More than words
If you're aged over 25 there's a good chance that the title of this blog post has given you an acoustic 1990s earworm. Sorry about that. It just seemed like a good phrase to use to explain how hiring a freelance writer can be a really good thing for your business (and as earworms go it could be a lot worse).
Seeing as you're reading this now, I'm going to take a wild guess that you can already write in English. You might even be quite good at it. But there are probably lots of other things you're better at, like managing people or inventing an amazing piece of technology.
I'm a pretty good cook, but I know for a fact that if I ever presented my macaroni cheese to Gordon Ramsay he'd call me all sorts of rude names and chuck it in the bin. We all have things we're ok at, terrible at (I am a mathematical dunce) and brilliant at. Knowing and understanding your own skill set is really important when it comes to making money, so if you can find someone who's able to take care of the other bits it would be silly not to, right?
What makes professional writers different is that we understand the science of writing and have a genuine love of words. We've chosen this path because we get excited about this funny old language and all its quirks, to the point where we're probably a bit nerdy about it. We love telling stories and creating the kind of content that people love to read, and share. Oh, and not to blow our own trumpets, we're really good at it too.
As you're probably already aware, any business owner who wants to get ahead needs to have a strong online presence. Blogs are a great way to engage with your audience but there's a knack to it that only really comes with experience.
Hidden in every Google friendly blog post will be lots of carefully chosen keywords that all bring traffic to your website, and it can be a real pain trying to work out which ones to use without making it sound really obvious. We've all seen those annoying clickbait posts that are full of repetition and bad grammar and have the capacity to infect your PC with a nasty virus at 50 paces.
Good copywriters stay well away from those because they don't need to use dodgy methods to get readers interested.
For some people, it's simply about time. Managing your social media posts and making sure all your publicity materials are up to date can be a full time job in itself, so it makes sense to hire someone who does it for a living. If you're serious about getting found online you'll need to be putting out at least three blog posts a week- if it takes you a couple of hours to write a 500 word blog post, that's 25 hours a month.
Soon adds up, doesn't it?
I do understand that this isn't a great time to be asking UK companies to spend extra money. Brexit has sent many of us into a state of panic, so it's perfectly reasonable to want to hang on to as much of your marketing budget as possible.
Here's the good news. Hiring a freelancer is way more affordable than going through an agency or recruiting someone in-house, because most of us work from home. This means that we have very little overheads and travel costs, so we're able to deliver a great job without costing a fortune. And because many of us work round the clock we're able to meet the kind of deadlines you won't get from an office based nine to fiver.
So to go back to that earworm (sorry again), hiring a copywriter is about much more than words. It's about finding gifted storytellers who understand people, can turn the mundane into amazing and can save you valuable time and money.
Go on, give it a try- you might just love us!
This post was originally published on my LinkedIn page:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/more-than-words-why-hiring-freelance-copywriter-can-great-evatt/