How We Hire Great Blog Writers (And Mistakes We've Made Along the Way)

10/25/22 • 60 min

In this episode of Grow and Convert Deep Dives, we share our mistakes that we've made when hiring writers and how we've developed a process to solve it.

We go into detail on our process and share things that we've implemented to help us screen writers, test them and train them. We hope you enjoy.

Here are the sections:
0:00 Intro- How to hire blog writers
2:42 Mistakes we made when hiring blog writers
6:38 First big learning hiring writers
9:14 Problem #1: Mismatches in expectations and communication
10:52 Solution #1: Aligning expectations before writing: The questionnaire
15:51 Summarizing our mistakes we made early on hiring writers
17:16 Our writer hiring process
20:59 The test project
24:51 Summarizing learnings of test project
31:11 A question we added to our writing application
33:11 Two filters to help find writing applicants
34:01 How many writers make it through the funnel?
35:32 What are you looking for in the writing application?
38:20 Devesh Rant: Finding good writers is hard
39:27 Bottlenecks that arose in our writing process
40:32 What is the editor looking for in the writing? And coaching...
43:54 Why coaching writers is important
44:49 Don’t build processes too early
46:51 Hiring writers if you’re not a writer
48:08 The profile of a great writer
52:01 Why training writers is important
58:58 Summarizing our writer hiring process

In this episode of Grow and Convert Deep Dives, we share our mistakes that we've made when hiring writers and how we've developed a process to solve it.

We go into detail on our process and share things that we've implemented to help us screen writers, test them and train them. We hope you enjoy.

Previous Episode

Average Blog Conversion Rates + Can a Blog Post Convert Higher Than a Landing Page?

In Episode 4 of Grow and Convert Deep Dives, we argue against the prevailing wisdom that landing pages convert better than blog posts. We share conversion rate data from two different clients of ours - both a mid-market/enterprise demo based SaaS company and a B2SMB self service SaaS company- and show how we're getting 2%+ average conversion rates on our blog posts and compare those stats to how their sites convert overall from organic.

Then we share data on what we've seen for average blog conversion rates and share what we think a good conversion rate target should be for each individual blog post.

Lastly, we share 3 examples of us outranking landing pages with blog posts and debate why we think landing pages are usually better to go after high intent keywords with-- and how we think they may have higher conversion rates (even if the landing page were to rank higher than our blog post).

This one gets pretty nerdy into the numbers, hope you enjoy it.

Articles mentioned:
https://www.growandconvert.com/conver...
https://geekbot.com/blog/slack-retros... (example 1)
https://scribemedia.com/memoir-ghostw... (example 2)
https://www.tapclicks.com/resources/b... (example 3)

Interested in working with us? Fill out the form below:
https://www.growandconvert.com/conten...

Sections of our podcast:
0:00 What we’re going to talk about in this video and why
3:53 Blog vs. Site Conversion Data, Client Deep Dive- Mid-Market/Enterprise Demo Based Sales
14:50 Measuring your organic performance relative to the rest of the site
19:55 [Graph] G&C blog posts conversion rates vs. all other organic sources
21:53 Blog vs. organic website conversion data client deep dive example 2- B2SMB, Self Serve
33:46 Landing Page vs. Blog Post Debate / Example 1 (Geekbot) - Self Serve
43:01 Landing Page vs. Blog Posts Debate / Example 2 (Scribe Media) - Service
52:39 Landing page vs. blog post debate / Example 3 (Tapclicks) - Demo Based Product

Next Episode

Managing Remote Workers: How to Manage Outcomes Over Outputs

In this episode of Grow and Convert Deep Dives, we discuss a philosophy we have about managing remote workers (or workers in general): How to manage by outcomes instead of outputs. Oftentimes in our work, we come across other companies that have goals that don't move the needle, don't motivate employees, and cause more harm than good. We think this approach does the opposite.

We discuss how we think about goals, creating a great work culture, and how to effectively manage remote workers.
0:00 Intro- Managing by outcomes over outputs
2:07 Example’s in Benji’s career of output style management
3:58 Fear driven management
5:16 Having the right business goals, work backwards
6:07 Devil’s advocate - How would a business determine outcomes that are important?
9:57 Determining outcomes for a role you’re not familiar with
15:08 Mistakes management make and remote management principles
23:17 Grow and Convert’s examples outcomes over outputs
27:13 Outputs have a sneaky way of finding their way into goals
30:49 Goal setting - setting goals that tie to outcomes
36:33 Stop breaking large goals into small details
38:52 Tying examples back to G&C’s business
41:36 Using cloud-based remote tools to help manage people