How to Find Blog Writers for Vape Shops [Tips to Hire Writers Correctly]
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Hiring professional copywriters can be a hassle, but finding the right guest bloggers for your company is even more challenging.
But worry not:
You can follow easy tips to find professional writers that will take your guest blogging strategy to the next level. But before you do so, you’ll have to define what it is that you want to accomplish with your blog.
Keep reading to discover the elements that define whether or not a guest blogging strategy is for you or not. the elements that define whether or not a guest blogging strategy is for you or not.
Table Of Contents
- Should You Hire Professional Article Writers or Guest Bloggers?
- Benefits of Guest Post Blogging
- Benefits of Hiring Professional Blog Content Writers
- How to Find Guest Bloggers
- How to Motivate Bloggers to Submit a Guest Post
- Do This When Hiring a Writer for Your Blog
- Wrapping Up
Should You Hire Professional Article Writers or Guest Bloggers?
The short answer is, it depends, specifically on your content strategy goals and your budget.
Hiring full-time professional writers as a part of your team could be an excellent solution to your content needs. But making this decision would only be justified if the volume of content output you're planning for your website is enough to compensate for investing in an additional full-time salary.
Using guest bloggers is a valid option if the amount of content you need to put out is insufficient to justify a full-writer. Guest bloggers can be free, but depending on the industry and the writer's quality, they can be even more expensive on a per-hour basis than a full-time writer.
Guest bloggers are also a great option if you're trying to post content created by writers who already have a following of their own or are an authority in the industry. These writers won't usually work for a company full-time and prefer to work as guest bloggers.
Benefits of Guest Post Blogging
Many copywriters are interested in becoming guest bloggers because they are trying to build a freelance business. Guest blogging is a great way to start building a resume that will develop their experience and validity.
Guest bloggers want to be writing content for the top publications in the industry. If you’re starting an online shop, then it’s likely you are not one of those top publications. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have something interesting to offer to guest bloggers.
Because the bloggers you are targeting are also starting, the relationship you build is a win-win situation. They find exposure and build their resume by posting on your website, and you get a guest blogger for free or a nominal fee to start building your content library.
Having a team of consistent guest bloggers frees up your time and could turn out to be practical, depending on your content strategy. But relying solely on guest bloggers is not an excellent idea for consistency in a structured marketing campaign. Because guest bloggers work for a nominal fee or even for free, it is hard to sustain relevance and accountability. That is unless you’re also running a magazine where all of your attention will naturally end up editing the content you publish and managing writers, even if they are guest bloggers.
Benefits of Hiring Professional Blog Content Writers
If you’re trying to be very consistent with the subjects you touch on in your blog, then hiring a team of professional writers might make a lot more sense. Because you are running an online vape shop and not a magazine or other publication, a team of writers or a single lead writer managing and updating your blog post makes much more sense a guest blogging approach to content creation.
In your case, while it still makes sense to have a guest blogging strategy, it would make more sense to give it a secondary role.
By hiring a professional writer, you’ll have somebody you can trust to lead the whole content creation process, creativity, and overall content strategy in a way that falls into what your customers expect of your brand. You can’t rely on guest bloggers to think strategically as they are mainly there to create the content you request of them.
Remember, guest bloggers work by the hour, so they will want to be finished with your content as soon as possible to start working on content for other clients. On the other hand, an in-house copywriter will have your best interests in mind. It might even make sense to have an in-house content writer who works as an editor who manages the guest blogging team.
It could also make sense to hire an agency that manages writers for you. I constantly work with services like them for some of the brands I manage. This agency provides a quick way to get articles published faster than in-house writers who have other responsibilities like content ideation, planning, and other hidden tasks.
How to Find Guest Bloggers
There are two main ways to find guest bloggers in your industry that are willing to work with you. One relies on your brand exposure and how motivating it is for a guest blogger to publish their work on your website. The second approach requires you actively looking for guest bloggers, very similar to the process you would follow when looking for a new hire.
1. Inbound Approach
An inbound approach doesn’t make much sense to use if you’re running a blog to drive traffic to your website for your core business; online vape sales. While your blog might be an essential part of attracting new customers, the content you’re creating for it is not your main product.
This makes it harder for writers to be interested in writing for you if you’re not actively seeking them out. Writers are artists, so they want to be published in leading publications, magazines, etc.
While your website will certainly bring them some notoriety and, more importantly, money, it is not the first type of business a writer will be looking for to guest blog on. So the chances of you landing a solid guest blogger this way are narrower.
If you do run a blog that drives the interest of professional bloggers looking to guest post, then make sure you have a landing page with instructions to apply, editorial standards, and examples of the type of content you’re looking for.
2. Outbound Approach
The outbound approach is more hands-on than an inbound blogger acquisition strategy. You want to think of this approach as you would a normal recruiting process.
Talk to friends and acquaintances in the industry who could refer people. Post features on social media that tell the public you’re looking for guest bloggers for a vape publication, doing the same on freelance websites, and reaching out to bloggers in the industry you follow are also good ways to approach this method. You may also go with the easier but more expensive alternative of hiring a writing agency that takes care of everything for you.
How to Motivate Bloggers to Submit a Guest Post
There are plenty of things you can do to entice professional article writers into working with you. While the whole idea of using guest bloggers is that you won’t have to pay them as you would have to when hiring a writer for your blog.
But this doesn’t mean that there isn’t any compensation expected. In some cases, writers will also work for backlinks to their blogs or website. If this sounds like something you can do, then make sure to offer it.
Demonstrating your vape blog’s high readership ratings is also a huge motivation for many writers. In some cases, it’s the only motivation they’ll need.
If you can’t offer any of those, then you’ll probably have to provide monetary incentives. You could even provide a combination of the above and financial payment.
Do This When Hiring a Writer for Your Blog
It’s easy to learn how to hire a blogger. Recruitment processes with professional article writers are pretty standard.
Guest blogging, on the other hand, is a bit trickier. You have less control over what is being written, including the style, length, and overall tone of the articles you’re getting. That is why it’s so important to follow the below steps.
1. Structure Editorial Standards
Make sure you have a detailed set of guidelines that writers can fall back on. This increases the chances of the content complying with your quality standards.
2. Define Linking Policy
Too many backlinks and low-quality backlinks in your content may be counterproductive to your goals. So make sure you define a linking policy that all your guest bloggers agree with.
3. Establish Long-Form Content Goals
Establishing content goals is crucial because it will serve as the base for the type of content you publish. Sales-oriented content looks very different from educational or research content. Establishing a clear north for bloggers to follow will help you sustain coherence between your publications and your goals.
Wrapping Up
Choosing between hiring professional writers and guest bloggers will depend on your content strategy and goals. The benefits of guest post blogging include lower costs and convenience, but hiring professional blog content writers that work for you exclusively, ensures further coherence between the content and your goals. If you decide to go with a guest blogging strategy, there are multiple ways you can find writers, but for an online vape shop like yours, you’ll likely have to ask for references and post on social media to find them.