Leveraging Freelancers to Ride the Content Creation Wave

Episode Summary

On the MarTech Podcast with host Ben Shapiro, Steve breaks down the different types of content, the different types of content providers, and how scaling content through outsourcing can give brands serious weight in the marketplace. Steve and Ben also talk about the content strategies they’re seeing in the industry today, and what those trends mean for the future.

???? Get smart: “Content, if done right, is really a dream channel. The idea is that you earn your traffic, you earn your organic growth, and it stays with you forever. Advertising is paid and is rented and goes away.”

Podcast-at-a-Glance

???? Podcast: MarTech Podcast

????️ Host: Ben Shapiro

???? In his own words: “The MarTech Podcast tells the stories of world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success.”

???? Two of our favorite episodes: “Artificial Intelligence for Growth Companies” with Morphio CEO Eric Vardon, and “Guide to Hiring Contractors to Solve Discrete Marketing Problems” with MeasureMatch CEO James Sandoval

Top Tip from This Episode

Use content as a competitive advantage ????

Steve asks listeners to think big: “If you could create as much content as you wanted at an affordable price from writers who understand your subject matter expertise and also your preferences, what would you do with it?” Content can play a lot of roles, from the bare-bones level of “keep the lights on, be consistent, and make sure you’re respectable when your audience comes to find you”—to truly differentiating yourself and your business.

He mentions a Verblio client, Rankings.io, who is using the platform to create more than a hundred pieces per month for their clients in personal injury law. With that kind of scale—and with the quality that comes from having every single piece edited by a lawyer—Rankings.io is able to give their clients “such a competitive advantage that nobody will be able to compete with them.”

Episode Highlights

In-house writers: Pros? ✔️ Cons? ✔️

“When you work with in-house writers, you have total command and control and they’re going to get your voice, and they’re going to repeat what you have. You can make them into subject matter experts because they’re there full-time. So the benefit of that is outstanding, if you’re most concerned about your own voice—that’s great. The negatives are that first of all, it’s the most expensive route. The second is that you’re basically creating the amount of content that you can write. So you’re writing the amount of content that each writer can produce per month, as opposed as what you should write.” 

All content providers are not created equal

“We’re talking about freelancers as if it’s one option. And I think the idea that’s most prevalent in people’s minds is like an Upwork, a Craigslist—you go out into a marketplace, you see people’s profiles, you go through them all, and they have the advantages of, they’re flexible and you can get the long tail as far as expertise. And the negatives are, they might not be there when you need them to be, and you might be retraining them again and again.

The second type is the new movement that we think that we are a part of at Verblio, which is creating a platform that really delivers content writers as a service—a combination of sourcing those writers for you, and also delivering it as a platform so that we’re part of your management experience and we’re delivering content as your solution, as opposed to sourcing just writers for you.”

Toyota content gets you where you need to go

“There are different types of content. You have your Ferrari content: this is going to be your clear thought leadership piece that only you can write, or you have to hire a super high-end writer in order to do it. The majority of most companies’ content is what I call more Toyota type content. It’s consistent. It’s deliverable. It’s always on time and it’s meeting a very specific purpose.”

One content strategy, multiple objectives ????????????

“I think the dream of good content is that it has many halo effects. One is it brings more clients to you, more cost effectively, on an ongoing basis. The second is that it helps your sales team close them and helps establish you as a premium brand.

…I think another one that’s kind of less obvious is how much it makes you have to think about your business and your audience. It’s basically a forcing function to think more about your audience, your clients, what’s available to them, and what they’re looking for. You’re constantly trying to answer their questions. And if creating consistent content is a part of your strategy, I think it gives you a deeper connection to what your audience is thinking about.”

Top Quotes

????️ Steve:

 [5:18] “The main categories that you are evaluating are your own time, the quality of the writing, affordability, and then also the ability of the writers—so basically, what you can do with those writers.”

 [9:03] “So much of creating great content is getting the ideas out of the thought leader or the subject matter expert and into the hands of the writers with as little friction as possible.”

[10:56] “Content, if done right, is really a dream channel. The idea is that you earn your traffic, you earn your organic growth, and it stays with you forever. Advertising is paid and is rented and goes away.”

 [16:08] “Content has only become more important as other channels went away, like event marketing and the like, and also as paid advertising became less attractive. Particularly now, it can sound off putting to do more paid advertising.”

????️ Ben:

[4:52] “People are outsourcing content production because either they don’t have the ability to produce the content, or they’re having trouble with scale.”

[12:42] “Content can really help you build reach. It can build authority. It also gives you something to say, right? It allows you to have a tone and a perspective which helps your customers think about how your brand is different.”

[15:18] “Nobody wants to be advertised to anymore. You can use your performance marketing channels to circulate your content, which—even though it’s a sponsored piece of content—is still seen as a piece of content, as opposed to an ad.”

[21:12] “It is not an art. It is not a science. It is marketing.”

Learn More

See how Rankings.io is giving their clients a competitive advantage through content in our case study.