LinkedIn Content Writer: What One Does and What One Costs in India

A readymade shirt is cut for a man who does not exist. It is close enough for most people, which is why it sells. A tailor works the other way. He does nothing until he has measured you, and the measuring is most of the skill. The stitching comes after.

Founders who look for a LinkedIn content writer are usually choosing between these two without knowing it. One kind of writer sells posts. You give a topic, and a post comes back that would fit any firm in your trade. The other kind measures first. They sit with you, find out what you think, and write that.

Both are called content writers. They do different work, at different prices, and they produce different results. This piece explains what each one does, what the work costs in India, and how to tell which one you are talking to before you pay.

What a LinkedIn content writer does

A LinkedIn content writer writes the posts that go out under your name or your company's name. That is the short answer, and it hides four separate jobs.

• Finding the idea. Deciding what this week's post is about, and why your buyer would care.
• Writing it. Turning the idea into a post a busy person will read to the end.
• Getting it out. Posting on a steady schedule, and replying to the comments.
• Looking at what happened. Which posts brought the right people, and which brought only likes.

The second job is the one everybody pictures, and it is the easiest of the four. Writing a clean post is a skill many people have. Finding an idea that only you could have written about is much harder, and it cannot be done without you in the room.

So when a writer quotes a price, ask which of the four jobs it covers. A price for writing alone leaves the idea with you. That is fine if you have ideas and no time to type. It is no help if the blank page is your real problem.

Content writer, ghostwriter or AI tool

Search for a LinkedIn content writer and three different things come back under one name.

The difference between the first two is where the idea comes from. A content writer starts from a topic: "five mistakes in hiring", "why culture matters". A ghostwriter starts from you: the client you turned away last month, the advice in your field that you think is wrong, the number you learnt the hard way.

This matters because of what a LinkedIn post is for. A founder does not post to teach the market about hiring. A founder posts so that the right buyer reads a few posts, decides "this person thinks clearly about my problem", and gets in touch. Only the second kind of post does that. We went through how it works in the piece on LinkedIn ghostwriting.

What a good one does each month

Ask any writer you are considering to describe their month. A good one will describe something close to this.

A conversation with you. Thirty to forty-five minutes, once or twice a month, or a few voice notes sent from the car. The writer asks questions and you talk. What did a client ask this month? What did you disagree with? What went wrong? This is the measuring. A writer who skips it is selling readymade.

Drafts in your words. The writer turns the conversation into posts. A good draft keeps your phrases. If you say "the sums do not work", the post should not say "the unit economics are unfavourable".

Your approval, every time. Nothing goes out under your name that you have not read. In the first month you will change a lot. By the third month you should be changing very little. If you are still rewriting every post by then, the writer has not learnt your voice, and probably will not.

A steady schedule. Three posts a week, every week, does more than ten posts in one week and silence for a month. The schedule is half of what you pay for. Most founders can write one good post. Very few write the fortieth.

Comments, answered. A post that gets a thoughtful comment and no reply looks abandoned. Agree with the writer who answers: you, or the writer in your voice.

A short report. Once a month. Not impressions, which always look large. The useful numbers are profile visits from the kind of people you sell to, messages received, and enquiries where the person mentions your posts.

What a LinkedIn content writer costs in India

The work is sold in three shapes.

By the post. Freelance content writers often charge for each post. This is the cheapest way to buy, and it suits the topic-based kind of writing. It rarely includes the conversation, the schedule or the comments.

By the month. Ghostwriters and agencies charge a monthly fee for a set number of posts, with the calls and the edits included. You pay more for each post, because you are also paying for the measuring.

As a salary. Some firms hire a content writer as an employee. This makes sense when you have enough work for a full week: posts, a blog, a newsletter, case studies. It rarely makes sense for LinkedIn posts alone, and an employee still needs someone to direct the work.

Our own prices are public, so here they are. We charge ₹35,000 a month for 12 posts in your voice and a rewrite of your profile. We charge ₹65,000 a month for 16 to 20 posts, with comment writing and a monthly report. A full programme with articles, carousels and a newsletter is ₹1,10,000 a month. All three exclude GST.

Three things move the price, whoever you buy from.

1. How many posts. Twelve a month is three a week. That is enough for most founders.
2. How much the writer does beyond writing. Comments, profile, reports and carousels each add work.
3. How hard your subject is. A writer can learn a recruitment firm's world in a week. A firm that sells clinical trial software needs a writer who can follow the conversation, and there are fewer of those.

A low price for each post is not a saving if nobody remembers the posts. The useful sum is not rupees for each post. It is rupees for each conversation with a buyer, counted over six months.

Can an AI tool do this job?

It can do part of it, and you should know which part.

An AI tool is good at the typing. Give it the transcript of a ten-minute conversation and it will produce a tidy first draft in seconds. Most working writers now use one for exactly that, and there is nothing wrong with it.

What a tool cannot do is supply the opinion. Ask it for a post on "why follow-up matters" and it gives you the average of every post already written on the subject. Readers have seen that post many times. They scroll past it now without reading the second line.

So the fair comparison is not AI against a writer. It is a writer who uses AI to type what you said, against a tool that types what everybody says. If you have strong ideas and an hour a week, a tool and your own editing may be all you need. If you never get to that hour, the tool will not find it for you.

Six questions to ask before you hire

1. Where will the ideas come from? Listen for "from you, on a call". If the answer is "send us your topics" or "we research your industry", you are buying readymade.
2. Can I read posts you wrote for someone else? Read them as that person's buyer would. Could a competitor have published them unchanged?
3. How much of my time do you need each month? The right answer is small but not zero. A writer who needs none of your time is not writing about you.
4. Do I approve every post? You must.
5. Who answers the comments? Decide before the first post goes out.
6. What will the monthly report show? If it leads with impressions and followers, ask what it says about enquiries.

Freelancer, agency or employee

A freelancer is one person. If they are good, they hold your voice better than anyone, because the person on the call is the person who writes. The risk is that one person falls ill, gets busy, or takes a job.

An agency has more hands and a steadier schedule. The risk is that you speak to a senior person on the sales call and a junior writer does the work. Ask who will write your posts, and ask to speak to that person.

An employee is right when writing is a full-time need across several channels. For LinkedIn alone, you are paying a full salary for part of a week.

When hiring one is the wrong buy

Do not hire a LinkedIn content writer if you will not give thirty minutes a month. The posts will be hollow, and readers can tell.

Do not hire one if you need enquiries this month. Posts build recognition slowly, over months. For a faster result, outreach comes first and the posts support it. The piece on LinkedIn outreach services covers that side.

And do not hire one if your buyers are not on LinkedIn. The owner of a 40-person fabrication unit rarely reads the feed. Put the money where he does look.

Frequently asked questions

A good tailor is known by how long he spends with the tape before he picks up the scissors. Judge a LinkedIn content writer the same way. Before you ask about price or the number of posts, ask how they will find out what you think. If they have no answer, the shirt is already cut, and it was not cut for you.