Do You Need an In-House Team for Your Corporate Blog?
Having a dedicated in-house editorial team vs. outsourcing content making
Modern-day companies outsource a lot of things. They delegate accountancy, HR, marketing, design, and content production to agencies or freelance specialists if they deem it unreasonable to have them working full-time.
In this piece we will highlight the pros and cons of having an in-house team for a corporate blog.
Pros
Availability
The most obvious benefit of having in-house specialists is their availability. You will be able to control workloads, deadlines and schedules of your employees, which is not the case with an agency. All in all, in this case an in-house team is a more flexible solution.
Communication
Similar to the previous point, it is much easier to communicate with an in-house team than to keep on relaying messages back and forth with an agency or freelance specialists through managers. On top of that, it’s easier to have easy-going professional relations with the people you have known for a while than with someone you have just met yesterday and who will leave once the job is done.
Industry Expertise
It is definitely better when the people in charge of your corporate blog are well-versed in whatever your company is doing. With an in-house team you can achieve it either by teaching your writers and editors or hiring experienced people in the first place.
It is a lot harder to pass your company’s industry knowledge over to outside specialists. It is a waste of time to bring somebody up to date with the entire industry just for the sake of completing a single task.
Cons
Operating Procedures
Agencies tend to have well-defined procedures covering everything from customer acquisition to the final delivery. These processes are honed and tweaked to be efficient and get the most out of the client’s budget while observing deadlines. This standardized approach brings order to the customer-agency communication and sets clear quality guidelines.
Of course you can do the same with an in-house team but then you will have to create all the standards and procedures from scratch and spend some time and effort to make it all streamlined and efficient.
Fresh Perspective
In-house teams are susceptible to internal biases. They tend to create content with the company’s goals in mind, sometimes forgetting the needs of the audience and struggling to see the bigger picture.
This is not the case with people who look at your company and its messages from outside. An agency will have a fresh perspective on the needs of your audience and potential flaws in your marketing efforts.
Costs
Onboarding several full-time employees is definitely more expensive than hiring a freelance writer or even an agency. With an in-house team you have to pay salaries and provide benefits to your employees year after year. Agencies and freelancers are paid by the work they do when you need it done.
What to make of it?
Of course, this isn’t a one or another situation. Some companies use hybrid approach combining smaller in-house teams with services of marketing agencies and occasionally delegating tasks to freelancers.
Consider your company’s goals and needs, look at your closest peers, and explore different combinations. Iterate your approach and analyze the results to find the optimal solution for your unique case.
That’s it for now. Stay tuned and leave us a comment if you want us to talk about a particular topic.
