Home » Content Marketing » Creating Content In-House vs Outsourcing: The Pros and Cons of Both

Creating Content In-House vs Outsourcing: The Pros and Cons of Both

CopySmiths October 12, 2021

Small and large businesses should publish 3–5 new and updated posts per week in a consistent content marketing campaign. In other words, it’s the new trick in business success.

But only 13% of entrepreneurs and bloggers publish at regular intervals. What this means is they do not focus on creating content. They dedicate their limited time and resources to core business functions. They undermine the benefits of organic traffic.

Are you in that category? The good part is you’re not alone.

However, you can leverage organic traffic by publishing high-quality and consistent content. You can increase brand awareness, customer base, readership, and drive sales.

You must be wondering how you can achieve that. The solution is to create content in-house or outsource. Either way can get you there.

So, today, you’ll learn the pros and cons of outsourcing vs in-house content creation. Stick with us, because you’ll get insights to help you decide whether to hire in-house writers or outsource to freelance contractors and content agencies.

Here is a quick comparison: Insourcing vs. Outsourcing: Pros and Cons

Insourcing vs. Outsourcing: Pros and Cons
 ProsCons
Insourcing
  • Competent in-house team
  • Limited skills and experience
  • Time-consuming
Outsourcing
  • Consistent content
  • Wide-ranging skills and experience
  • Confidentiality concerns

Now, let us break these down for you.

Creating Content In-House

The method involves developing content with an in-house team working full-time for your company. Here are its ins and outs.

Pros

Competent in-house team: creating content in-house allows you to build a component in-house team. 

This is how: by training, researching, and creating content, the employees gain skills and experience to generate quality content. 

One benefit of having a competent in-house team is the ability to eliminate dependency on outsourced content. With the right skills and experience, your team can create high-quality content at scale. Your writers meet your content needs.

On top of that, they produce content that shows expertise and authority. Since they work in the industry, they have the technical knowledge that helps them understand the topic at hand. The result is accurate content addressing your customers’ pain points and answering their questions.

Insourcing also helps your team members grow their careers and talent. By contributing to create different content, your employees get additional skill sets. They add value and become problem solvers in core business needs.

Because of these reasons, insourcing is a good long-term content marketing strategy.

Cons

Time-consuming: creating content in-house requires more time to complete tasks involved in creating and publishing quality content. The tasks include:

  • Researching
  • Outlining
  • Assigning
  • Writing
  • Reviewing
  • Publishing
  • Distributing
  • Promoting

Let us illustrate.

Focus on the time it takes to create a well-researched blog post. According to Ragan, a well-researched 1,000+ word blog post uses approximately 4–8 hours depending on topic complexity and writing skills.

In other words, you use 12–24 hours per week in writing three blog posts per week. You can use this time on other important activities, such as exploring new marketing ideas, learning trends, and engaging with your customers.

Without a dedicated content team or a digital marketing manager, creating content can consume your valuable time for other core business activities. It may overwhelm, too, when done alongside other business responsibilities.

Save time by outsourcing your writing tasks to a distinguished content shop.

Limited skill and experience: Believe it or not, your employees cannot match the skills and experience possessed by content marketing agencies in creating content. Each team is excellent at what they do.

Content agency teams are excellent at creating content while employees are good at business functions. Thus, with limited knowledge, it’s hard to develop or strengthen an effective marketing strategy.

Take Apple’s case, for example. According to Neil Patel, Apple’s decision to beam the U2 album to everyone’s device was a failed content marketing strategy. They promoted the album by presenting it to half a billion iTunes users regardless of their taste.

It never resonated well with their customers. They regarded the act as an affront.

If Apple had consulted a third-party content marketer, they would’ve gotten a fresh perspective on the strategy. They would’ve learned the strategy wouldn’t work.

On top of ineffective marketing strategy, your in-house team may lack the SEO expertise and skills to create multiple forms of content.

Outsourcing Content Creation

The process involves hiring freelance contractors or content agencies. Unlike insourcing, you transfer the whole workload to the hired contractor.

Here are its advantages and disadvantages.

Pros

Consistent content: Outsourcing your content writing tasks to content writing agencies will ensure you publish content throughout.

The reason is that content agencies’ line of work is writing content. Other business activities do not limit them. They have the time, resources, and laborers needed to produce consistent content for you.

To create content at scale, the agencies have multiple writers to handle the writing tasks. Once a client orders a batch of articles, they assign them to writers to complete at once.

They also deliver on time since their reputation depends on meeting deadlines. Failing to adhere to deadlines can lead to the loss of valuable clients to their competitors and financial losses.

Here is the bottom line: outsourcing saves you time for other important business aspects and yet creates surplus content for your audience.

Wide-ranging skills and experience: High-quality content agencies have content production teams with extensive skills and experience in multiple fields. So when you outsource content creation tasks, they hand-pick specialists in your subject to effectively handle your project.

Here are some skills at your disposal:

  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Web development
  • Writing content
  • Marketing content
  • WordPress
  • Content management

Since content agencies work with multiple clients, they’ve probably worked on similar projects before. Thus, they have the experience to deliver content tailored to your product and prospects. They also know the effective and ineffective strategies in your field.

Take Lodge’s case, for instance. Lodge is an Australian web-based company that is living proof of the benefits of outsourcing content writing to CopySmiths. Here is their review.

Paul napper

As you can see, they recognized our extensive knowledge of SEO and content creation. We deliver effective SEO content—103% increase in organic traffic in one month.

Probably, they had tried hiring in house. So they spotted the big difference between in-house and outsourced content results.

Email us for custom content now.

Cons

Confidentiality concerns: Information confidentiality concerns can arise when you’re outsourcing tasks to strangers. Your sensitive data is at risk of landing in the wrong hands.

Let us explain.

When you share your classified information with third-party contractors, they have control over the information. Unethical writers can intentionally or unintentionally leak it to cybercriminals or share it with your competitors.

Take the Equifax Security Breach, for example. An employee’s mistake enabled hackers to compromise sensitive personal data of more than 143 million Americans.

It halted the operations, and the company had to compensate the affected customers.

Similarly, such would happen if a contractor leaked your customer’s data or mission-critical information. It could bring your operations to a standstill or cause financial losses.

Take precautions by reading the customer reviews on the content agency or vet the freelancer before hiring.

Choose Your Content Creation Strategy

Now you’re aware of the pros and cons of creating content in-house vs outsourcing. Weigh them and decide the strategy that will help you publish frequent posts with a consistent standard of quality. It’ll increase your site’s traffic, audience, and sales.

Check this graph from the B2B Benchmarks Report.

The 84% rate at which B2B organizations are outsourcing content creation has proven it truly works. CopySmiths can make it work for you too.

We deliver consistent and high-quality content on time at affordable prices. Contact us and order your content batch now.

Katrina McKinnon

CopySmiths

I'm Katrina McKinnon, founder of CopySmiths and Small Revolution. In my 20 years of experience, I have helped online businesses create high-performing content specifically on an eCommerce store's blog. Find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.