MBA1641 How to Find a Great Content Writer
2 Feb 2026 · 10 min
Omar Zenhom breaks down writer quality: 20% elite, 60% mediocre, 20% poor. Find great ones by reading blogs you like, reaching out to strong authors directly, and starting with paid trial projects. Connor went from small gigs to full-time head of content this way.
Questions this episode answers
MBA1641 How to Find a Great Content Writer
Omar Zenhom
2020-10-22
Over five years
20% elite, 60% mediocre, 20% poor
Chapters
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Visit Dell.com deals. Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. We're improving your business as our business every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn how to find a great content writer. Finding a great writer for your website, for your blog, for your marketing, for your emails might seem overwhelming, even daunting. How do you get somebody who has the skills to convey your message and embody your brand? This is one of the most critical hires in your business because they're going to be representing the voice of your business. They're going to be making some creative decisions that will affect the way people view your company. So it's an important hire and you want to make sure you do it right. So how do you find a great writer? Do you go on job boards? Do you search for them on LinkedIn? How do you find them? Well, in today's episode I'm going to explain the best strategy I found to find great content writers. I'll even share my own story and how we found Connor who is our full time head of content who's been with us for over five years we'll get into that and more in today's lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. The title of today's lesson is how to find a great content writer. And I want to emphasize this because what I found when it comes to writers is that 20% are just straight up bad writers. They're just horrible. Okay? They're not good at their job. 60% are okay. They're actually pretty good. They're mediocre. They're not going to be offensive. They're going to get the job done, but they're not going to thrill anybody. They're not going to knock anybody's socks off. And then you have a top tier of 20% of all content writers. I found just 20% that really know their stuff. They really know how to communicate to your audience. They know how to convert them into interested leads and buyers. They know how to represent your brand and be your voice. I'm interested in helping you get a writer that's in that 20%, that elite level of writer. One of the best pieces of evidence of a great writer is great writing. Okay? If you want somebody who's great at something, there's a good chance they have great work out there. They will leave clues. So where do you find these clues? Well, other blogs, some of your favorite blogs have great content writers. Think of the blogs that you follow, whether it's digital photography school or Copy blogger or Mashable or whatever it is. You're going to see some great articles out there that you probably read on the regular, but you never really notice who wrote it. And it's probably a content writer that works that freelances for that blog. Take note of these people and reach out to them, get their name, check out their social handles, usually included in their bio in the website. When you click on their name on the blog post and you can learn a little bit more about them and reach out and say, hey, do you do freelance work? Do you do any other copy work for other companies? Chances are they do and this is a great opportunity. Even if they're not available full time, that's totally fine. Just because you can't have the whole pie doesn't mean you don't have a slice. So the reason why I say this is because this is how we got started with our full time copywriter, Connor. We just started on a small few projects, a few blog posts, and that's what he was able to do. Given the fact that he was in demand and he was working for other blogs. He was working for other companies. And great writers are willing to say, hey, I'll write you a blog post between X amount of words, you know, 500 to 1000 words or 1000 to 1500 words. And this is what it's going to cost you because they're going to do some research and they're going to take some time to craft it and put some images together and all that kind of stuff. And this is a great way to enter a relationship, a working relationship with a great writer. And it's sort of like a trial project. And you can go through a few trial projects, a few blog posts. Maybe the next step is like, hey, I would love you to write the copy on this landing page or on this sales page. And what this does is one, it allows you to see evidence, proof that this person can do what you want them to do for your brand and for your company. Two, it allows them to understand your voice and get enough reps to understand your needs and your wants and your audience and be able to deliver better and better work. And three, is a very low risk way for both of you to enter a working relationship. So step one, take note of the great writers, the great articles that you read on popular blogs, take note of who's writing these blog posts, Reach out to them and see if they're willing to work on a freelance basis just to start working with each other one article at a time, one page at a time. And some people will genuinely not be available or can do it, and that's fine. But you're never going to know unless you ask. And the more you ask, the more you're going to get answers, the more you're going to get yeses. They say business is a contact sport because the more contacts you make, the better. A good friend of the show and friend of ours, Matt Giovanisi, has a blog that I absolutely love. It's called Swim University and it's about pool care. I do not have a pool. I am not interested in pool care. But I was fascinated with the fact that his blog posts were so creative and fun and interesting, even though it's about a boring topic like pool care, if you can write that well and write a piece that's really fun to read and interesting about pool care, for sure you're gonna do a great job with our subject matter, whether it's business or webinars or whatever it is. So I said, hey, Matt, love your blog, love the blog posts on your site. Do you know any great writers that you can refer to me. And that's when he made an email introduction between me and Connor. And it's one of the best emails I received, is one of the best connections we've made because Connor has really been a big part of our company, both on our lmba and webinar Ninja, helping us hone in our message and is a big part of all the messaging we do from the website, from the blog posts to the emails we send, to even the copy on our webinar registration pages. If it has anything to do with words, Connor takes care of it. But Connor wasn't full time from the beginning. We started again on smaller projects. He then had a retainer of hours and we built up to the point where he did come on full time. Here's a secret about great talent. People that are good at what they do already have work, right? They're already in jobs, already freelancing, they already have gigs. They're not on job boards because they don't need to. They're sought after. So it's your job if you want great talent to go after them, to reach out, to make the connections to, you know, find out how to contact them and get on social and build a relationship with them and ask, hey, I would love to have a great writer on our team. Would you start with us as a freelancer? Thy ticket lady, Jennifer of Coolidge.
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To wrap up today's lesson, a great content writer is a great asset to your company. Words create ideas and ideas produce a reality for your customers. If you don't say or communicate on the pages, on the emails, on the blog, your value no one will ever know it. No one will understand what you bring to the table if you don't communicate it, if you don't show that value. And a great writer can do that for you and can really affect your bottom line. Not just now, but in the long run as well. Because content has that evergreen ability to kind of live there and be found until this day. Written content is the number one way to be found on Google with SEO. So there's a lot of benefits with a great hire here. This is worth the time to take the time to find a great writer or writers, because it's an investment. It's a big investment in your business no matter what you do. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 RMBA show. I hope you found it useful. If you did leave us an iTunes rating and review. We'd love to hear what you think. Just go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. We read every single review. And by leaving us a review, you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. We do a random draw with everybody who loves us. We do a random draw with everybody who's left us a review on Apple Podcasts and everybody somebody wins lifetime access to one of our programs. Sorry to say. Thanks for showing us love on Apple Podcasts. Before I go on, I'll leave you with this. The beauty of this process is you could try before you commit for a long term relationship. A few projects, blog posts, pages, sales pages, whatever it is. Sometimes it will work out and sometimes not. And sometimes it has nothing really to do with their talent but maybe their level of commitment or time. And that's okay. You have to try. You have to experiment. That's the only way you'll know you have what you need. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in. Tomorrow's episode, Free Art Friday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of. Okay.
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