Which type of project should I choose?

Which type of project should I choose?

The freelance content creators at Contentoo are experienced in working with five types of projects:

• Content creation
• Rewriting
• Editing
• Translation
• Transcreation/localisation

Content creation
During a content creation project, the freelancer writer creates an original new text for you, based on the instructions you provided in your briefing.
Common content creation projects include:

• Blog posts and online articles
• Ebooks, white papers and how-to guides
• Customer cases (including interviews with clients)
• Email messages (for internal or external communications)
• Press releases and news stories

Content creation projects are all about taking advantage of the creativity of our freelance talent. Our freelancers are experienced researchers and have written original texts on many topics that are relevant for your target groups. You can trust them to produce engaging SEO text to get your message across.
Think of it this way: content creation means that you have an idea for a blog post, article, ebook or other type of content. Then you give your freelancer a blank sheet of paper and ask them to put your ideas into words for you.
To get the best content as efficiently as possible, try to provide as much information as you can when creating a briefing for a content creation project. You can let your freelancer know which topics and keywords you want to include in the text. You can also provide an outline, or links to similar texts, to give your freelancer a clearer idea of what you want the all-new text to look like.

Rewriting
Rewriting is similar to content creation, but requires less original writing from the freelancer. With a rewriting project, you provide your freelancer with a text that has already been written and ask them to significantly change it. There are many different reasons for ordering a rewriting project. For example:
• You want to revamp existing content on your website or blog, because your company’s tone of voice has changed. Say, for example, you have an old how-to guide or blog post that uses an outdated, technical tone that no longer matches your brand. You can ask your freelancer to rewrite this content using your company’s new, informal-yet-professional tone of voice.
• Content needs to be updated. Say, for example, you published a very successful beginning-of-the-year trend report last year. And at the start of the new year, you want to have it updated to include some new insights. The main content and outline of the original text will remain very similar to the original, but you want your freelancer to tweak it now to keep it fresh and relevant.
• In some cases, you may want to repurpose existing content so that it targets a different audience. For example, you might have a well-written internal communication (like a newsletter or text that you used to inform your company’s employees of a new product or development) and you want to now release the same message to your customers. Your freelancer can rewrite the text in that case, so that it is customer-focused and suitable for release to the public.
• Perhaps you have a text written internally or by a third-party partner which needs to be adapted to your company’s style guide and branding guidelines. Your freelancer can rewrite this text so that it is fully consistent with the way your company normally communicates.

Editing
If you've written a text that’s almost ready for publishing, but you want a professional editor to have a look and correct any grammar, spelling, punctuation or style errors, then you can request an editing project from your freelancers.
Editing improves the quality of your own text without changing the message or significantly altering the content. It’s all about making the text perfect, so you can publish it without any doubts.
This is a great option for texts that are written by non-native speakers who want to have a native speaker check to make sure the language is correct and authentic.

Translation
Are you trying to reach audiences in multiple languages? If so, then you can create a project to have a professional language expert translate your existing text into their own native language.
For a translation project, the translated text will have the exact same message as your original text, but it will be written in a style that is natural and appropriate for the second language. Here are some examples:

• You have legal or technical documents (such as a privacy statement, terms and conditions, contracts, etc.) that need to be duplicated precisely in a second language.
• You have general content (such as a press release or how-to guide) that you want to have translated without altering the original message or wording. For example, you write a press release targeting Belgium-based media outlets in Flemish, and you also want to have the same message translated into French, but still target media outlets based in Belgium.

All Contentoo translations are written in a stylish, authentic way. Our translators do not use auto-translate software (such as Google Translate), and they do not write 1:1 literal translations (unless asked to do so).
We believe that the translated version should always read naturally, so that native speakers will not notice they are reading a translation. That means that the translator will replace any basic figures of speech or expressions that do not work in the second language with equivalent expressions from their own language.
However, with translations, the finished text will generally have the same form and structure (sentence by sentence) as the original, with some slight variations if necessary, due to differences between the languages.
If you need for the translation to also be fully rewritten to ensure that it is culturally appropriate for another target audience, then you’ll want to choose transcreation/localisation instead of translation (see below).

Transcreation/localisation
Transcreation and localisation go beyond the scope of traditional translation. With this service, you fully convert a text that is written in one language into a new text written in a second language. The new text captures the original message from the original text, but often uses different sentence structures which are more appropriate for the second language. Be sure to specify in your briefing if you would like for a text to be transcreated/localised.

With this service, your message will be recreated and adapted so that it has the desired impact on your target audience in the second language. It is fully tailored to suit local tastes and ways of communicating.
Here are some scenarios for choosing this type of project:

• You want to convert important messages, such as your company’s slogans, creative writing or advertising, into a second language. These types of messaging often use culturally-specific references or colloquial language that will need to be fully rewritten by your freelance transcreator/localisation expert to make sure they resonate with the new target language group.
• You want to translate a text, while also adapting it to a different market. For example, say you have written a German-language how-to guide about the best SaaS solutions in your industry. And now you want to translate that guide into Dutch, while also changing the content so that it is fully relevant for Dutch readers. This will involve additional culture-specific research from your transcreator/localisation expert, and the finished Dutch text will be significantly different from the original German text.

Not sure which type of project to choose?
 If you're not sure which category is right for your project, contact us for advice by writing to support@contentoo.com. In some cases, one project may fall into more than one type of service. We're happy to help you get your project going. The platform will look for the best freelance writer for the job, so you get the high-quality content you need.