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When Does Content Outsourcing to India Work?
THURSDAY,
FEBRUARY 09, 2017
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When it comes to outsourcing content creation to India, almost everyone has a horror story to share; sloppy grammar, non-persuasive writing, foreign idioms, incorrect jargon, or a finished piece that just does not sound like the voice of your business. The list can be long and easily convince a business owner to hire only native writers or move content production in-house. Neither is panacea.
Hiring native writers can solve language issues but it will still be difficult to find someone who can write like you would. Any writer, native or not, will take time to learn the lingo of your trade and adopt your voice. In-house content writing can solve quality problems arising out of poor knowledge of your business but it can be prohibitively expensive. Not to mention the HR issues that arise from hiring and retaining talent.
Outsource to India or US, or Hire In-House?
Each strategy—outsource to India, outsource to the US, and hire an in-house writer—has its pros and cons.
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Outsource to India
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Outsource in the US
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Hire a Writer Full-time
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Cost
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Low
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Medium
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High
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English skills
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Varies
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High
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High
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Writing skills
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Varies
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Varies
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Varies
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Industry knowledge
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Varies
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Varies
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Can be acquired quickly
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Cultural awareness
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Little
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High
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High
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Relying solely on any one of them will either lead to content that is not in line with your goals or make your content marketing financially unsustainable. Given this choice, what can a business do?
A lot. You can outsource content creation and still get quality work without overshooting your budget. Large companies, including Google, have Asian writers on their payroll at least since 2006. No one can claim hiring writers from India has put a dent in the quality of their documentation. If Google can pull it off, you can too.
What Can Businesses Do?
Besides the obvious—hire university educated writers with many years of experience or take your business only to the people with an excellent track record—there are less conspicuous but equally important areas you can work on. To start with, you can be a part of the team.
Become a Subject Matter Expert
It will time-consuming for you to write everything and letting your writer to do all the work saves you time but does not always produce desire results. Donning an editor’s hat is a sweet spot you can aspire to fill.
Go beyond hiring and providing an overview of your business when you outsource. You are the subject matter expert. You know your business better than anyone. You know what kind of writing it will take to help you grow. Share your knowledge before letting your writer do some research and produce a copy.
The first copy you will receive is unlikely to be perfect. It rarely happens. There are a few things you can do here:
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Hire a new writer because you did not like the first copy.
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Write the whole thing yourself.
Neither is a good strategy.
Hiring a new writer will only repeat another cycle of frustration. You may be pressed for time, especially if your business is in its early stages.
The right strategy is to edit the document and share your input with the writer who can then produce a nicer copy. After a few rounds you will have a polished copy which is usable and which can help you in expanding your business.
This process of improvement with iteration is quick, but it is neither as expensive as hiring a full-time in-house writer.
Know What You Need Content For
Did you ask your writer to create a keyword-rich blog on how awesome your products are? The chances are the blog will be mediocre and unlikely to be of any use to your customers. Ten years ago, blogs filled to the brim with keywords were all the rage. The era is behind us.
Contemporary readers want useful stuff. They do not want to read barely legible, convoluted texts. As a business owner you will have to listen to your readers if you want to survive and thrive.
Sit down with a marketing manager to find out the best way to reach out to your clients: mail, social media, blogs, articles, or e-books. Once a strategy is in place, you can go ahead and hire writers. That will leave neither of you undecided and you will have useful metrics to measure content performance.
Takeaway
US businesses have been outsourcing content creation to India for more than 15 years; a lot of them successfully. You can also cut costs and get quality content from India if you put in some effort and have a clear vision of how the content will be used and success measured.
Cogniter Technologies has been in the business of content writing since 2003. Working with Cogniter can help you reduce marketing costs and maintain quality. Write to us at consultation@cogniter.com to know more.
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Posted By
Chetan
at
05:14:46
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