Content is King: Use Craigslist to Find Some Writers (part 3)

Keep up: part 1 & part 2

Ok, so this is it: you’ve written your sparkling proposal letter, you’ve properly posted your letter on Craigslist (CL), and now you’re starting to receive a nice flow of response – YAY!!

Now what?

Now you’ll want to spend the time of carefully going through each response to determine if the writer is a good fit for your company; many will not.

I use a certain filtration system that quickly determines if I respond to the writer or not:

1. Spelling:

   If there’s more than 2 or 3 blatant spelling errors in the response email, that tells me that the writer doesn’t pay attention to the details. And if he/she is already off to a bad start “before” they got the position, you can only imagine what will happen when they get started.

2. Attitude:

   You can usually tell how hungry someone is from their response letters. If they write a few lines of blah..blah..blah… basically telling you how much “you” need them because they are so qualified, then you may want to pass on such a person.

   On the other hand, if you feel a lot passion and enthusiasm coming from the writer – possibly through a strong background story of their experiences and why they love to write about stocks — then that may be an excellent candidate. You’ll know who’s hungry and who isn’t.

3. Teammate:

   You’re better off finding a team player who is willing to learn and has a lot of passion, than taking on someone who is an excellent writer and possibly has more experience, but isn’t a team player at all.

   You don’t want to poison your company by taking on the wrong person. Find a team player who is going to add real value to your venture.

Just keep at it

As I’ve stated, most of the respondents will not be what you’re looking for – that’s just how CL works. So you’ll want to stay determined and keep on posting listings every 2 weeks or so; possibly tweaking your proposal letter and experimenting with different propositions.

Soon enough, you’ll have that awesome team of writers and you’ll be on your way to producing a constant flow of quality content through your site.

Get your CL on!

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