The advantages of hiring a niche writer
A nice advantage of working with freelance writers is that you can find one who specializes in the type of content you need. If experience is what you need, here are tips for finding a specialist.
Specialization could be at the audience, industry, or content type level.
At the audience level, for example, I write B2B (business to business) marketing and technical content, which means I help brands sell to other brands. It would be more of a stretch for me to writer B2C (business to consumer) content than it would be to write B2B content for a brand-new industry. Everyone’s got their sweet spot.
Industry experience can be broad or deep. Because there are many industries served by high-tech software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, I’ve written B2B content for healthcare, manufacturing, insurance, mining, professional services, cybersecurity, public sector, and energy industries, to name a few.
But if you’re looking for a B2C writer to promote your luxury jewelry line, you’ll want to hire someone with a few years of experience writing for luxury brands. Or, if your industry has lots of compliance considerations, like pharmaceutical marketing, you’ll want to work with someone who is familiar with those regulations.
There are also various content types, produced by copywriters, content writers, and ghostwriters. Copywriters create marketing copy to sell products, whether for websites, online ads, or product packaging. In the B2B world, content writing can lean more technical, whether it’s got a how-to or a product-feature focus. Case studies and product pages are good examples. There’s also thought leadership content, which is a form of ghostwriting. That’s where you help an executive share their opinion on an industry trend or current event. They contribute their knowledge and opinions, and you help them craft their message in the most effective way.
How does experience play out? As an example, while writing a case study, I was reading a transcript of a customer interview that I was not part of. I researched the names of the third-party products that the customer mentioned, and it turns out that one of them is an generative AI product associated with the client. I know from experience that AI is a big focus, especially if it’s a solution that the client invested in, so I asked if we wanted to include that angle in the story.
Ok, so everyone these days knows that AI is a big deal, but you get the picture!