Your goal: To achieve recognition as an expert on your topic; validated by testimonials?and worthy content.
How do you get started?
If you are not a great writer/communicator,I can see merit in working with someone who can listen, understand, and interpret what you do well. In other words, if you can tell your story to someone competent as a storyteller, you may be able to get to the point of your greatest strengths, experiences, accomplishments, and reasons for working with you.
How do you find this individual? One approach may be to review your local business newspaper/website and discover the specialist journalist/writer relating to real estate and construction. Communicate and ask if the person has any problems/restrictions in accepting freelance assignments, and explain your goal isn’t to interfere with the individual’s day-job, but to gather information and insights to create web and marketing content.
You might also discover inexpensive talent by connecting with the instructor at your local university/college’s journalism program, and ask for recommendations for the best students for some part-time freelance work. You will then, if all goes well, receive content that will be relevant, well-written, and have third-party validity (especially if the journalist/writer interviews your clients). A bonus: The writer may use the material independently as source material for his or her own independent?writing.
I think this is a far better (and less expensive) way to achieve publicity/content marketing content than paying for spammy marketing services which solicit your business uninvited.
There are risks, of course. Your new writers may be duds and they may lack the experience to really understand your business.
If you want to go for a dirt-cheap solution, you could try offshore services such as odesk.com and elance.com. However, the problem here is the people you work will be very “chancy” and unlikely to gather the depth of understanding of your business. They may also lift content without permission or otherwise violate copyright.
You can of course seek out recommendations from non-competing peers and through your industry associations. You’ll probably pay a lot more for the services, though.
Finally, you can contract with me.
