If you’re running an online business, sooner or later you’ll realize that effective marketing requires a lot of writing. You might be a good writer and dedicate yourself to composing online literature, but then you won’t have enough time to actually run the company.

The solution here is simple: a professional writer who can create much needed content with minimal supervision. How do you go about finding a good writer you ask?  

How to Hire a World-Class Writer for Your Business Needs

Job boards and freelance platforms have so many candidates waiting to get on your radar. However, if you aren't a writer by trade or lack experience in managing this type of work, how do you properly vet a writer candidate? Make the process turn-key by incorporating the guidelines below to accomplish this otherwise daunting task.

Have a clear understanding of your needs

Before posting a vacancy or sending offers to candidates, you need to set up expectations beforehand. These expectations help to explain the needs of the business as well as provide the writer the opportunity to identify the most effective way to create and deliver content.

These are some essential things you need to consider:

• Scope. Even if you need just one article to be completed, there should be a number of particular requirements, such as use of images and keywords, deadline, and style.
  
  
• Budget. What do you think is possible for you to spend for writing projects?
  
  
• Research. An in-depth blog post and product description are obviously two different kinds of text that need to be completed accordingly. Which one are you looking for?
  
  
• Deadline. This one deserves special attention because a writer should be given an appropriate amount of time to complete everything.

Ask the right questions during the interview

Let’s suppose a bunch of writers have responded to your vacancy. What needs to be asked to determine if they are perfect for the job? Consider asking these questions.

• What is your experience in writing blog articles (product description, and so on)?
• Do you have some great writing samples I can check out?
• Do you know SEO? Can you include organic links?
• Do you include images in your articles?
• What is your rate and how a deadline determines it?
• What is your policy toward rejection and revision of your work?
• What is most appealing for you in this project?

The answers to these questions will give you good clues to whether you should work with that particular writer.

Look for red flags

Remote hiring can be tricky because you cannot know everything you need about the person. For example, your candidates may send you the best projects and won’t discuss the ones that went really ugly. There is, however, something you can do to discover red flags.

• Talk to previous clients of that writer. If you have a chance to find clients who worked with your potential writer, that’s what you should do. Take a look at the portfolio and contact the persons who have experience working with that particular writer. Once you find them, ask whether you were satisfied with him/her. If they weren’t, we have red flag number one.
  
  
• Ask to complete a test project. If a writer really wishes to get a job, a test assignment won’t be such a huge problem (plus you can give them a real task and say that you will pay for it if they succeed). This way, you will determine the skill level of the writer that will tell you about the direction in which your relationship should go.
  
  
• If a writer doesn’t want to complete a test assignment and has a handful of clients, that’s a red flag. Keep looking.
  
  

How to find them

• Upwork. Freelance job boards like Upwork are a good place to find writers because it showcases the ones with the best performance, has a messaging system, and can give you the clues about skills with portfolio.
  
  
• Best Essay Tips. This is where you should go to hire both academic and online content writers. Although the company specializes in complex academic writing, it also offers services in other areas of writing, such as ghostwriting.
  
  
• ProBlogger Job Boards. Problogger is a comprehensive source of knowledge for bloggers that also has a pretty good job board with hundreds of jobs available. You can post your job there and start interviewing candidates right away.
  
  
• BloggingPro Job Boards. Another good source of various writing jobs where you can post your project and find reliable writers. The site has effective policies regarding the job boards, so only candidates who are worth attention will apply.

If you’re ready to hire a writer, this is great news because it likely means your organization is growing and you need more manpower! Go ahead, hire a great writer, and he or she will bring you more success in your content creation effort.