Finding the right freelancer: experience

Last week I posted five indicators of a skilled freelance writer.

The top one is experience.

If you want to work with a seasoned writer, here’s how to distinguish between a pro and an enthusiastic beginner looking to start a side hustle. No shame, we’ve all been there; but if experience is your top priority, read on.

Experience could include freelancing or working at a marketing agency or similar company where they created content on a regular basis. How many clients have they written for? What industries were those clients in? The answers will help you determine their experience writing the type of content you need.

To find out how many years of experience a potential freelance hire has, you can poke around on their website or LinkedIn profile. If they don’t have a website, it’s not the end of the world. But they should be able to supply you with quotes or references from happy clients.

Or talk to them about experience and track record during the discovery call. That’s the initial meeting when you talk about your writing needs and figure out if you’re a good fit to work together. After that, if it’s a go, the writer will provide a quote for the project, among other things.

If all they ask for is for you to fill out an intake form, and they respond by emailing you about their hourly rate, those could be signs of an inexperienced freelancer.

If they lack experience writing for clients, they might not know to ask questions about your audience and their pain points, and what you expect this piece of writing to accomplish. Pros are familiar with timelines and deadlines, and how to make sure they deliver what they promised when it’s due.

A seasoned writer also knows some business basics about how to work with clients, charge for a project, write a statement of work, and provide a contract to sign if needed. Craftwise, they’ll understand enough search engine optimization (SEO) writing, project management, and content strategy to keep a project on track. They’ll also know how content provides business value, and how to maximize that value.

As you can probably tell, finding hiring a freelance writer will involve some project preparation on your side in addition to vetting potential writers. We’ll get to that in a later post.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.