We're not ashamed to admit it: we troll job boards like Elance, Freelance Writing Gigs, and Craigslist to find leads and potential clients, just about every day. We've actually found a couple of good clients this way. We've also find a lot of horrible "Writer Wanted" ads, and a lot of ads asking for things that are unfeasible or bad practice. One of those in-demand bad practices is ordering blog articles in bulk, say 10, 20 or 30 at a time. We never apply for those jobs, and you should never ask for your blog articles in this manner. Here's why we think you're asking for a disaster when you do this:
What are You Going to Do Next Time?
Okay, you actually find someone who can deliver 30 awesome blog article on deadline, each one about a topic you haven't yet covered on your blog and optimized for long-tail keywords and all that jazz. How long do those 30 posts actually last? What happens with the next 30 blog posts, posts that may cover duplicate topics, or may not be as well written, or may not come in on time, or may optimize for keywords that you don't need optimizing? By ordering in bulk, you risk all of that, and risk any consistency your blog could have (consistency in publishing, quality, content etc.) If you know you need blogging services for while, it's better to hire for the long term than the short term.
No Room to Be Flexible
Let's say those 30 posts last your 30 weeks. Great. However, what if breaking news happens at week 15 that you really want to cover, but don't have time to cover or to get that contractor to cover? With the way that you get your posts, and the way that they are scheduled, you can't be flexible for timely, newsy topics. Sure, you could double up one week and take care of it yourself, but if you're going to do that, then what's the point of hiring someone to do 30 articles for you? It would be better to pay them as you go, so your hired blogger can cover breaking news as well as more evergreen topics.
By flexible, we also mean creating content that speaks to customers and address their pain points. Your customers don't want to wait three months to have their questions answered, and if they can't find their answers online with you, they are going to find out the answer from a competitor.
Brand Messaging is All Off
We've found that our target market is concerned about brand messaging, and about keeping it consistent across all channels all the time. That can be tough to do if you're ordering your blog posts in bulk. At first, you're stuck with 30 blog posts that might not be consistent, so you have to wait for the next 30 and hope that the writer does a better job this time around. Or that the new writer will get it. But, what's better at achieving that consistent brand messaging is to hire one person (or a few people) to do the blogging long-term, and work with them to ensure the brand messaging is understood and can be delivered correctly and consistently.
Tough to Experiment
It's tough to experiment if you already have 30 blog posts ready to go. If you have a good blog post idea that could be fleshed out into a series of posts, then you'd have to wait a whole year before you get to publish the next part in the series. If you want to try and to include video or an infographic as part of post, then you have to work it in way ahead of time or try to squish it in with a blog post that's already been submitted. Those can be tough barriers if your competitors are already experimenting with these techniques and you want to find out if they can work for you too.
Ordering your blog articles in bulk is simply not the best way to conduct blog management and content creation. It's incredibly reactive, and reactive with a huge time delay. It also means your priorities aren't straight when it comes to your business blog. Your business blog shouldn't be about filling it up with content. It should be about providing something of value to customers and to potential customers, moving them through the buying process so they can build trust in your brand and in what you have to offer. All that is much harder to do when you order your blog articles in bulk, from different writers, and without much foresight into the content that you need to be creating.
