How to choose freelancers for social media and SEO tasks
So how do you pick the right freelancer for SEO and Social Media
#1 Trial and Error
#2 No freelancer is good for everything
#3 Maintain a healthy level of competition
#4 Squeeze but do not squeeze too hard
#5 accept nothing but good quality from day one
+1 (Do not) trust the wisdom of the crowd
#1 Trialling possible SEO freelancers.
If you run a search for sites where you can hire freelancers, and run another search for SEO on say the top 5 of these sites, you will have a thousand people who claim they have superb SEO skills / SEO knowledge / SEO experience. If they really were so outstanding, would they be looking for work here? So take all self promotion with a pinch of salt.
Before you commit yourself and your task to a single vendor, design a dry run. Split out a similar task like your main project but smaller on scale and budget. Split it into 4-5 clearly comparable subtasks and have people bid for those. This way you can test quality, timeliness, work ethics and real SEO skills with a controlled budget and choose two candidates who can tender for the main project.
#2 No freelancer is good for everything
Do not confuse professional skills with work ethics. Just because your fav copywriter is a pleasure to work with, it will not make him a good graphic designer or php coder.
#3 Maintain a healthy level of competition
Freelancers tend to loosen up on their second project. They will only maintain their original focus and quality if they know that other candidates will also be hired unless they give their best. Regularly run open bids and select a candidate other than your usual freelancer. Or, use two outsourced contractors to do half of the tasks each and make sure they know about one another.
#4 Squeeze but do not squeeze too hard
Squeeze but not too hard means do not keep contantly squeezing people on money. If the momey you originally agreed on is acceptable for you, do not try to halve it. Instead squeeze people on quality and on sticking to the deadline.
#5 Accept nothing but good quality from day one
And be consistent about this. If you accept a job that you are not completely satisfied with AND hire the contractor again, you give clear indication to the freelancer that mediocrity is acceptable. Either do not accept the job if the contractor is otherwise outstanding. Or do not hire that freelancer again.
+1 (Do not) trust the wisdom of the crowd
Star based reviews, ten point scales and feedback notes are indicative. But they are not always reliable. Once I contracted someone based on his good reviews, who later on gave me such abuse like I had never got before or after. Also, just because someone felt the freelancer does not meet a particular criterion, if that condition is right at the bottom of your list, go for it.
