What to look for in a content strategy consultant.
The short answer is that you want someone you like, someone you can tell the truth to, and someone whose truth you could take in return, alongside values that match yours and a way of working that suits how you run your own week... all measured against goals you've defined before you start.
That's it in a nutshell, but the sections below go through each part, including the mismatches I see most often when founders hire content support in a bit more detail.
Can you tell each other the truth?
You'll be working with a content strategist for months, sometimes years, and you'll be sharing half-formed thoughts, worries about how you come across, and probably a few rambling voice notes recorded in the car... which is a lot easier with someone you'd happily have a cuppa with, so liking them counts for a lot.
Liking them covers half of it, because you also need to feel able to tell them when something isn't working for you, and just as able to accept the same from them. A good consultant will sometimes tell you that a post idea you love won't do what you hoped, or that the audience you've been aiming at isn't the one you thought you had, and if you can already feel yourself bristling at the thought, it's far better to find that out before you sign (and pay) anything.
A simple test on an intro call is to ask about a time they disagreed with a client and what happened next, then listen to how they tell the story (if the client comes out as the villain every time, you've learned something useful about how they'd talk about you 🙈).
Do their values match yours?
Listen to the language a strategist uses, because it tells you how they see your audience and what they'll treat as important. If you think of your audience as a community and you work in a people-centric way, a service that talks in 'funnels', 'conversions' and numbers is going to feel like an awkward fit, however good their results look on paper. If you're happiest with dashboards and hard numbers, someone who only talks about 'connection' and 'presence' may leave you frustrated, and neither approach is wrong, so the useful thing is knowing which sounds like you before you're 3 months in.
I'm particular about this myself (I'd say 'journey' where a lot of marketing says 'funnel', and 'invitation' where it says 'conversion'), because the words we use about an audience shape how we treat them, and you'd want the same care taken with yours. A useful follow-up question is what they'd do if your instincts differed from theirs, for example if you'd rather post 2 or 3 times a week than every day, since that answer shows how much of the strategy is built around you and how much comes from a template.
Are you clear on what you want them to achieve?
A consultant can't hit a goal you haven't told them, and you can't judge whether the work is going well without one, so it helps to set your goals before you start. A goal like 'more visibility' sounds sensible and is very hard for anyone to be measured against, so it's better to get specific about what you'd like to see change, such as more consistent posting, better conversations in your comments, or enquiries that suit the work you want to do. There is nothing wrong of course with visibility being the goal, lots of my clients have this as they’re thought leaders, but having a chat beforehand about what success around that would look like is key.
If it's social media posting, for example, decide what you'll look at each month (reach, saves, comments, enquiries) and ask how they'd report on it, including how often you'd see the numbers and who pulls them together. It’s important to agree what success looks like at the start, and follower growth sits in there as useful context, because a smaller audience full of the right people does more for you than a large audience full of the wrong people. Knowing your goals also makes it easier to brief someone well, and a well-briefed strategist is much more likely to deliver something that matches what you had in mind.
Does their way of working fit yours?
Working styles can clash even when the personalities get on brilliantly, and someone who works last minute won't suit someone who plans 6 weeks ahead (that's me, with the calendar filled well in advance so I've got space for the last-minute reactive posts!). So ask how far ahead they plan, how approvals work, where the work will live (a shared Notion board, Google Docs, a very long email chain) and how often you'll speak (someone who replies to your enquiry at 11pm on a Sunday may be wonderful, though you'll want to check that's the pace you're signing up for).
Scope needs the same conversation, and a common mismatch is hiring for content support only while expecting engagement too, meaning the replies, comments and conversations that follow a post, which is its own job with its own time and skill. Ask on the call who handles them, and when the scope arrives, check it says so in black and white, because it's much easier to agree before you start than to discover it after the invoice has arrived.
Do they use AI, and does that suit you?
Some strategists have built their whole agency around AI, some are entirely human-led, and plenty sit somewhere in the middle (I'm a hybrid myself, using it for some clients and not others, and for some parts of the process and not others). There's no right answer, so what matters is that their approach suits your brand, which is why it's well worth asking how they use it before you agree to anything.
It helps to know your own view first. If you'd like no AI from start to finish, say so, and a good provider will be honest about what their process looks like. If you're totally fine with it, say that too, because you might be talking to a human-led provider and you'd both want to spot that mismatch before you start. It's also worth asking where it's used, since writing, images and summarising data can each get a different answer (I use AI to support things like summarising data, and I work with a graphic designer for images, which is simply my choice).
Then there's how visible you'd like it to be, since an audience can read something as AI when it isn't, and you'd both want to know where you stand on that before anything gets posted!
What level of support do you need?
The most common mismatch I see in our industry is paying for a new junior VA and expecting a seasoned strategist, content creator and graphic designer rolled into a single person. A VA can be brilliant at implementing, meaning scheduling, keeping things organised and collecting data reports, but strategy, writing and design are different skills, and expecting all of them at a VA's rate sets everyone up for disappointment.
The reverse happens too, where someone pays strategist rates and only needs posts scheduled and a monthly report pulled together, in which case a VA could have done the job well for less.
A simple way to work out what you need is to write down everything you'd like done and label each task by whether it needs thinking, doing or a bit of both. Strategy, positioning and deciding what to say are thinking, while scheduling, formatting and reporting are doing, and writing and design sit somewhere in between. I split my own work into Map, Make and Matter for the same reason... Map is the strategy and direction, Make is creating the content, and Matter is the visibility and engagement that follow once a post goes out, so it's easy to point at which part you'd be paying for and which you might hold on to yourself.
What affects the cost of a content strategy consultant.
Prices vary a lot depending on where someone is based, how much experience they have and what's included, so I'll help you work out what you're paying for, since any figures I quoted would be out of date by the time you read this (one of the joys of writing about money on the internet!). The biggest factor is usually how much of the work is thinking and how much is doing, because strategy, positioning and writing take experience, while scheduling and reporting take organisation, and the price tends to follow whichever mix you're asking for. Add in how many platforms you want covered and whether engagement is included (the replies and conversations that follow a post), and it's easy to see why 2 quotes for 'social media help' can be miles apart.
Most people are offered either a monthly retainer or a one-off project. A project suits a defined piece of work, such as a strategy, a content plan or a brand voice guide, while a retainer suits ongoing support, where the consultant learns your voice and gets better at sounding like you the longer you work together. If you're unsure, it's worth asking whether they'd start with a project and move to a retainer once you both know it's working.
After an intro call, a good consultant should send a scope that spells out what's included, so that's the document to read carefully (and to ask questions about) before you say yes. They might also deliver the scope over another call- which is great, but if they do, don’t feel pressure to say yes- take the scope away with you and read it again before deciding.
What will you get back for the money?
It's also worth counting the cost of getting it wrong. Paying a junior for a strategist's job, or a strategist for scheduling, usually means paying twice, once for the mismatch and again for the fix, and that's before the time you spend re-explaining your voice to someone new (a very particular sort of tiredness!).
Then there's the return, which for many founders shows up as people understanding what you do faster, invitations to speak or appear on podcasts that fit your expertise, enquiries from people who already know how you think, or simply fewer hours spent wondering what to post on a Tuesday. Decide which of those matters most to you before you compare quotes, because that tells you what to weigh each price against.
And I'll add a caveat here, financial ROI can be intangible in some cases, because a lot of what good content does (someone reading your posts unseen for 6 months before getting in touch, a referral from a person who saw your post) happens long before anyone could trace it back to an invoice, so it's worth talking through how you'd both keep an eye on that during your intro call.
Questions to ask a content strategy consultant before you hire them.
These questions will help you discover if you’re a good fit for the person you’re talking with:
Can you tell me about a time you disagreed with a client, and what happened next?
How will we agree what success looks like, and how will you report on it?
How far ahead do you plan, and how do approvals work?
Who looks after comments, replies and messages?
Who will be doing the work day to day, and what experience do they have?
How do you talk about the people my content is for?
How do you use AI in your work, and how would you like to handle it for my content?
If you're weighing up who to work with and would like to talk through what you need, pop me a message... I'd love to hear more about your business and what you're working on.
