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Ask The Blogger

Blogging Tips & Strategies

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Should I Outsource My Blog Content?

By Christian

Question: I’ve read a lot of prominent bloggers outsource their blog content.  Is this really a viable method of generating content and should I try it?

Ever since Tim Ferriss told the world how he practically outsourced his life in his book The Four Hour Work Week, outsourcing content and design for blogs and websites has seen an incredible explosion popularity.  It sounds great – pay someone else a low fee per article and receive content to put on your website or blog at regular intervals.  Even better – pay a one-time fee and receive 10 or 20 articles so they can be scheduled on your blog while you take a vacation to the Bahamas.

Sounds almost too good to be true, doesn’t it?

There are two main reasons to outsource your content.  First, your blog is insanely popular and you just can’t keep up with the amount of content being requested from your readers.  Your reader’s contact you constantly about writing an article on this topic or that topic, and you simply don’t have the time to keep up with all of them.  You need help and you need it now.  The other reason is the opposite: You just don’t have any ideas for more content and you need someone fresh to come up with new ideas.

Both of these aren’t necessarily good reasons.

A Voice Is Unique

Many people enjoy a good impression.  But no impression can fully copy the original. For a blog to be successful, it needs its own voice.  That voice can only come from the blog’s regular writers.  You can set as many guidelines for the article as you want, but chances are it will have a feel all its own. Your readers want to hear from you – not a paid article or blog post writer.  While you can outsource your posts, you can’t outsource your voice.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Even Tim Ferriss notes in his book how every virtual assistant he used wasn’t the best.  If you outsource your content, you may get back articles that are completely worthless or need a lot of revision.  Worse, you may google a couple sentences and find the article was lifted word-for-word from another website, blog, or published article.  Since you prepay for the writer to supply the article, there is usually no recourse or way to not-approve the article.  It’s money down the drain.

For A New Blog, It Isn’t Cost Effective

For new blogs starting out, outsourcing content seems like the perfect starting place.  And if you have a healthy budget it may be just the thing to get your blog started.  But article writing is not necessarily cheap, and you have to weight whether or not that blog post or article will make the return on investment you made in having it written.  If a blog post cost $5, will that post actually make your blog $5?  For new blogs, probably not.  The posts may bring in traffic, however, and that traffic can eventually and indirectly make that return on investment you paid – but it isn’t 100% trackable.

Still Want To Outsource?

If you still want to outsource your blog’s content, make sure you subscribe to this site’s feed.  We are planning another post to help you through the common pitfalls of outsourcing to improve your chances of receiving quality articles and blog posts from your writers.

 

Filed Under: Ask the Blogger, Blogging, Content, Outsourcing Tagged With: blog posts, elance, odesk, outsourcing, tim ferris

What is a Blog Editorial Calendar and Do I Need One?

By Christian

Question: What is a blog editorial calendar? Do I need one?

An editorial calendar is a tool many professional bloggers use to keep track of and organize their daily blog posts. It can be as simple as a grid of post-it notes on the wall or as intricate as an Excel spreadsheet. A dated Excel sheet, but a good resource can be found on Andy Wibbels’s blog.

The month is broken down into days, and each day is assigned a particular category of blog posts to help the blogger think of topics for that particular day. Underneath the days are different blog topics you have written or intend to write.

Another page on the spreadsheet could contain all of your blog ideas for future posts. When you are ready to write and publish a post, it goes from one spreadsheet to another.

Many bloggers don’t use an editorial calendar, but it can definitely be useful if you are having trouble finding a blog topic for a particular day or to keep track of possible topics for future posts.

Organizing different blog topics for different days can help overcome the dreaded “what am I going to write today” obstacle. For instance, on a web design blog you might have assigned the following topics to the days of the week:

  • Monday: jQuery examples
  • Tuesday: Site of the day
  • Wednesday: Tips and Tricks
  • Thursday: Cool Tools
  • Friday: News from around the web
  • Saturday: Off
  • Sunday: Off

Categorizing your main toipics this way will help direct your posting, plus it will also provide consistency for your readers.

Whether you use a formal editorial calendar or its all in your head, breaking your blog into definite categories for different days of the week can greatly increase your producitity.

Filed Under: Blogging, Content, Writing Tagged With: blog posts, Blogging, calendar, word press

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