Outsourcing Content Writing Services: To Be Or Not To Be?
That’s an age-old dilemma. To decide which type of content writing team to choose – in-house or external content writing services – calls for understanding the pros and cons of both. So, here we are to help you get this dilemma sorted. Scroll down to know what is in store for you if you start outsourcing content writing services or build a team within your company.
What’s good about content writing outsourcing?
A bunch of pros keep content writing agencies ahead of others. Wonder what these are? We have them listed out for you:
- Cost flexibility
The biggest advantage is cost-effectiveness. You can get your content writing work done at a much lower cost but higher efficiency. Wage patterns vary from one agency to another. If you are a startup you can save immensely on your fixed cost and training an internal team. Even for bigger enterprises, outsourcing content writing to content writing companies stands out to be a more profitable option. Instead of maintaining an entire team of content writers, they can simply hire content coordinators who can look after the delegation of work and coordinate between the agencies and the rest of the in-house digital marketing team.
- Extended talent pool
Outsourcing content writing means reaching out to a huge pool of specialists or experienced content writers or developers. You can hire them based on their skills and experiences. Usually, some of the best content writing companies have writers from a varied background in their team. While some are generalists, others specialize in particular niches. Depending on your requirement, you can get your content written without worrying much about finding the right candidate(s).
Let us say, you are a Cloud startup or an EdTech startup providing live online coding classes, and you need articles for your blog and other content publishing channels. You would ideally want real-life coders or someone having the knowledge of Cloud computing, AWS, Agile, etc to write those articles for you instead of any random freelance content writers. It is usually difficult to find coder-writers as per your requirement but if you outsource content writing to an agency it will get you the resource you need. Content writing agencies, as already stated above, have people from different backgrounds working under them.
- Faster delivery of work
When you choose a content writing company it relieves you of the time you would be spending on recruiting. Secondly, Content writing outsourcing decreases “time to market.” One of the important qualities of a reliable content writing service provider is the ability to adhere to deadlines. So, no matter how complex or big your assignment is, the agency delivers the work within the time they commit to you either verbally or on paper.
- Scale-up and down
Improved scalability is yet another advantage of outsourcing to content writing agencies. Want to boost the process? Opt for a bigger team. No work at hand? Decrease the reach to the agency.
- Shared responsibility
This comes as a big boon when you work with a third-party content writing service provider. It has its own team of content managers, senior content writers, proofreaders and sub-editors who not only help train the writers as per your requirements and standard but also quality-check the article multiple times before they are delivered to you and/or made ready for publishing. As a result, the chances of factual errors and quality issues get reduced significantly.
And talk about value-addition! Some content writing companies help with SEO, infographic creation and other services that help enrich an overall project.
- Leveraging manpower
If you are looking at content marketing from a strategic point of view then you would be requiring content in bulk- for blog posts, PR, re-purposing of landing pages and so on. Getting the entire requirement met through hiring a single freelance writer or a scattered team of writers can be quite problematic. You have to manage payments based on different payout rates, train each writer separately every time you assign a new project, and maintain communication with multiple points of contact. The content writing companies take care of these issues. They are, usually, sizeable teams of writers; hence, they are capable of handling bulk jobs in a systematic way. So, you simply have one point of contact to explain your ideas to. The agency manages the rest internally
For you, these are the Top 10 Qualities of A Reliable Content Writing Company.
What’s good about in-house content teams?
When enterprises build up their own content writers’ team, it comes with its own pros. Guess what they are?
- Your team knows your culture
Your team of writers has been with you from the start. They know what you need from them. They are already motivated and thrive to give you the best outcome. Thus the workforce is already aligned with your company culture.
- Makes way for quick changes
Who doesn’t know how finicky some clients can be! They are always asking for an edit here, a snip there and so on. With an in-house team, you can communicate those changes to them quickly instead of waiting to reach out to the outsourced content writing agency.
- Easy communication
The writers of the in-house teams in your content writing company always work together. Some of them have been together since day one, right? They share a certain level of comfort while working with each other. This makes communication easy, clear and comfortable. Direct face-to-face communication eliminates the chances of misunderstanding and improves effectiveness.
Even the downsides of content writing outsourcing can be tackled effectively
Believe it or not, both outsourcing content writing and relying upon in-house teams have their fair share of disadvantages. Let’s first have a look at the problems that you may face if you choose to outsource content writing services and how you can deal with those.
1. Risk of a security breach
It is quite likely that you never even meet the content writing agencies whom you outsource your work to. The word of mouth is all that you have to rely upon, right? There is a fat chance that your idea gets stolen. The best way to negate that chance is to enter into a written agreement so that you can sue the company in the case of a security breach.
2. Lack of communication
With face-to-face communication completely absent among team members delivering the projects, there might be a mismatch of the content, quality issues etc. The provider of content writing services and you, the service user may also fall prey to inefficient communication. Moreover, if your chosen content writing outsourcing companies are from different time zones, there are all the more chances of lack of communication.
But hey! In the era of video and web conferencing that allows for screen sharing and presentation, working remotely should not be looked at as a challenge. It’s just a new way of working that you have to master. And, trust us, once you start collaborating remotely, it’s just a matter of time!
Now let’s pay attention to the disadvantages of having an in-house team
- Lack of cost-effectiveness
Working with a vendor is always, as we already mentioned before, cost-effective. Building a team calls for additional investment in resources. You have to cough up the taxes, rent, hardware and software expenses etc. Additionally, you have to train your employees, provide them with perks, allow them to have sick days etc. All of these add up to the increased cost.
- Staff turnover
Content writing companies are always on the lookout for writers with the capability of delivering quality works. Your prized writer may shift the company any day if he/she gets a better offer. If you are working with freelance writers, you are all the more at risk of staff turnover as they are never bound to work with you for a certain period of time. On any given day they might call it quits. This will leave you with the humongous task your client gave you.
So, what should you do? Tally the pros and cons of both and analyse which suits you better. There are ways to eliminate the disadvantages also. Implement them and bring out the best work out of your team of writers or the vendor agency. Oh, and another thing; want quality content at the right rates delivered to you perfectly on time? Look no further- contact us!
