Depositphotos_19834643_xs In the words of content marketing guru Brian Clark, “the writer runs this show.” Whether you’re running an agency, publishing a magazine, or just trying to keep your brand’s blog updated, the quality of your writers can make or break your business. If you’re looking to hire and retain the best talent, here are ten factors to consider.

1. Do you have a strong core mission?

No, I’m not talking abut the statement you wrote in some retreat that’s been doing nothing but collecting dust. A mission for your business should be palpable. It should be a guiding factor in all of your decisions and be based on something greater than just making money. Having a strong vision will attract writers with the same vision, and it’s the reason they’ll go the extra mile to find cutting edge research, or scrap a draft and start over when new details emerge rather than turn in work that’s passably good–but not great.

2. What does the energy feel like?

Even remote workers can pick up on your company’s vibe. High expectations, consistency, and a clear company culture go a long way.

3. Are your expectations reasonable?

You may work 60 hours a week and on evenings and weekends, but expecting freelancers to submit rewrites at 1AM is completely unreasonable. Asking for twice as much work as negotiated in the scope of your original agreement is completely unreasonable. The list goes on and on. Remember that just because someone is responsive to these requests at first doesn’t mean they’re thrilled about it. Trying to see just how much you can get away with is not a good recipe for retention.

4. What about everyone else’s expectations?

You’re probably not the only person interacting with your freelancer. If clients treat them like automatons or are disrespectful, that’s a part of their experience with your brand. So are those endless conference calls where they’re not really supposed to talk and are playing 2048 or muting their line so they can do their dishes.

5. How do you resolve conflict?

You may think you treat your freelancers just fine, thank you very much, but what do you do when there’s a conflict between a writer and a client? Bending over backwards when someone’s being unreasonable may keep them happy in the short-term, but freelancers like to work with people who have their back. Drawing a line with a client when necessary is a sure-fire way to win points with freelancers. So is working on eliminating extraneous steps and streamlining a process, with everyone’s feedback. If you do this on your own without them having to talk to you first, all the better. This isn’t to say that you should always placate freelancers, either. Just be fair.

6. How much of a cut are you getting, and what are you doing for that cut?

You’ll never hear this brought up to your face, but every freelancer will wonder about this at some point. If they’re practically running one of your projects, and you’re pocketing a hefty percent, you damn well better be providing value in some way or another. If you are micromanaging, adding extraneous tasks, or making mistakes your writer has to clean up for you–and adding additional steps for them in the process–you may wind up with a retention problem.

7. Do you have a crazy Draconian contract?

Nobody wants to sign those. Even if you pay enough that they will, they probably won’t feel good about it.

8. What does your CMS look like?

Do you have a sleek, sexy CMS that’s easy to use? Or are you forcing your freelancers to use some antiquated system that is ridden with bugs and occasionally breaks? Redesigns that everyone complains about and which don’t actually solve the problems people have don’t count as an improvement.

9. Do you give specific feedback?

The best writers want to improve their skills. You using their work as is could very well be a red flag. That said, it’s important that the feedback you give them is actionable and specific. And make sure to throw some praise in there as well, when warranted. If you can share metrics, all the better.

10. Do you accept feedback?

If you ask for it and ignore it, it doesn’t count. If your company isn’t agile enough to act upon suggestions, you’ll likely have problems beyond attracting and retaining talent. Also, it’s worth noting that feedback isn’t always honest when you’re just chatting by phone. Anonymous surveys are a good start. Hiring someone else to analyze them is even better.

Following these steps will not only help you attract and retain top talent and win their loyalty and affection, it’ll also help you build a damn good business that can weather any storm.

Writing has its own unique set of challenges, but finding a to-do list scrawled on the back of an envelope (for example) doesn’t have to be one of them. Luckily, there’s a whole slew of amazing apps which can help with this issue, and many others. These are some of my favorites.

For signing contracts – OurDeal

As many freelance writers have learned the hard way, working without a contract can lead to a lot of complicated problems. But if you’re not working with someone who already has a prewritten contract, it can be time-consuming trying to put one together. OurDeal takes care of this problem by having a library with agreement form templates, along with selectable options (such as a non-disclo sure agreement or a non-compete clause), and it only takes seconds to put a contract together. Your client can sign the form automatically, which saves a ton of time waiting for letters in the mail. The price starts at $9.99/month for 10 deals, and goes up to $27.99/month for unlimited contracts. Check it out at http://www.ourdeal.com.

For managing assignments – TeuxDeux

TeuxDeux is a really nice free browser-based to-do app (and an iPhone app). You basically list everything you need to do for the week, and then you can see a week view every time you go to the site. The days that have past turn light gray, future days are black and the day you’re on is red. When you finish something, you can check off or delete the item. You can manually drag tasks from one day to another. Anything you don’t do gets transferred over to the next day. A word of warning: I’ll give you a quick warning here; you can’t put every single thing on your entire to-do list on TeuxDeux if you’re swamped with deadlines. That’s because the stuff you don’t finish on one day goes to the BOTTOM of the next day’s list, which can be bad if you need it at the TOP and forget to rearrange your day. There’s a “Someday Section” you can use to add items that don’t need to be done immediately–you can even make different columns to keep them all organized. (Hat tip to Casey Allen for recommending keeping separate lists for personal and business to-do lists, which has worked for me.) TeuxDeux’s web-based app is free, and the iPhone app costs $2.99. Check it out at http://teuxdeux.com/.

For billing – FreshBooks

There are a ton of invoicing programs, but Freshbooks has a lot of really amazing features which just aren’t available anywhere else. First of all, they have the best customer service team ever–which may or may not have to do with the fact that they’re Canadian. Free customer service is available from 9am to 6pm Eastern.

In addition to allowing you to quickly create invoices, FreshBooks has some great tools for tracking your time and your monthly expenses (including receipts). It allows you to accept online payments, can be set to automatically send past due invoices (so you don’t have to worry about it), and to address clients who pretend they didn’t get invoices…well, FreshBook even tracks the exact moment an invoice has been viewed. You can also create estimates, track the time you’ve spent on a project (from your laptop OR your iPhone with a free app). FreshBooks is free for up to 3 clients (and you can get a 30-day trial for free). The cost is $19.95/month for up to 25 active clients, $29.95/month for an unlimited amount of clients, and $39.95/month if you need things like team timesheets and team expense reports.

For distraction-free researching: Chrome’s Incognito Setting

Just download Chrome (if you don’t have it already), and click on “File” and then “New Incognito Window” if you’re on a Mac, or use the shortcut ⌘-Shift-N. On a PC, click on the Chrome menu on your toolbar and select “New Incognito window,” or use the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+N. Chrome’s Incognito setting allows you to view all sorts of sites without them saving as much information about you. Why is that important? Because then you can do all the research you need for your article without being tempted to check your e-mail, Twitter, Quora or facebook. Your password isn’t saved and cookies are deleted, so you can actually stick to what you’re doing. This is good for non-fiction writing, or even fiction writing which requires research to complete, so apps which don’t allow you to browse the web at all (like Freedom) won’t do the trick. Chrome is free, and you can download it here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/.

Update: a reader informed me that Firefox has a similar option called Private Browsing, and Internet Explorer has InPrivate Browsing.

For writing or organizing your articles: Scrivener

Scrivener is pretty awesome, because it allows you to keep all of your content all in one place. It has all these cool features to let you create files and drag them around in different categories. And you can totally search the entire file. It also lets you keep all of your research (e-mails, Word documents, PDF files, etc.) in one place. There are a ton of other great settings you can check out, including a cork board to be used as an organizational tool (since documents are attached to “index cards” which you can write synapses on), or you can use an outline if you prefer. And there’s a cool setting in the toolbar where you can blank out the rest of your desktop to write. Scrivener is $45 and well worth it. (There’s a free 30-day trial as well.) Check it out here: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/index.php.

Your Turn

Did I miss anything you love? Let me know what your favorite writing apps are in the comments!

How To Attract and Retain Top Freelance Talent