I think most business owners who operate only in the physical world would be astonished to know how much written material is required for an online business venture. Using the Internet for commercial purposes requires a huge amount of content. Whether we rely heavily on video or the written word, every utterance or sentence must be carefully crafted.
We can never lose sight of one unavoidable reality; our site is often the first exposure that many of our prospects have to our company. We must make a lasting, favorable impression on our visitors with the words we choose to convey our story. It is essential that our writers meet the expectations of our prospective customers or clients.
Some businesses are large and diverse operations that choose to handle almost every task within one of the company’s departments. Many of us, on the other hand, do not have the time or, perhaps the in-house talent to meet all of the writing needs that we have. A great many Internet marketers choose to out-source the authoring to professionals–or to whom they hope will be professionals. There are many free lance authors and web article writing services available.
Free lance writers and article services can be cost effective solutions. In choosing among the many possible professional writers, be sure to learn how much they understand your business needs. Any writer you use should meet these criteria:
1) They should be fluent in the language of choice (that of your target market). I prefer writers who have grown up with the language rather than those who have learned it later in life, as they will be more familiar with idioms, common expressions and the idiosyncrasies of usage.
2) Unless you narrow your search to only writers who are part of your industry, you will not find someone who is an expert in your field. In most cases, that is not a problem. However you do need to be certain that the writer has the research skills and the research ethic to be able to quickly learn what is necessary to learn to be able to communicate credibly with your prospects.
3) They must be able to write conversationally for the web. Writing for most Internet venues is very different from writing for an academic journal or composing a report for school.
4) They must undertand the purposes of the article. If it will be published on your website, the article may have a very different purpose than if it is to be distributed for article marketing purposes. The former deals with a reader who has already found your site, while the latter is designed to attract visitors to your site.
5) They must recognize the role articles play in your essential search engine optimization efforts. Some free lancers will recognize that need because of repeated exposure to writing for the web. Others will have no idea what the term even means.
All of these concerns are more important than whether an article costs you , or even 0. Ten poor articles do not have the impact on your long term profits that one very good piece of prose will.
