How to Find a Suitable Content Partner

by Kushal Sharma

There are many vendors who show you very good samples and great testimonials to impress you, but when you receive the actual work, you realize it's not nearly as good as the samples promised it would be. You move on to the next vendor, and something similar happens. Finally, you end up editing the substandard content yourself to meet your deadline, and you come to believe that good quality is really a myth unless it comes with an exorbitant price tag you can't afford. However, do not despair. Good quality is available, and while it is not cheap, you can definitely find a vendor you can afford. Here are some of the ways you can weed out impostors and identify a content provider that can offer real value to your business over the long term: Pay attention to the language they use: Ever heard the sentence, "we have experience working with worldwide clients"? That's someone you may not want to work with. You'd be better off looking for someone who's "worked with clients worldwide", if you know what I mean. Sure, it could be a typo at times, but if someone has such errors all over the place on their website, that should tell you a lot about their ability to provide you with quality. How well do they write their emails? I understand that not everyone is skilled in the art of presentation, however, the kind of attention someone puts in on the proposals they send you tells you a lot about the attention your work will get if you hire them. Have they understood your requirements and addressed them well in their proposal? Have they taken extra efforts and made useful suggestions or provided you with alternative ways in which they can help you do that job better? Have they explained the exact manner in which they'd be able to provide you with what you need -- for example, in case of a bulk requirement, a brief outline of how they intend to ramp up? These are the hallmarks of true professionals who care about delivering real value. Are they willing to offer you a free sample tailored to your requirements? This is a very good method of measuring the quality benchmark of your potential vendor. If they really are that good, they will be happy to write or translate a short paragraph or article specifically for you and prove their claim. Do take a look at their previous work samples as well A writer once sent me a sample article that had a serious grammatical error in every other sentence. And here's the funny part: the subject of the article was "the importance of writing good English." These are the vendors who genuinely think they provide good quality and do not know how bad their quality really is. When I informed this writer about the errors in his article, he refused to acknowledge them and said his article was perfect! There are a lot of vendors in India and other non English-speaking countries who genuinely do not realize their inadequacies and make tall claims. A quick look at their samples will help you identify them. How flexible are they? This is another important measure for professional vendors. Are they willing to go that extra mile and accommodate random requests that creep up at your end or do they simply mention the contract every time and tell you that it's not their responsibility? If it's the latter, you might want to look for another vendor.