6 Pointers for Managing a Far off Freelance Writing Group

Freelance writers are a godsend for plenty of companies having a look to ramp up their content material advertising and marketing efforts. However managing a far off staff of writers isn’t any cakewalk. You want to make sure your writers honor their commitments and ship paintings that meets your imaginative and prescient, the entire whilst keeping off scammers and time-wasters. Unsurprisingly, those demanding situations simplest turn into extra pronounced as your writing staff grows.

Thankfully, my time overseeing greater than 350 freelancers at WordAgents has taught me a factor or two about the best way to organize a far off staff of writers successfully. Listed here are the principle courses I have discovered:

1. Leverage era

Applying far off operating gear and on-line platforms is a no brainer in relation to coordinating a geographically dispersed staff of writers. In fact, given the abundance of choices to be had, it may be a problem to collect an easy-to-use tech stack that maximizes productiveness. 

In my enjoy, the next gear paintings nicely for successfully managing our writing staff’s workflow and keeping up constant, high quality output:

• MarketMuse for content material briefing

• Grammarly for proofreading

• Copyscape for rooting out plagiarism

• ClickUp for undertaking control

• Google Workspace for file group

• Slack for fast or asynchronous verbal exchange

• Zoom for are living conferences

• Loom for video messages and displays

• Trolley for fee control

• BambooHR for managing staff knowledge

Comparable: 5 Pointers for Managing a Digital Group

2. Set up same old working procedures

A not unusual hurdle when hiring freelance writers is getting them up-to-speed on how your enterprise operates and clarifying what you are expecting of them. The easiest way to briefly acclimate new writers to your enterprise is to expand a well-defined onboarding program that conveys your same old working procedures in easy black and white.

To reach this, I like to recommend you create a “author operations playbook” handy out to all new freelancers. This starter-pack useful resource must comprise the whole lot your writers wish to find out about operating together with your staff, together with the criteria you are expecting from their paintings, your bill/fee procedure and directions on the best way to get admission to any gear or coaching that may lend a hand with their writing.   

It’s additionally value putting in place a web based hub the place writers can simply get admission to data, like their efficiency metrics, consumer comments (if acceptable) and fee historical past.

3. Refine your hiring funnel 

Developing an optimized hiring funnel is very important for decreasing the chance of taking over board wrong applicants. The sooner you are able to clear out poor-quality writers, the less complications you can have down the street.

The trick is to deter dangerous applicants from ever making use of within the first position. To chop down our pool of candidates at WordAgents, we ask all applicants to write down a small check piece, entire a brief on-line direction, and attend a video name earlier than deciding whether or not to rent them. (I must notice that we simplest percentage check assignments finished by way of our applicants inside our staff. We by no means ship candidate paintings to shoppers.)

If an applicant is a hit, we will position them on a brief probationary duration throughout which we will observe their talent to ship the paintings we set for them. From time to time, new writers will overestimate how a lot paintings they are able to tackle and omit that “author fatigue” exists. Because of this, we attempt to restrict the workload of recent writers to not more than 2,500 phrases every week. 

Comparable: Find out how to Rent Most sensible-Tier Freelance Writers in your Content material Industry

4. Push for responsibility

When managing a far off writing staff at scale, slipping requirements could cause giant issues as an increasing number of of your time is spent chasing up writers who stray from the principles. So, it is crucial to beef up your requirements obviously and steadily. Finally, the fewer time you spend operating down “particular instances” and the less revision requests you obtain, the easier your ROI might be.

Just remember to determine a standardized comments process the place writers get common and truthful value determinations in regards to the high quality and amount in their paintings. You’ll additionally inspire writers to persist with the criteria by way of putting in place an ongoing coaching program. Your best possible and worst performers must frequently take part in those training periods to foster a tradition of collaboration and mutual fortify inside your staff.

5. Focal point on results vs. job

Micromanagement is an useless and impractical technique when coping with a big staff of writers. Accordingly, you must position a miles higher emphasis at the amount and high quality of your writers’ output fairly than the minute main points in their day by day actions.

This implies environment transparent targets in your writers but in addition trusting that their ability and coaching will make them ship high quality and punctual paintings.

Whether or not generating a work of search engine marketing writing, an guide or a touchdown web page, other writers will manner other assignments with their very own distinctive plan. Leaving them to take on the undertaking in no matter method fits them best possible will give them a better sense of possession of their paintings.  
Comparable: Micromanagement Is Homicide: So Forestall Killing Your Staff

6. Put a concerted emphasis on over-communicating

My philosophy is that there is no such factor as over-communication when operating in a far off operating surroundings.

I have already discussed the significance of frequently reinforcing requirements and speaking your same old working procedures on your writing staff. The similar is going for letting your staff find out about new traits inside your enterprise or group.

You can wish to expand a verbal exchange technique in your staff to make certain that the proper messages get to the proper folks on the proper time with out growing data overload. For instance, your communications technique must lay out the frequency of staff conferences and come with standardized assembly templates to make sure they keep productive.

Comparable: 

Lately’s virtual financial system makes it more uncomplicated than ever for organizations to satisfy their advertising and marketing KPIs thru the assistance of freelance writers. However some great benefits of outsourcing paintings to freelancers additionally introduce a brand new set of demanding situations for advertising and marketing managers.

I’m hoping this submit has reassured you that those demanding situations are completely surmountable. The important thing to managing a staff of far off freelance writers at scale is to expand well-communicated and repeatable techniques which are smooth to observe.