If you are looking to cut your marketing costs, the outlay for a professional copywriter may be one hard-to-justify figure, especially if you have perfectly capable staff who could take over. Seems like a logical cost-saving measure right?
Except that this story of a copywriting nightmare endured by the Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford serves as a cautionary tale to any business 
taking over writing duties for the first time. Although most companies will be blogging in their native tongue, the lesson learned by Westfield (the hard way) shows the importance of having copy checked by a professional before it is published. A quick once over by a native Arabic speaker would have saved Westfield from embarrassment on the world stage. The same goes for your blog which is also visible anywhere in the world.
From a purely financial standpoint, it does make sense to ask staff to contribute to the company blog although they will obviously need to fit research, writing, editing, re-checking and publishing around the rest of their job. If they really can do all these tasks on a regular basis (an infrequently updated blog is almost as useless as no blog at all), then I still strongly suggest securing the services of a professional copywriter to check that all is well with the content which they are producing. This will of course incur an additional charge for maintaining your blog, but it should also be less than having the writer create new content from scratch. Or rewrite substandard content.
It is possible to cut your copywriting costs – just make sure you don’t cut corners in the process. Lower marketing outgoings may come at the cost of your brand’s image.
If you want advice on copy editing (or have changed your mind and want to secure the services of a professional blogger after all), why not contact me today? My copywriting rates are much cheaper than the cost of repairing an embarrassing content cock-up.
