Teach Your Freelancers The Product: The Overlooked Key To Better Content

Has your freelancer ever seen your product?

Not a screenshot. Not a landing page. But a real walkthrough of how it works?

If not, you might be asking too much of them.

Many companies want product-informed content. The kind of content that helps a reader think, “Oh, that’s exactly what we need.” The kind of content that goes beyond listing features to show real-world problems and how your product solves them.

But too often, we expect that kind of depth without giving freelancers the tools to get there. We keep them at arm’s length, assume they don’t care, or simply run out of time to bring them in. And when the drafts come back a little off, we fix them ourselves instead of fixing the process.

Here’s the good news: you don’t have to overhaul your entire content workflow to get better results. You just need a willingness to share your product, and a few systems to make that sharing easier.

In this post, I’ll show you:

• Why freelancers can and do care about your product

• How I trained a freelancer at Nectar to write more confidently about ours

• Practical ways to share product knowledge, even when your time is limited

The Big Myth: Freelancers Don’t Care About My Product

When I think back to my time as a freelancer and compare it to my experience in-house, there’s a pattern I’ve observed. In-house teams often keep freelancers at arm’s length. Sometimes it’s intentional, and sometimes it just happens.

There are a few reasons for that.

• Some companies are navigating legal or classification concerns, especially in regions where treating a freelancer too much like an employee gets tricky.

• Other times, it’s a bandwidth issue. Founders and marketers are busy, and getting someone up to speed on a product feels like one more thing to do.

• And sometimes, if we’re honest, there’s a quiet assumption that freelancers don’t want to go deep on one product. That they’re juggling so many clients that they wouldn’t have the capacity or interest to learn your tool well enough to write about it meaningfully.

But in my experience, that’s not how it works.

Yes, many freelancers work with multiple clients, but most are also trying to build stability. Having a few reliable, long-term clients allows them to plan their months and workloads with more clarity. Being the person who can write SEO content and take on product-informed work makes them more valuable. That value often comes down to product knowledge.

Knowing the product makes a freelancer’s work stickier. It gives them more range. It makes them harder to replace. Better content is not just good for the company, it’s good for the freelancer, too.

And let’s not forget that most freelancers already specialize in an industry or subject they care about. If you’ve hired someone to write about HR software, there’s a good chance they chose that space for a reason. They didn’t stumble into your tool by accident. At some point they said yes, not just to writing a blog post, but to writing for you.

Companies do themselves a disservice when they assume freelancers are only in it to hit the word count and move on. Most want to do work that’s effective, insightful, and deeply useful. They want to create content that checks as many boxes as possible, so you keep sending them assignments.

The better your freelancers understand your product, the more equipped they are to do exactly that.

How I Trained A Freelancer To Write Product-Informed Content At Nectar

I’ve worked with a lot of freelancers over the years, but Rebecca Noori was the one I trusted most when I needed to hand off product-informed content I’d normally write myself.

She first reached out to me with a personal Loom video, something I wasn’t expecting and honestly wasn’t prepared to act on. I wasn’t hiring freelancers at the time. The effort she put into that message stuck with me, and a few weeks later, I found her some one-off assignments. A few months down the road, as I realized how much time I was spending editing multiple freelancers, I decided to stick with just one. That freelancer was Rebecca.

Once we committed to working together consistently, I knew the best way to make it work was to treat it like a real partnership. We started having monthly meetings to talk deeply about the product and the content we were creating. I didn’t just assign her a topic and wait for a draft. I showed her how her work was showing up across the business. We talked through internal reactions, where her pieces were being shared, and how they were being used by teams like Customer Success and Sales.

On the product front, I’d walk her through new feature releases, explain how our tools were being used in the real world, and share examples from our help center. I wanted her to understand not just what our platform did, but how our customers used it and why it mattered.

Over time, Rebecca became a true power player when it came to our product-informed content. She wrote some of our best-performing product-informed pieces by writing pieces like How To Create A Winning Employee Advocacy Program At Work and Employee Challenge Ideas: 51 Ways To Boost Company Engagement. She didn’t just mention our features, she taught people how to use them. Her product mentions felt like a natural part of the story. She also nailed internal linking and calls to action, which made her pieces even easier to plug into our broader content ecosystem.

When I asked her to write about new areas, like AI in employee recognition, she jumped in without hesitation. That flexibility came from the product understanding we’d built over time. I didn’t have to explain everything from scratch or worry that she’d misrepresent our capabilities.

I wholeheartedly feel that most freelancers can learn to create this kind of content. You can create that kind of relationship if you make space for it. Product-informed content gets easier when you stop gatekeeping the product and start inviting your freelancers in.

How To Train Freelancers On Product-Informed Content When You Are Short On Time

Not every team has the capacity to meet monthly with a freelancer, and that’s okay. While regular collaboration is ideal, you can still empower your writers with the product knowledge they need using tools and resources you likely already have.

Think of this as building a lightweight onboarding flow. You’re not aiming to make your freelancer a product expert, you’re just helping them connect your features to the real problems your customers care about.

Here are a few simple, scalable ways to get started:

Tactic	Quick Synopsis	Tools You Can Use	Lift Required	Estimated Time Investment	Best For
Share recorded demos or real sales calls	Help freelancers understand your product through structured demos or real customer interactions.	Gong, Avoma, Zoom recordings	Medium: You'll need to identify relevant recordings and ensure access is available.	1–2 hours upfront	Freelancers writing deeply about product features or use cases
Invite freelancers to product webinars	Let freelancers observe how your team discusses the product live with prospects or customers.	Zoom, Demio, GoToWebinar	Low: Send an invite or link to a webinar.	30–60 minutes per webinar	Freelancers covering industry-specific or campaign-related content
Share interactive product tours	Give freelancers hands-on, guided walkthroughs of your product.	Navattic, Walnut, Storylane	Low: Share existing tour links your team has already built.	15–30 minutes per tour	Freelancers new to your product or industry
Point them to your help center or knowledge base	Use your documentation to illustrate how features work and how users interact with the product.	Zendesk, Intercom, Help Scout	Low: Link relevant help docs in briefs or onboarding material.	15–60 minutes per brief	All freelancers writing any type of product-informed content
Give sandbox or demo account access	Allow freelancers to explore and test the product in a safe environment.	Internal staging/demo environments	High: Requires permissions, setup, and security consideration.	1–2 hours upfront, occasional maintenance	Trusted freelancers working on technical or bottom-of-funnel content
Record a reusable Loom walkthrough library	Create short, specific walkthroughs once and reuse them across briefs and projects.	Loom, Vimeo, Google Drive	Medium: Initial time investment to record and organize content.	2–4 hours upfront, very low ongoing	Content teams onboarding multiple freelancers

You don’t need to use every tactic in the table above to make an impact. Sometimes the most effective thing you can do is simply link to a help article in your content brief. That alone can help a freelancer write more confidently and cut down on your editing time.

The truth is, product-informed content is about giving freelancers just enough context to create content that lands with readers and supports your business goals. Whether you’re sharing a full sandbox login or just a help doc link, you’re building a more collaborative, scalable content process.

Pick one tactic to try this month. Maybe it’s adding one link to your next brief or recording a quick Loom. You’ll be surprised how far a little context can go.

Conclusion: Build Your Delegation Muscle With Better Product-Informed Content

You don’t need to overhaul your content strategy to get better at delegating product-informed content. You just need to start.

If you’ve already found a freelancer whose tone and content resonate with your brand, that’s your starting point. From there, all it takes is one conversation. When I decided to work more closely with Rebecca, I didn’t have a detailed strategy,  just a hunch that we could do more together. I sent a short email proposing a new cadence, a better rate, and a monthly meeting. She said yes, and our most impactful product-informed content began there.

You don’t need a six-step onboarding workflow or a Notion hub (though those things help). You need the willingness to open a door, even a small one, to give your freelancers the context and tools they need to succeed.

Start with one strategy from this post. Your future self (and your content calendar) will thank you.