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.
There are a lot of things that go into making a vendor the ideal one for
your requirements. It might get a bit painful finding such a vendor at
times, but do not give up; it's more than worth the effort. Once you hire
the right vendor, you'll see your traffic and revenues multiply within a
matter of a few months.
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About the Author:
Rebecca Thachil is a co-owner of Atlantis Group which is a content
writing and translation service provider. To know more on how content and
translation can make a difference to your business, you can visit:
http://www.atlantis-group/blog
