When developing a blog for your company, it’s not uncommon to reach out to freelancers or agencies to get some help. So what does a founder do to maintain a consistent tone, vibe and voice of the culture of the company if they turn to outsourcing the content?
We asked six entrepreneurs how they approach their outfacing public content. Check out their answers below and get your marketing strategy in line today:
Provide Examples and Links
At our company we do things in house, but making sure tone is conveyed properly still requires effort. So, we have a list of examples and links to content we curated already for the writers. Then, we ensure that our main editors do a good look through and critique and work with the writer to improve tone and voice for future pieces.
– Jessica Baker of AlignedSigns
Create Brand Guidelines
If you’re going to hire someone to do your marketing for you – even if you’re just outsourcing a small portion of your business – you need to work with them. Create a brand guideline document that gives them an idea of your target demographic, general industry details, and some language/statements you’d prefer they use or avoid. Also, make sure you proofread everything before it goes live.
– Steven Buchwald of Buchwald & Associates
Create a Personality Guide
While I’m not a fan of outsourcing content, this tip works just as well for internal content producers as external team members. Style guides have been used for centuries, but that doesn’t dictate tone or personality. Business writing can take on so many different tones today. I suggest to intentionally craft your company’s personality and codify it with examples so content producers know how to stay on brand.
– Tony Banta of Venture Greatly
Edit In-House
We, like many of you, outsource some of our writing. Whether it’s blog articles, on-page content or press releases, we always do some form of editing in-house. This allows us to add the familiar tone that we prefer. The edits are usually very subtle, and they definitely set the stage for consistency of voice.
– Ben Walker of TransOutsourcing
Use a Project Management System
Even when outsourcing writing or other content development, we organize the project in Trello or Basecamp so we can oversee each step of the process and ensure it’s meeting brand standards along the way. There’s nothing worse than finding out too late that a project was missing the mark.
– Emily Richett of Richett Media
Create a Reference Persona
Ask yourself (or your client): If this brand were a character from a movie, television show, book or a celebrity, who would it be? If you want to take it further, create your own brand character/profile that content creators can reference.”
– Todd Giannattasio of Transonic Media
Read more about content marketing here at Tech.Co.
