A note from Janice:
I know that not every technology company has the budget to hire a freelance technical copywriter with my depth of subject knowledge, writing skill, and marketing savvy. For these companies, the freelance marketplace sites can be a good way to find writers for less-demanding content projects. But using these sites can be overwhelming and nonproductive if not approached carefully.
In this helpful guest post, marcom manager Christine Farrier offers practical advice on finding the right freelance writer on the marketplace sites. Her tips also apply to finding writers through a LinkedIn or Google search.
Four Tips to Guarantee Freelancer Websites Deliver Great Results
By Christine Farrier
The current
stable of freelancing and crowdsourcing sites offer a compelling solution for
the staff-poor and most likely budget-poor marketing leaders who are
increasingly called on to do more with less, while still attempting to uphold
their personal and corporate standards of professionalism and
effectiveness. The challenge is to
make certain that the job or projects you identify as suitable for virtual
outsourcing won’t bounce back to your mile-long checklist as an item you end up
doing yourself. That would sort of
defeat the point.
In the
beginning, there was the creative brief . . .
Just as in the offline world, preparation is key. Taking the necessary time to organize your
thoughts and to clearly identify the outcome that you want to achieve will save
you hours of frustration—hours that could be better spent on those tasks that
truly make the best use of your time and talents. One of my first posts on a freelancing site
yielded so many proposals that I yanked the listing in a panic, realizing that I
would never be able to weed through the hundreds of vendor responses in the one
hour that I had optimistically allotted to the task.
A few posts later, both the websites and I
had become a lot smarter. All the
established sites (e.g., Elance) now require much more complete project descriptions to make the selection process more efficient for
everyone involved. [Editor's note: an
experienced, independent freelancer will also ask for complete project
information before giving you a cost estimate for accepting the project.]
And while the design marketplace 99designs is the only site that actually calls their task
description a creative brief, in preparing your project requirements, this is the perfect approach to take. Be ultraclear. Be superspecific. Be ridiculously
concise. Pretend you are talking to
your 17-year-old nephew, because for coding or SEO jobs, you very well might
be.
Key
Elements
1. Who are
you? This is not the time to
cut and paste your three-page mission statement, value proposition, brand DNA,
or Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Think
more along the lines of your firm’s elevator pitch or press release
boilerplate. If you are masking your
company’s identity (no sense in alerting the competition that you lack in-house
AdWords expertise), you might mention that you are a company “similar to” the
biggest player in your space. The 600-pound gorillas are likely to be more
easily recognized to a wider audience of freelancers and provide the appropriate
context, tone, and connotation for your project.
2. Who are you
looking for? Aim high—it can’t hurt, and it will
certainly help. If your ideal provider is a Hedge Fund SME (subject matter
expert) and Chicago Manual of Style-freak who dabbles in social media, works in
your time zone, and can turn around edits within two hours of receiving your
draft comments, say so. Someone (or a
team) in Istanbul, Rio de Janiero, or Brooklyn has the skills that
you require at the ready.
3. What EXACTLY
do you need done? If you don’t know the answer to this
question, you aren’t ready to outsource, and you especially aren’t ready to
crowdsource. Work through breakfast,
lunch, and dinner (again), and do it yourself. You might get a headache, but you will save
yourself a migraine. Imagine every question that a clamoring throng of
freelancers might ask and answer it in advance.
For example, do
you need a thought leadership piece, a case study, or an advertorial?
How many words does it need to be? Is it a part of a larger
campaign? What goals do you hope the piece will achieve?
Where will the document be published? Your website, a trade
pub? Who is the target audience? Are complementary
components required like a client email announcing the
availability of the material or a concurrent social media push? Do you have a sample of
something similar that you love? Something you hate? How long will you use it for? How long have projects like this taken in
the past? What’s the normal review
process? You get the idea. I have found that the clearer your job
description, the higher the quality of the response you will receive and
typically an end product that is achieved faster and closer (or even better) to
what you originally had in mind.
4. Use a trap
door to help with vetting. The best freelancers are conscientious and
pay attention to the details. It is
what truly separates them from the crowd. Plant a booby trap in your task description
that will help you quickly identify providers who have actually read the brief
that you have put valuable time and effort into versus the trigger fingers who
apply for every job that appears in their highlighted category. Mention that you can only consider
freelancers who provide a link to their latest project or send you a private
message with a knock-knock joke. Not
only will this help you select resources that are going to give you exactly what
you need, but you also might actually smile during the process.
About the Author: Christine Farrier is a Marketing Communications Manager at a financial
services firm that specializes in cloud-based risk and portfolio management
solutions for the alternative investment industry. She can be reached though her LinkedIn profile.