As a business-owner, you know that the content on your blog, your product descriptions and even your Twitter feed can make or break you. In a world where consumers are bombarded with information from every direction, the quality of your content is what sets you apart from the competition. Poor content drives people away; great content brings them back again and again.
But producing that great content consistently is far easier said than done. Between managing your team, dealing with suppliers, handling customer queries, and actually delivering your products or services, content creation often gets pushed to the back burner. And when it does get done, it’s often rushed, which means the quality suffers.
That’s where an external content writer comes in.
You Need an External Writer
Creating a quality blog post is about far more than just sitting down and typing out a few hundred words. A single well-crafted article requires thorough research into the topic, interviews with relevant experts or stakeholders, careful headline development that captures attention, multiple rounds of proofreading and editing, sourcing appropriate images, and finally uploading and formatting the piece for your website.
When you add all of that up, a single blog post can take at least three hours to produce — and that’s for someone who writes professionally. For a business owner juggling a dozen other responsibilities, it can take considerably longer. Those are hours you could be spending on sales calls, strategy meetings, or simply running your business.
An external writer handles every step of that process for you. You provide the topic or a brief outline, and they deliver a polished, ready-to-publish article. It’s that simple.
It’s a Huge Commitment
Let’s do the maths. If you’re publishing two or three blog posts per week — which is the minimum recommended for maintaining an active online presence — and each post takes around three hours, you’re looking at six to nine hours of writing per week. That’s roughly 40 hours per month dedicated solely to content creation.
Forty hours. That’s an entire working week, every single month, spent on blog posts alone. And that doesn’t include the time needed for product descriptions, email newsletters, social media updates, and all the other content your business requires. Managing in-house content demands a significant and ongoing time investment that most small business owners simply cannot afford.
Even if you hire a member of staff to handle your content, you’re still responsible for briefing them, reviewing their work, providing feedback, and managing their workload. The time savings are rarely as significant as you might hope.
External Writers Have Their Own Coffee
One of the often-overlooked benefits of working with freelance writers is just how little overhead they bring. There’s no salary to pay during quiet months, no holiday entitlement to cover, no desk to provide, and no coffee to buy. You pay for the content you need, when you need it, and nothing more.
The management burden is also drastically reduced. A good freelance writer is a vetted professional with years of experience and specialised expertise in their field. They don’t need hand-holding or micromanaging. Give them a clear brief and a deadline, and they’ll deliver quality work on time.
Many freelance content writers have backgrounds in journalism, marketing, or specific industries, which means they bring specialist knowledge that would be expensive and time-consuming to develop in-house. They understand SEO, they know how to write for different audiences, and they can adapt their tone and style to match your brand perfectly.
Your time is your most valuable resource. Stop spending it on tasks that a skilled professional can handle better, faster, and more cost-effectively. Leave the content to someone who lives and breathes the written word, and get back to doing what you do best — growing your business.