Struggling to find good writers? Great stay-at-home-moms who are dependable? Tried oDesk and failed? Well, you’re probably doing it wrong. Allow me to show you in less than seven minutes how to find good writers. It isn’t hard, but you have to be aggressive.
Here are the steps:
1) Write your ad. Keep it short and to the point. Your Title should be “grabbing” and “descriptive”. For example, “Writer Needed for Floral Design Website”. Because you don’t want just “any” writer, you prefer one with experience in your field. The reason you do this is two fold. First, to get people to apply who have experience; Second, anyone who applies and does NOT mention your field you know they didn’t even read the job posting and you can instantly reject them.
2) Once your ad is posted, don’t just sit on your hands and wait for people to apply for your opening, get aggressive and go after the writers! Watch the video and I will show you how easy it is to find great writers.
3) Once you find a good writer, click on the Contact button.
4) Under Job Opening, choose the writing job from the drop down menu.
5) Your message should pull 1-2 key areas from their profile that caught your eye. Just as you want the response you receive to look like the candidate at least put forth the effort to read your job listing, you need to do the same here. It doesn’t have to be long. For example, “Hi Tracy, we have an opening for a writer and I was very impressed with your experience. We are looking for articles written in an active voice with on-page SEO components in place. Do you have some experience in SEO? You mentioned that you write articles up to 500 words. What is the average time it takes you to write an article of that length?”
Once the dialog starts you should waste little time in hiring, as you can always fire them later. Give them a topic and enough direction – possibly another article that has been written that you were happy with. Let them know your expectations upfront and then let them go to work.
The writers that I have had the most success with are those that need little direction. You give them a topic and what you want accomplished. For example, “Hi Tracy, we need an article written in the 350-500 word range dealing with outdoor weddings in the San Francisco Bay Area in the Spring. We would like our client mentioned in the article as a solution.”
That’s it. Turn them loose and let them be creative. Allow for one rewrite and if they can’t get it right move onto someone else. It isn’t an issue of hurting someone’s feelings – it is getting what you need in the time you need it.
You may be suffering from trying to to everything yourself because, well, no one does it as good as you. That’s true. Why? Because no one cares about your business the way that you do because it is yours. However, you got into this business to work less and spend more time doing that things you want to do – not shackled to your laptop.
Take the first step and hire some good writers. This will free up more of your time, gain link popularity, improve traffic and conversion and lower your stress level. All of those are GOOD things.