Hire, Outsource, or Purchase? Choose the Best Content Creation Option for Your Small Business

If you’re a solopreneur or a small business owner, limited budgets could often prevent you from running aggressive marketing campaigns. But what if you can still get results without deep pockets? This is where content marketing can help you.

Unlike the more common marketing activities such as ads and promotions, content marketing is a highly affordable technique for small businesses. Yet many companies still shy away from it. After all, setting up blogs, websites and social media profiles is the easy part. But who will create the content to keep the audience engaged? It demands specialized skills and you might not have the resources to spare.

Creating content is inarguably one of the biggest hurdles that’s keeping many small companies from adopting a content marketing strategy. So, in this article, we discuss the important content creation options available for a small business owner so you can choose what’s best for you. But first, let’s look at why you should make content marketing an important part of your marketing strategy.

What’s content marketing and how can it help your small business?

Content marketing is a highly focused marketing technique. It involves sharing specially designed content with a targeted audience. This is done to achieve specific business objectives for short- to long-term results.

And this content can take various forms, from text-based formats such as blog posts, case studies, social media posts, and ebooks to highly visual and auditory types like videos, infographics, GIFs, webinars, and podcasts. But today, many platforms allow hybrid content formats that use a combination of text, visual, and auditory content types.

Strategically created content could be an excellent asset for a company of any scale. Here are some important ways your small business can benefit from a content marketing strategy.

• Rank higher in search results with the help of a keyword strategy.
• Engage your audience and create a brand following.
• Build credibility by demonstrating expertise in your industry niche.
• Leverage the viral power of digital word-of-mouth.
• Demonstrate your brand personality by creating your unique brand voice.
• Listen to brand conversations and gauge customer views and opinions.
• Collect useful data on customer insights with opinion polls, surveys, and reviews.
• Demonstrate your brand values and the social and environmental causes you support.

Despite the low investment needs, the benefits of content marketing are certainly compelling. It’s an excellent strategy to drive traffic to your website and boost conversions in the long term.

But what’s the best way to go about creating content for your business? Let’s take a look.

Hire, outsource, or purchase: What’s the best content creation option for your small business?

For a small business owner, keeping costs under tight control is a priority. This has led to many entrepreneurs taking up multiple operational tasks on their own. So, adding content creation to your personal list of responsibilities could be tempting. But generating content is time-consuming and can take your attention away from critical operational and strategic activities. This is why it’s important to look at other options to create and execute your content marketing strategy.

There are three main methods small business owners could use to generate their content―hiring, outsourcing, and purchasing. And what’s best for you will depend on your specific business needs and where you are in your business journey. Let’s look at each of these options so you can determine what will best work for your company.

1. Hiring

Adding content creation to an existing employee’s work responsibilities could become counterproductive as time goes by. It gets difficult to multitask as the content workload increases, especially when audience engagement picks up. Besides, it requires a separate set of skills.

So, having a dedicated employee for content creation could pay off in the long term. But that’s not to say that it doesn’t have any disadvantages.

Let’s look at how your business can benefit from hiring a content creator as a permanent employee.

Pros

• You gain better control over their time.
• More involvement in the business means they’ll have a better understanding of your business requirements.
• Providing opportunities to build a career could help you gain their long-term commitment.
• Paying a fixed salary will eliminate the hassle of negotiating prices for each project. This also makes it easy to plan your budgets.

Cons

• The cost of hiring and onboarding could be expensive.
• Monthly costs will include salary and additional expenses such as overheads, work resources, employment taxes, insurance, and benefits.
• Hiring locally will mean a limited pool of candidates to choose from.
• The non-availability of the employee, for example, due to an illness, could disrupt the workflow.
• Terminating services could be tricky if you’re unhappy with the performance.

Advertising on job boards, using headhunters, and browsing local profiles on LinkedIn can all help you with the hiring process. You will of course need to follow the same hiring practices as you would with any other employee―interview, check work portfolio, give some test tasks, and get references.

2. Outsourcing

Today, many businesses depend on independent professionals, so much so that freelance workers now contribute to the US economy with an estimated $1 trillion. And with COVID-19 pushing companies to cut down expenses and run lean operations, even more businesses are turning to this growing global talent pool.

So, how can outsourcing your content to an independent writer serve your business needs?

Pros

• Gain access to high-quality content from writers who specialize in each content type.
• Eliminate hiring, onboarding, and other recurring employee expenses.
• Can maintain a pool of freelance writers to offset any disruptions to the workflow because of the non-availability of a writer.
• Access a large global pool of independent writers to suit your specific work and budget requirements.
• Flexibility to end work arrangements when required.

Cons

• Fee increases over time could make it difficult to plan your budgets in the long-term.
• They have less involvement in the business, which means briefing them could take more time.
• You will have less control over their time and availability.

The most popular methods to find independent writers include advertising on freelancer platforms and job boards. You can also identify writers by browsing published content that’s relevant to your industry and directly approach them.

3. Purchasing

This is another content acquiring method that’s rapidly growing in popularity. Instead of creating your own content, this involves purchasing already developed, unpublished content from large article catalogs. It’s an excellent option for small businesses looking to quickly build their content assets, such as company blogs.

Pros

• Save time by eliminating the hassle of finding writers or hiring employees.
• Access high-quality content from a large collection of work.
• One-time fixed payment with no additional costs or ongoing work commitments.
• Purchase full rights or usage licenses based on your requirement and budget.
• Freedom to tweak the content or use it as it is.
• An excellent option when you need content in a hurry.
• Much lower rates compared to getting custom work done.

Cons

• The content you purchase will most likely need further customization to fit your business needs. This could mean an additional cost.
• Mainly limited to blog posts and articles.

There are several platforms that offer article catalogs covering a broad range of industries. They feature unpublished work that is already proofread and checked for plagiarism by their in-house editors. An offshoot of this approach is content hiring, where some platforms allow businesses to rent already published articles through licensing agreements.

A final word

In addition to the three content creation options we’ve discussed, user-generated content has also gained traction. This is where you get your audience to create content on your behalf. It can include sharing their brand experiences, reviews, and testimonials. But this is best left for already established brands with a significant following online.

As a small business that’s just starting out with a content marketing strategy, hiring a dedicated employee, outsourcing to an independent writer, or purchasing pre-written content will better fit your business needs and limited budgets. Weigh the pros and cons and understand your goals and limitations before determining what will work best for you. Ultimately, you may even decide to use a combination of these content creation options for your small business.