Should I Hire a Professional Writer for My Website?

Like many DIY jobs, you can probably do it. But can you do it well?

You’ve had a brilliant business idea. You’ve researched the opportunities. You’ve found the perfect domain name and hosting solution for your website. Magic. But have you thought about exactly how that website is going to look? Have you considered how much written content is needed, even for a simple website? Or whether you can approach this task yourself, or if it should be handed to a professional content and copy writer?

To be or not to be, that is the question

Many business owners find themselves facing the question of whether to hire a professional writer to produce content for their website. For some, this question arises early, for others it comes later. For a few, it never arises at all. So, what value can a professional writer bring to the table? In this post, we’ll explore some of the advantages of hiring a professional writer — and they’re not all directly related to writing.

Many, if not most, businesses in this day and age have a web presence. They need a web presence. A website is an essential part of joining the business community. Some of you will remember the old Yellow Pages from back in the day; a huge, thick, book it was. As a boy my first booster seat at the dinner table was a Yellow Pages stacked on top of the phone book; I felt like a king sat on those monsters, they were so thick.

Back then, if you needed to find a business, you reached for the Yellow Pages. If your business wasn’t listed in the Yellow Pages, most people wouldn’t be able to find you. Nowadays, when we need to look for a business, we fire up Chrome, or Safari, or Internet Explorer (which, like the Yellow Pages, also used to be huge). If your business can’t be found online, you’ll have plenty of competitors that can. So far, so good.

But the Yellow Pages analogy falls down here.

We can’t just post a website for ‘A1 Taxis’ and sit back, safe in the knowledge that anyone looking up ‘taxis’ will come across our entry almost immediately*, an analogue SEO triumph if you will. No, these days, we need words. And, in a funny kind of way, that’s part of the problem.

Alright to write, or in too deep?

Most of us are familiar with words. The majority of us can read and write. Words are no strangers to us, so we don’t pay a whole lot of attention to them. You’re probably not familiar with, say, washing machine repair, which is why you don’t hesitate to call in a professional when needed. But when something needs writing, there’s every chance that you feel up to the job. It’s just a few words, we covered those in school. Easy, right?

Just like swimming the English channel is easy, right? After all, swimming’s familiar isn’t it? We learned to swim in school, didn’t we?

Writing is the same; it’s one thing putting a few sentences together but sometimes, like when your livelihood is on the line, it pays to get a professional in. So what does a professional writer bring to the table?

A professional copy and content writer will know the importance of words. Sounds obvious, but what does that mean exactly?

Well, they will know that the visitor’s attention must be gripped instantly, then prevented from being wrestled away by a billion other webpages seeking to do the same. They will know how to structure your homepage, landing page or sales page to best achieve that goal. They will know that, rather than hearing about who you are and what you can do (an all too common approach of DIY writers) visitors want to know what you can do for them. A professional writer knows that a visitor’s trust must be won while guiding them toward a desired action; they also know the folly of then leaving that visitor hanging, without a decisive call to take that action. Because that’s the copywriting equivalent of asking somebody to call you, then slamming the phone down on them when they do.

Crafting a message is best practised holistically

These are technical aspects of the discipline of copywriting, and of writing for the web in general. Grammar is important, but less so than identifying the desired message, and then getting that message across. Copy and content writing is more akin to writing a letter to a friend than submitting an assignment to an English tutor. A decent writer will be able to guide you toward a target for whom that message is intended. It’s never intended for anybody and everybody.

It’s common, when asked who a target audience is, for a client — particularly newer businesses — to answer, ‘anybody who wants…(whatever it is that the business is offering)’. This is a natural response, we don’t want to alienate people from our business. But the truth is that an approach that attempts to embrace all is likely to embrace none. Think about it, how likely are you to appeal to the interests of a twenty-something graphic design graduate as well as a fifty-something physiotherapist? Writers know this, and know how to target a message accordingly.

Perhaps you now appreciate a little more the value that a professional writer brings to the table. To return to the swimming analogy, a few lengths of the local pool is one thing, swimming the English channel is quite another. What time of day and year is best? What is the best route? Should we go from England to France or vice-versa? What stroke is most efficient for that swim? You get the picture. But there’s another advantage to be gained from hiring a writer for your website, one that surprises many people when they discover it.

There’s more to the message than just the message

Writers spend much of their time engaged in research. Its usual for writers to be familiar with a few subjects, much like everybody. I worked in the casino business for years, also on cruise ships and I have a lifelong photography habit. These are subjects I can write on with just a little research. Everything else — research, and lots of it.

I did some work for a skincare and waxing studio. To me, skincare was basically soap and water, and waxing was something I was supposed to do to my car now and again. I now know a lot more about microdermabrasion, oxygen infusion and Brazilian waxes. What a time to be alive.

While researching these amazing topics I delved into what other skincare places were doing, both locally and nationally. How were they formulating their messaging? How were they advertising their businesses? Social media presence? How were they handling the covid lockdown (most had essentially paused in time)? Through my research I was able to provide my client with valuable feedback on her industry and competitors that she just hadn’t seen. She was, quite naturally, focused on her business. But armed with the feedback that her competition were paused in time, waiting for lockdown to end, led her to see a great opportunity for video consultations and an enhancement to her online store. Your writer can provide valuable research information, and give it to you in a non-biased, thats the way I see it, kind of way. And that can be hard to find in business.

Food for thought

So, there you have it. I hope that I have given those of you that have never considered hiring a writer food for thought. And I hope those of you who may be wrestling with whether or not to go it alone or get a professional in can now feel a little more informed as to what a professional writer can contribute.

If you’d like to know more about how a professional writer can help you realise your vision, reach out below, let’s start a conversation!

*for those who really are too young to remember, the Yellow Pages was a physical directory of businesses for your town or city, with businesses arranged alphabetically by category, then alphabetically by business name within those categories.

This post was first published here