If you’re publishing content, but no one’s reading it — that’s a sign you might need a content marketer. Even in less dire situations, their mix of strategic thinking, writing chops and distribution savvy can be exactly what you need to grow.
In the coming years, “the freelance market will be flooded with high quality professionals,” Speakeasy’s Steve Dorman predicted to Forbes in late 2020.
In content marketing, that trend has already started.
Experts are realizing they can make more independently than they can as a full-time employee. A 2019 “Freelancing in America” study showed that skilled freelancers could earn more per hour than 70% of the U.S. economy’s workers.
And as the privacy-first web makes content more important — and the business climate more uncertain — many companies are drawn to flexible external expertise for any and all things content marketing.
In 2020, the companies that outsourced content creation did so primarily for writing, but more than 25% also outsourced for graphic design, video design and SEO, SEMRush found.
That’s… basically all of content marketing.
Is it time for you to join their ranks and hire a freelance content marketer, too?
In this post, we’ll cover the signs you don’t have the right content marketing talent in place just yet — and what to do about it.
Meet the experts we interviewed to figure it out:
- Julie Neumark, COO of Media & Marketing Minds and an experienced content marketer
- Annie Clark, a content marketer who cut her teeth in the luxury DTC world before switching to full-time freelance Lauren Lang, a former college English instructor who said teaching effective communication to B2B SaaS companies is “really not that different” from teaching 18-year-olds
- Dr. Fio Dossetto, the content expert behind the contentfolks newsletter