the article for. Letting them know the main keywords upfront will help them write the article in a way that includes those keywords in the article seamlessly. You can also ask your writer to do their own keyword research and find the most relevant semantic keywords (keywords that relate to the original keyword) to include in the article. 

To optimize your content for the right keywords, you and your writer can use AI-based tools such as Surfer or Market Muse. These tools can also help you create a detailed, well-structured content brief for your writer, including related topics, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and linking suggestions.

2. Create a Detailed Article Outline 

Creating an article outline for your writer is crucial to ensure that the article they deliver meets your expectations. While you can give your writer creative freedom to come up with their own explanation flow for the article, writing out in detail what you want them to include will ensure that the article covers the information you want. 

Create a point-by-point outline detailing all the headlines you want them to include in the article and explain briefly what they should cover in each. To ensure a clear structure, organize the headlines into H1, H2, and H3. 

For an even more thorough outline, you can record an explainer video. To do that, use one of the following free tools: Screencast-O-Matic or Loom. Record your screen while typing out the outline for the article and explaining to your writer exactly what you’re looking for in each point. You can also give them additional tips to implement while writing and walk them through your style guidelines. 

3. Invite Your Writer to Use Grammarly

When posting content on your blog, you want to publish only high-quality articles that bring real value to your readers. This means error-free in terms of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. In addition, a well-written blog article should be engaging, structured, and get the point across in a straightforward and concise way. 

To ensure that your content writer delivers a high-quality piece, invite them to use Grammarly. Grammarly is the ultimate tool for all writers to help them improve their writing and avoid grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. The free version of Grammarly offers you basic error checking, but the Premium version will take your articles one step further. Grammarly’s Premium version allows you to improve sentence structure, suggests synonyms that create more depth, and helps you make your writing sound even more professional. 

Grammarly Premium is a must for every professional content writer. What’s more, as a professional blogger, using Grammarly Premium pays off for you too. If your content writer doesn’t already use this tool, you can share your Premium account with them to guarantee a better quality of the articles they deliver. 

4. Check the End Piece for Plagiarism

New content writers, or even professional ones, may sometimes plagiarize. They may not even know they are doing it most of the time, especially if they are still inexperienced. Other times, they may do it on purpose, copying someone else’s content and passing it as their own – in that case, you’ve hired yourself a scammer! This is why it’s always essential to check every article for plagiarism. 

There are many plagiarism checkers on the Internet, ranging from basic, free tools to more advanced, premium tools. One of the best plagiarism checkers that most bloggers and professional writers use is CopyScape. CopyScape offers advanced plagiarism search, is easy to use, and is affordable (200 checks cost $10). If you do not want to invest money into a plagiarism checker, you can use free tools like 1text.com or PrePostSEO. 

It may also be a good idea to use more than one plagiarism checker to ensure that the content you’re getting is 100% free from plagiarism. However, bear in mind that these tools use AI, which finds results based on terms that two websites have in common – sometimes it’s just a coincidence and doesn’t mean that the article was copied from another website. So if CopyScape, or another plagiarism checker, comes up with results, go to each of these websites separately and see for yourself if the text has been copied. 

5. Hire a Proofreader or Editor 

Another thing you should do to make sure that the article your content writer delivered is a high-quality piece is to hire a proofreader or an editor. The role of a proofreader differs slightly from that of an editor. A proofreader’s job is to check the text for grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. On the other hand, an editor will read through the text and correct the sentence structure and language clarity. An editor focuses mainly on improving the article’s readability, but they will also check it for any kind of errors. Even though your content writer might be excellent at what they do, a professional editor can take your article even further and provide more edge and depth. 

Depending on your writer’s style and flow, you may decide to hire either an editor or a proofreader. There is no need to hire both. The process of hiring a proofreader or an editor is similar to the process of hiring a content writer. If you plan on hiring either, the tips mentioned in this article will be helpful to you. 

Conclusion 

Hiring a content writer is the next step for you if you want to grow your blog without drowning yourself in hours of writing content on your own. A professional content writer who knows how to write a blog post that engages your audience can help you gain more traffic, and therefore, increase your profits. What’s more, a good content writer will produce high-quality articles for your blog which you will be able to post regularly to keep up with your posting schedule and provide valuable content to your readers on a regular basis. To hire the right content writer and work with them efficiently, follow the steps and tips provided in this article.

Now that you’ve learnt how to create great content for your blog, you’re ready to learn how to monetize your blog.