6 Signs You Desperately Need to Hire a Blog Writer

Been tossing around the idea of hiring a blog writer?

Interested in starting a blog for your business but not sure who will write the content?

As a business owner, you’re smart to consider blogging. Although blogging is a long-term investment that takes some time to pay off, it’s what’s working for businesses. Blogging generates leads, increases website traffic, and helps to acquire customers.

The Perks of Blogging

A simple Google search will provide many articles that highlight the benefits of blogging. In the meantime, here are a few reasons blogging helps your business (thanks to Writtent for compiling them):

• B2B marketers who use blogs generate 67% more leads than those that do not.
• 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog.
• 81% of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs.
• 60% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content on its site.
• Blog traffic generation increases by 30% after 21-54 blog posts.
• Companies that blog receive 434% more indexed pages.
• 61% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from a blog.

You know that blogging isn’t a passing fad, but what are you going to do about it?

How Do You Know When It’s Time to Hire a Blog Writer?

It’s a good question to ask yourself. Hopefully, these six points will help you to determine if now is the right time to use an external writer for some or all of your blog content.

1) You don’t have a shred of blog content

Whatever the reason – time, budget, interest, skill set – you’ve held off on creating a blog for your business.

Businesses that don’t have a blog are really missing out. Blogging helps your business in so many ways!

• Search engine optimization
• Lead generation
• Long term ROI
• Visibility and reach
• Traffic generation
• Authority and trust
• Content for other marketing uses

The last one on the list is particularly critical because you can transform your blog content into many other formats, which means it’s not only useful but also worth the investment.

Consider also that your competition is blogging. That gives them a big advantage over you for the reasons listed above.

A common misconception is that there isn’t enough room for another blog. However, studies by Hubspot show that people are starved for more content.

Now, it’s possible you’re using other forms of content to attract leads and sales, such as podcasting or videos. Consider re-purposing these formats into blog posts to extend your reach into different audiences and increase your rankings.

2) You’re promoting other people’s content more than your own

Curating and sharing content shows you care about others and aren’t only focused on yourself.

Also, sharing excellent content in your niche benefits your audience and gets you noticed by influencers.

When you’re first starting out, you may need to supplement your brand with content from other people because you don’t have enough of your own.

These are all good things!

The problem arises when you’re not developing enough branded content for a consistent amount of time.

Your own original, unique content is how people find you, learn about what you have to offer, and trust you as an authority in your niche.

You want your audience to interact with your brand. Creating your own content that’s targeted to attract your ideal avatar means you’ll get more qualified leads from your blog.

While sharing content from competitors isn’t a bad thing, promoting the competition’s content doesn’t make much sense if you aren’t also answering similar questions on your blog.

Think about it for a moment. When someone is searching for information and assistance, they will choose the business that best answers their problem. You’ll need branded content that outshines your competition’s content on the same topic.

Content is the foundation of your online business. Sharing other people’s content helps build their brand (and possibly send leads away after a while).

If you want to reap the benefits of content marketing, you’ll eventually need to invest in your own blog.

3) You have a blog but not enough consistent, quality content to grow your business

Between Google and your audience’s desire for information, you can get overwhelmed by quality content production. Not only that, but publishing blog posts very frequently can also be challenging.

You need the bandwidth and expertise to keep up!

We know that longer content gets shared more, which has ripple effects of increased sharing, higher traffic, and better search engine ranking.

We know that quality content outperforms mediocre content.

With quality and quantity both affecting your blog’s effectiveness, you need to concentrate on both as part of your content strategy.

Unfortunately, as a business owner, you often are pulled in multiple directions. You put your customers first, which is awesome! But, at the end of the day, your business suffers when you don’t have enough resources.

Getting to the place where you publish great content at least once a week is your sweet spot.

4) You’d rather vacuum than write a blog post

When you’re sitting at your computer trying to crank out another post but would rather be doing anything else, you know it’s time to hire a blog writer.

It’s okay! There are many reasons why you may not enjoy writing. Maybe it’s not your:

• Preferred method of communication
• Core competency
• Passion or talent
• Primary priority

Don’t be ashamed or embarrassed to hire a blog writer.

In fact, give yourself a huge pat on the back if you’re willing to hire a writer. You’ve learned that your effort is better spent on higher level tasks that generate the big bucks.

Those who delegate are usually great at time management and more successful because they realize it’s impossible to “do it all.”

Using guest bloggers isn’t out of the question and might be the perfect solution to your blog woes. There are plenty of companies that don’t damage their authority by hiring guest bloggers. (Think of Copyblogger or Social Media Today as examples.)

Having a team of bloggers can be ideal, especially if you’re at the beginning stages of blogging. This way your audience gets used to awesome content as opposed to relying on one particular personality.

If you know that you’re not a great writer, don’t feel compelled to write your own content. In this scenario, hiring a ghostwriter can improve your authority and possibly save your reputation. 😉

Don’t let concerns about losing your “voice” dissuade you from hiring a ghostwriter.

A good ghostwriter can capture your voice, tone, and style. You can (and should) review the writer’s work to add bits and pieces of your personality throughout each article.

5) You don’t know enough about content marketing to write rank worthy, shareable content

Blogging without a purpose and strategy can still help your business.

However, the people who invest time into research and planning make their content more impactful and meaningful to their bottom line.

Writing about whatever is on your mind doesn’t target your content marketing efforts enough to build your business.

What exactly is content marketing anyway?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, the definition of content marketing is:

A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Blog content is one of many types of content marketing. A blog helps your audience become aware of you, their problems, and how to solve their problems through educational, informational, inspirational, and entertaining content.

With ad effectiveness declining, content marketing is one of the most effective ways to indirect sales, especially when used in a funnel.

As Digital Marketer points out, blogging is at the “top of the funnel” (TOFU) in terms of the content lifecycle. In other words, at this stage, your reader is unaware of your solution and often unaware of their problem.

If you’re not an expert in this area, then you may not realize the work that goes into blog “writing” for EVERY post. It’s not just about writing and editing!

• Analyzing headlines
• Researching keywords
• Reviewing existing content
• Looking at competition
• Determining post type
• Making content scannable
• Formatting
• Paying attention to sentence structure (things like Fleisch formula)
• Knowing proper grammar (and using it)
• Making the post the appropriate tone
• Developing unique content
• Crafting enticing opening lines/intro
• Optimizing for SEO
• Linking to the right external and internal content
• Using conversion tactics/call to actions
• Searching for the right photos
• Designing visuals

You want content that is good for search and social which means it’s worthy of ranking and sharing. And that means knowing what you’re doing!

Most certainly it’s time to hire a blog writer when content marketing isn’t your area of expertise.

6) You don’t have the time

You run a business and don’t have time to be in the weeds. That’s no surprise!

Concentrating on the biggest priorities for your business makes you successful. And, hiring a blog writer gives you the opportunity to focus on the bigger ticket items that bring in the higher dollars.

When you delegate your blog production to others, you don’t need to worry that your blog’s quality is suffering while you’re preoccupied with other tasks.

Even if you can squeeze another to-do item on your long list, should you?

Ask yourself what you could be doing with the time you’re getting back by hiring a writer to take the burden off of you. It’s not necessarily just work-related items.

With the time you save, you might be able to focus on:

• family
• health
• wellness
• travel
• hobbies
• interests
• philanthropy
• education
• personal goals

What’s not to love about that?!

Wrapping It Up

In the end, it’s up to you whether or not you feel comfortable hiring someone else to write your blog posts. There is some ramp-up time, and it may take a couple of tries before you find the right writer. Yet, there are plenty of benefits as I just explained.

Don’t forget that just because you hire a blog writer doesn’t mean it has to stay that way forever. The great part is that you can always change your mind if you want to return to writing for your blog.