This exercise not only helps you measure your creative and technical skills as a marketing author, but also gives you an idea of how much work your internal team may need to get your assets through the process of reviewing and approving your organization’s content. Based on this experience, I’ve gathered some tips and tricks to help you find, review, and integrate the outsourced authors that best suit your content marketing needs. No matter how good your strategy, membership and budget, the success of your content marketing program depends on just one essential element: the availability of talent to execute your plans. As someone who has received many of these requests, here’s what I think of the following question: if your company’s content marketing program really has the power to take my writing career to the next level, I will most likely ask you for an opportunity, not the other way around. As a content strategy consultant, Jodi helps companies assess their content and resource needs, build infrastructure and operations, and create compelling articles across multiple channels and media platforms. Typically, companies outsource content creation once they accept that they don’t have the time or talent to produce the quality, quantity, or scale of content they need to achieve their goals. Professional content creators can come from a variety of disciplines: marketing, journalism, copywriting, technical writing, research, and more. You can also find great talent among the thousands of people attending the world’s largest content marketing event. Platforms such as Contently, Skyword and NewsCred, and recruiters such as Robert Half, Writing Assistance and Artisan Creative offer a range of services to connect marketers with qualified independent professionals. Before talking to authors, honestly assess their content needs and expectations and assess the extent to which independent authors can be integrated into your content infrastructure. While many authors have flexible skills that they can apply to virtually any type of content, others struggle with tasks that are too far removed from their field of expertise. Work with a creative recruiting agency or content marketing platform. A note before you start: Marketers outsource many content creation tasks (writing, editing, design, production, project management, video creation, etc.) to marketers. – to a creative agency or content marketing platform. Jodi Harris is Director of Editorial Content and Conservation at the Content Marketing Institute.