I get it. Content marketing can be expensive and you’re not sure it will get enough results to justify the cost. So, why can’t you just write your own content?
After all, you’re the expert – you’re the one everyone wants to hear from. So why should you hire someone who’s not you to write content to try to attract people to work with you?
In short, the answer boils down to the fact that a good content marketer should be able to communicate your message to prospects, but better. Here are a few of the ways hiring a professional content marketer is better than trying to do your own content marketing:
Table of Contents
- Your Blog Is More Likely to Show Up in Relevant Searches
- Blog Post Topic Research
- Can Get Your Blog Posts Published Consistently
- Your Blog Posts Are More likely to Engage and Convert Leads
- A Content Marketer Can Sound Like You … But Better
- Conclusion
1) Your Blog Is More Likely to Show Up in Relevant Searches
At a minimum, a content marketer can help take the burden of creating blog posts, newsletters, website content, etc. off your plate. That alone is no small feat. Depending on how long you want your blog posts to be and how often you want to blog (not to mention all the other content you should be creating), and how long it takes to you to write a blog post, just having someone create the content after you come up with the topic ideas and guidelines can be worth the investment all on its own. Think how much more you could get done if you spent that time doing other things for your business?
But a content strategist can take your blog one step (or several leaps) further by making sure your content is relevant to your audience right now.
2) Blog Post Topic Research
One of the biggest mistakes I see small business owners and solopreneurs making with their blog is writing about whatever they want whenever they want without taking into consideration what really matters to their audience.
A content strategist can help you identify topics your target audience is searching for and not finding answers to because no one else has covered it yet. That gap between what they’re searching for and what has already been covered is known as a content gap and it’s SEO gold.
If too many people have already covered it, then it doesn’t matter how high the search volume is because you won’t be able to cut through the all the noise that’s already out there. On the other hand, if no one is searching for it, then there isn’t much value in spending the time or money in covering the topic on your own blog. A content strategist can help you find that sweet spot so you can make sure every blog post is relevant to your target audience.
Keyword research goes along with that. Your headline should contain the primary keyword for that particular post, but you should also have that keyword/phrase, as well as other keywords, scattered throughout the post, and in order to make sure you use keywords that will actually boost your ability to show up in relevant searches, you need someone who knows how to do keyword research.
3) Can Get Your Blog Posts Published Consistently
Blogging on a consistent schedule is key to showing up in online searches, but most business owners and solopreneurs simply don’t do it. They blog when inspiration strikes, or when they have time, but as soon as they get busy with client work or family obligations, the blog falls by the wayside, and guess what? Google notices. If you managed to build up an audience before things got busy, they’ll also notice the sudden drop off in new content, and chances are they won’t come back.
The more recently your content was published, the more relevant it’s perceived to be, both by Google and by readers. Our world is constantly changing, so if you haven’t published anything new in months, people will wonder if it’s still relevant.
Making sure you blog regularly is also a great way to show up in searches for your desired keyword. For example, if you’re an attorney who specializes in helping your clients get their estate plans in order, you can only use the keyword “estate plan” so often in one blog post without keyword stuffing (which is bad and can backfire). But if you write a series of blog posts about the importance of getting your estate in order before it’s too late, you can sprinkle that keyword throughout all those blog posts, which will give your website a better chance of ranking in those searches.
4) Your Blog Posts Are More Likely to Engage and Convert Leads
My very first client who hired me to write blog posts for him was an attorney who was writing his own blog posts. When I took a look at his blog to see what I was expected to write, I found content that jumped from one topic to another without any segue and generally confused the heck out of me. I eagerly took the job because I knew I could write better than he could. Within six months I had brought in $75,000 worth of business for his law firm through my blog posts.
Just because you know how to write does not necessarily mean you’re the best person to write blog posts. Content marketing is its own, unique skill and if you try to write a blog post the same way you wrote your book reports or philosophy essays, you’re going to bore your audience, and a bored prospect does not become a customer.
A professional content marketer can create engaging content that speaks to the audience’s needs in a way that engages them and keeps them reading long to enough to get to the call to action. A good content marketer should also be able to craft an effective call to action that meets your audience where they are in the buyer journey and leads them to the next logical step in that journey. You can lose out on a lot of opportunities by using a call to action that either asks too much, or not enough of your audience, but a professional content marketer can craft a call to action that’s just right.
5) A Content Marketer Can Sound Like You … But Better
A good content marketer should be able to emulate your voice and tone, which means they should be able to sound like you … but better.
As we talked about in the previous section, sometimes knowing as much as you know about your industry can mean you leave people not in your industry feeling confused when you go off about some shiny, new product or feature you’ve recently added. No matter how excited you are by the prospect of helping your customers in a new way, communicating that benefit to your customers in a way they can understand, and speaks to their pain points, is its own challenge, and one you might not be best equipped to meet.
A professional content marketer on the other hand should be able to understand what you’re so excited about and translate it into the benefits for which your target audience is looking, so when high-quality prospects find your website and read all about how much better you can make their lives, they’ll share your excitement, which will make them more likely to become customers.
A professional content marketer should also be able to make sure your content is free of any typos or grammatical errors. You might not think they’re a big deal, but in fact, your business can lose up to twice as many leads by having typos and grammatical mistakes in your content, compared to your competitors whose content is free of errors. Prospects also spent significantly less on time web pages that contained typos or grammatical errors, compared to content that was free of errors. So, even if you can’t hire a professional content marketer, you should at least be able to hire a professional editor to look over the content you’ve written one last time before you hit that “publish” button.
6) Conclusion
Contrary to popular belief, content marketing is not something that anyone can do. It is a profession, just like any other, that requires a particular skillset and training. While you can certainly write a blog post about whatever strikes your fancy and publish it on your website, it’s not necessarily going to get you the results you need unless you know how to conduct keyword research, conduct blog post topic research, craft a compelling headline, write engaging content using keywords from your research, and end with a compelling call to action that matches where your audience is in the buyer journey. All while making sure the content is free of any typos or grammatical errors.
Even if you can do all that on your own, you’re busy, and chances are your time is better spent working on other aspects of your business while you hire a professional content marketer to write your content for you.
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