Why You Should Outsource Content Creation

Why would you want content contributed by outside experts anyways?

Here are just a few benefits you gain from outsourcing content generation:

1. You take some of the workload off of your internal team, allowing them to focus on content optimization versus content creation.
2. You’ll gain ideas and concepts that you wouldn’t come up with on your own, creating a greater variety of content to your mix.
3. You’ll ideally gain exposure to the audience of the contributor which can help you rapidly expand your own influence and authority. The bigger their audience the better!

At DigitalMarketer, we’ve created a flow of incoming content that amounts to 20 to 30 pieces per month. Prior to using external sourcing here, I used the same method to generate 30-50 pieces a month for magazines and content platforms that I built in the past.

Now that you have an idea of why you’d want to use external sourcing, let’s talk about who you should generate the content from.

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Good external contributors have similar qualifications. Based on our experience working with hundreds of experts, here are traits that they will ideally have:

1. They have a minimum amount of followers on one or more of your desired platforms. The dog-food test in this case is typically 1,000 followers, assuming that they primarily post about the subject you’d like them to contribute content for.
2. They have an active newsletter. Content creators are usually good at email marketing. This is fantastic for your brand, because they’ll be more likely to gain instant engagement with the content they send you. Again, it depends on your industry, offer, and customer avatar, but the dog-food test here is at least 500 subscribers.
3. They direct traffic to platforms outside of their own. A quick review of their social media feeds will show you how often they promote links to content they’ve contributed to other platforms. What you don’t want is for them to send you information they’ve published elsewhere because they’ll be less likely to promote your piece.

This article is an excerpt from the Production Module in the Content Marketing Certification.