Hiring a professional freelancer has its benefits, including freeing you to focus solely on your core projects, gaining access to a skilled wordsmith, and saving you and your staff valuable time. Eventually, every growing agency or nonprofit is faced with hiring a professional copywriter to expand their brand. One key benefit is alleviating burnout – an all too common occurrence in busy organizations light on staff or resources.
How Hiring Freelancers Can Prevent Burnout:
Multitasking Relief: There’s no doubt that juggling multiple roles at the office can stretch anyone’s capacity to do top notch work. If you and your staff share added marketing and communications responsibilities, it chips away at other capacity and community building tasks.
No More Paper Chasing: Woe to the staffer who must constantly send email after email to collect input from colleagues for company newsletters, press releases, blog posts and other communications. We all know how frustrating and stressful that is. With a neutral freelancer tasked to complete writing projects, you save yourself the headache of having to chase down work from fellow staff members – or having to fix up or even do the writing yourself.
Consistent Content Generation for Emails, Websites, and Social Media: If writing deadlines get pushed to the last minute, or slip through the cracks and don’t get done at all, that impacts your marketing power. Freelancers take some of the pressure off. One sole person (perhaps you?) won’t have to make magic happen with your organization’s designated fundraising, awareness, and recruitment goals.
Things to Consider:
Know When It’s Time to Get Outside Help: In working with start-ups in the nonprofit and small business space, I’ve found that they realized they needed to make the leap to budgeting for professional freelance help once they either hit a threshold with their funding levels or client base. They either won a big grant or gained a new, coveted client. Wearing multiple hats or working with volunteers wasn’t feasible anymore – once they determined they wanted to up their marketing game for the long haul.
Clarify Your Needs: Invest a bit of time to identify the marketing tasks or projects you want to prioritize. How much writing can or can’t be done in-house? What work will you delegate and what will be the approval process?
Typical Freelance Rates – And Why Money Isn’t Always Your First Consideration: Freelance rates can vary widely. Some freelancers charge by the hour, some by the project, and some prefer to work on a monthly retainer. Some charge $25 an hour, others charge $100 or more. Price is always a consideration, but other variables like professionalism and skill level are also key. Veteran or novice, an unreliable or cranky freelancer who is a pain to work with can cost you dearly. Check those recommendations, samples, and testimonials well.
Working with Writers: A new-to-you freelancer will typically charge, as part of their contract, a 30% to 50% up front fee. Professional writers usually complete a creative brief, which is a series of questions designed to help the writer thoroughly understand your project requirements. Briefs might seem annoying or time consuming, but they’re essential to the writing process. They up the odds you’ll get what you’re paying for.
Expect a draft to follow, which you’ll need to review and give feedback on. The freelancer you want on your team will offer at least one revision.
Are you, week after week, struggling to complete your marketing and communications to-do list? Or, are you not getting to them at all because you don’t know where to begin (but you know you need to do something)? It might be time to consider outside help. Hiring the right freelancer can lighten your marketing load and free you up to do the genius work you do best.
Now, you tell me. What key factors might help you decide to hire a freelance professional to help with writing tasks?
