There is a myriad of benefits to maintaining an on-site blog for your digital business, which is precisely why many modern digital marketing agencies offer their clients monthly blog packages. As a writer of on-site blogs myself, however, there is an understanding that many startup businesses and other smaller companies are often forced to invest their limited resources in other areas of organisational development. Investing in blog writing is largely considered to be a luxury amongst many Australian startups operating outside of the tech and eCommerce sectors.
The fact of the matter is, however, that boosting your site’s organic traffic can also be a low-cost/high-reward endeavour if you play it right. Taking advantage of independent contractors or freelancers is generally recommended for startups looking to reap all the benefits of having an on-site blog or boosting their organisation’s online presence without necessarily having to sacrifice the time or other resources of their own limited workforce.
There are countless advantages to outsourcing your blog writing, so much so that exploring all of these benefits in-depth could honestly fill a book! In lieu of penning a thesis, however, we’ll just be outlining the major benefits that your micro business can experience when outsourcing your SEO copy and on-site blog writing.
Maintaining a flexible workforce and schedule
If you’ve ever felt like there’s simply just not enough time in a regular workweek to tend to all your company’s organisational processes, you’ll be happy to hear that you’re certainly not alone. Small business owners are amongst some of the most overworked and underpaid professionals in the world, with a growing majority of Australian small business owners reporting that they often work over 50 or even 60 hours a week.
With such long hours required in your company’s first few months if not years of operation, micro-businesses really can’t afford to deal with delays with regards to both your core deliverables, as well as your site development and SEO content production. At this point in your business’ development, having a team of in-house professionals may actually prove to be less productive than enlisting the services of freelancers, simply because freelancers both require no physical office space and aren’t tied to conventional working hours.
So long as you set firm deadlines and provide your freelancers with concise instructions and structured guidelines for the work they’re tasked with, your business will likely receive work that’s completed to a high standard, in a timely manner, and that work will continue to filter in even outside the ‘9 to 5’ so that business owners who are continuously working will still be able to make meaningful strides with regards to building up their online visibility on their own schedules.
Yes, this system will take some time to establish, especially if you’re hiring independent contractors over established industry professionals, but the preliminary legwork you do in setting up these relationships with your team of dedicated freelancers will likely result in your organisation being able to produce quality written work that maintains a consistent tone on a long term basis.
Providing opportunities for young professionals
There’s no denying that the gig economy has held an immense impact on the wider Australian workforce, especially so during the COVID-19 pandemic. With many companies downsizing or even closing their doors indefinitely, a great number of qualified and experienced Australian professionals lost their jobs virtually overnight.
Even with the JobKeeper subsidy, many professionals working on temporary jobs or on contracted work were compelled to seek alternative employment or opportunities outside their core workload. In a similar vein, young professionals looking to gain real-world experience alongside completing tertiary coursework continue to seek opportunities that may help them cultivate their own professional portfolios.
In essence, there was an influx of writers and editors looking for casual employment or contract work over 2020, and even post-lockdown those numbers have continued to rise as many professionals recognised the value of a flexible work week. With a large population of ready and able freelance writers to choose from, making full use of the symbiosis between these writers and established businesses seeking web copy and on-site blog content should really be considered a no-brainer by employers operating in all industries.
Moving from a remote workforce to in-house staff
All startups inevitably reach a point where their managerial team may be wondering if they can afford to hire in-house staff. The fears that your organisation may be expanding too quickly are well-known by entrepreneurs from all walks of life. It’s important to note, however, that failing to take action at the right time can often be just as detrimental to your organisation’s growth as taking action at the wrong time.
There are countless benefits to keeping your micro business as streamlined as possible in its earlier years. After all, you don’t want to be burdened with the costs of salaries or operational overheads when your company budget is still incredibly sensitive to any changes in staff or to your customer base.
So, how do you determine the ideal time to expand your business and bring your content production in-house? Freelancers can actually play an immense role in your company’s ability to identify its optimal time for hiring. If your micro business has reached a point where your on-site blog post creation processes have been well-defined and are demonstrably easy to teach to remote writers, these same processes can naturally be translated into the core responsibilities of an in-house team with minimal fuss.
And who knows? You may even find ideal candidates amongst your team of freelancers! Hiring a remote worker to join your in-house team may cut your training time quite significantly, alongside potentially removing the need for you to advertise job vacancies or interview external candidates too.
Time and energy to take advantage of growth opportunities
We’ll be ending with arguably the most prominent and widely known advantage of investing in freelancers: freeing up your own time! As stated earlier, small business owners cannot be expected to oversee all aspects of their organisational operations, even if your small business consists of a single storefront or centres around offering a singular service. Small business owners also cannot afford to get caught up in the minutiae of their everyday operations, simply because doing so will push back your timeline for organisational development, allowing any of your local competitors operating at a similar scale to gain a firmer footing.
Microbusiness owners with razor-sharp foresight probably recognised the potential for web development in COVID-19 lockdowns. Record numbers of Australians were shopping online and engaging with digital content, making Aussie lockdowns the perfect time for small businesses to start investing in on-site blog creation and SEO content development. In the present day, small business owners who are looking to forge ahead post-lockdown have continued to recognise that investing in their on-site blog to boost organic traffic is just the solution they’ll need to see their business through the initial tumult of our post-lockdown economy.
If you didn’t spend lockdown refining your company’s web presence, now is most certainly the time to do so! Aussie consumers are out in droves, and small business owners have a lot to gain from ensuring that their digital content is well-presented and designed to target their desired demographics. At the end of the day, an investment in your SEO will enable your organisation to become a fixture of your industry post-lockdown and beyond.