Hiring a Content Writer
I've been hiring a content writer, which mostly means reading a pile of applications that all start with some variation of:
"I specialize in SEO content..."
"I've grown traffic 200% using Ahrefs..."
"I reverse-engineer search intent to..."
You get the idea.
Look, SEO works. It scales. It makes dashboards go up and to the right. I get the appeal.
But if your whole philosophy is "find what people are searching for and give them a slightly better version of that," I'm already tired. That's not strategy. That's spreadsheet writing.
One application I got literally opened with a case study about ranking for "best CRM for plumbers." Cool. You ranked. But did anyone read it and actually learn something? Did a plumber in Phoenix finish that article and think differently about their business? Or did they skim the H2s, not find what they needed, and bounce?
I don't know. Nobody ever asks that question. We just celebrate the traffic.
The content I care about starts with people. What are customers confused about? What are sales reps tired of explaining for the 47th time? What's a smarter way to tell this story... one that respects the person reading it?
And here's the other thing — blog posts are one slice of the job. There's product messaging. Internal enablement. Stuff that makes onboarding clearer and helps customers feel like they actually understand what they bought. If your only move is "write blog, stuff keyword, wait for rankings," we're probably not going to vibe.
I'm not looking for someone who can reverse-engineer search intent. I'm looking for someone who's curious about the people on the other end of the screen.
That's it. That's the job.