Should Your Company Hire A Blog Writing Service?

29 March, 2017

Finally got approval to start a launch a company blog? Great job!  Clearly you know the stats and why this is a crucial next step in your marketing process. Blogging helps you get found online, fuels social media, and according to HubSpot:

  • Business to business (B2B) companies that use blogs receive 67% more leads than their non-blogging competitors.
  • Companies that blog receive 97% more incoming links to their website.
  • Businesses that prioritize blogging are 13 times more likely to enjoy positive ROI.

Now that you know where you’re going, it’s time to figure out how you’re going to get there. You can either blog in-house, hire a blog writing service or take a combo approach.

If you blog in-house, the only cost is your time. Obviously, this is the biggest benefit. The downsides of the in-house approach?

  1. Blogging can slip through the cracks anytime business spikes or a key employee is out. It’s an easy thing to shift the back-burner, and of course, if it’s on the back burner, it’s not achieving all the great benefits listed above.
  2. If you don’t have an in-house editor or someone to gauge quality and optimize blog for search engines, you may get less bang for your buck than planned. Remember, your blog is an extension of your company so it needs to be well-written. And, you need content that engages both readers and search engines – which is a delicate balance.

If you hire a blog writing service, it will clearly cost more, but the job will get done reliably – which means you will actually achieve your goals. The key is to hire a blog writing service that is truly suited to execute your blog writing plan. Some things to keep in mind:

  1. Content MUST BE ORIGINAL. Some companies subscribe to content services that allow them to choose from a library of articles. BIG MISTAKE!  If that article is published anywhere online before you publish it, you will not receive SEO credit which is half the reason for blogging in the first place.
  2. Content must be engaging. As stated above, your blog is your company’s face to the world. It needs to be intelligent, engaging, and grammatically correct. Hire a company with professional copywriting skills and preferably multiple copywriters on staff. You don’t want your production schedule hijacked if one writer gets sick. As with anything, you generally, you get what you pay for. Beware of low prices.
  3. Content should be written to an editorial schedule customized for you. You should not settle for generic topics that don’t provide any unique information or value for the reader. Find a blog writing service that will learn your unique business, and write content that represents your expertise.
  4. Content should educate, not sell. The purpose of the blog is to teach, impart wisdom and empower decision making.  Only the last two to three sentences of your blog articles should reference your products and services and how to get more information. The bulk of the article should be sales neutral.

The combo approach is the best approach of all.  Ask a few experts on your team to contribute one article per month. Plug them into your editorial calendar so that one in-house article is scheduled each week. If you’d like, you can ask your blog writing service to edit those articles for grammar and style before you publish them, although of course, this isn’t required. In addition, hire a blog writing service to provide one blog a week. By taking a combo approach, companies can effortlessly achieve greater blogging volume, which in turn increases website traffic, leads and ROI. And, if the in-house person gets too busy, you still have an article to publish from your blog writing service.

Where do you find an amazing blog writing service?

Inbound Insurance Marketing is a great place to start. We specialize in writing insurance blogs, but also write for a variety of other industries.  Learn more about our blog writing services.