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Chicago Style Gets With the Online Grammar Times (Singular They, Lowercase Internet & More)

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Chicago Style Gets With the Online Grammar Times (Singular They, Lowercase Internet & More)

Grammar nerds, hold onto your hats. On March 23 of this year, Carol Fisher Saller, editor of The Chicago Manual of Style’s online Q&A section, gave a presentation about some of the updates that would appear in the Chicago Manual’s 17th edition, due out in September of this year. Among the big news? It’s about time for these changes: internet will now be lowercase email will lose its hyphen. Take that Kim Kardashian. Who broke the Internet internet now? What The Chicago Manual Is Changing For 2017 (A Win for Online Grammar) If those two changes weren’t large enough for you, Saller also announced that the manual will begin accepting a singular “they” and that the 17th edition will include citation recommendations for social media posts, like Facebook and Twitter updates. Each year, editors announce the changes to the Stylebook at the American Copy Editor’s Society annual meeting. This meeting is where the world heard, in 2011, that the Associated Press intended to stop using a hyphen in email. Here’s a snapshot from that glorious moment: A huge cheer for @SubvCopyEd‘s announcement that @ChicagoManual‘s new 17th edition will close ‘e-mail’ at #ACES2017. pic.twitter.com/rwE1R5NHch — Peter Sokolowski (@PeterSokolowski) March 23, 2017 In 2016, the Associated Press announced that it would remove the capitalization from the word internet. The Chicago Manual of Style has since announced its intention to adopt these styles. Here are just a few of the notable changes from the recent meeting: Gender Changes Many of the recent changes revolve around what QuickAndDirtyTips.com calls “gender-related entries.” Here’s a breakdown: Her, his. Before, AP style required writers to use he when a gender was unknown. Today, it’s acceptable to use they, them, or their. Singular they. One of the largest changes, the AP Stylebook has recently begun to accept the use of they as a singular pronoun. This is especially useful in places where his or her would be overly clumsy or confusing. The only exception is when the phrasing would suggest there is more than one person. Additional Changes Additional, non-gender-related changes include the following: Autonomous vehicles. Thanks to the rise of autonomous technology, the AP Stylebook has taken up a guide for how to refer to them. Instead of using the word driverless, however, the correct method is to use the term self-driving, unless the vehicle can only do some of the driving, in which case it should be called semi-autonomous. Fact checks, fake news. “Fake news” may well be the term of 2017! Because there’s been such a sharp uptick in the use of these terms, the AP Stylebook now recommends using fake news in quotation marks to refer to deliberate falsehoods. The Stylebook also recommends not labeling individual news items as fake news that are disputed. Obvious enough, right? Flyer, flier. Thanks to the new AP changes, you’re now a frequent flyer rather than a frequent flier. This change is due in large part to the fact that flyer is more common in both American and British spelling. The Oxford comma. Today, clarity is more important than anything else, especially when viewed from the AP Stylebook’s standpoint. While the standard style has generally been to avoid the serial comma, the guideline now is to use it, but only where it’s needed for clarity. Virtual reality. Like autonomous technology, augmented reality has become a major fixture in modern society. When you refer to it now, the AP Stylebook says it’s fine to use VR on the second reference, as long as you spell out virtual reality the first time. What’s more, you may use AR to refer to augmented reality, on the second pass only, though. Why Updated Grammar Rules Matter to the Online Creator If you don’t write, or read, or interact with content of any kind, this might not seem like a big deal! To everyone in the content and online marketing communities, however, this is massive news. While online grammar has long since accepted these new realities, traditional grammar guidelines have seen them as “wrong” until very recently. Now that the recognition is formal, though, it frees online writers up from being looked down upon by grammar professionals across the web and print media. It also helps standardize digital content and ensure that it matches up with print media. Are the Stylebook and the Manual of Style Two Different Things? If you’re flashing back to a time when you had to map sentences in high school grammar, it’s okay. Grammar can be a confusing and often overwhelming topic, and wondering what the heck the difference between the Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook is doesn’t help matters. Here’s some clarity: they’re two separate entities. Here’s what grammar.yourdictionary.com has to say about the separation: “The Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style are very different guides for two very different groups of people who make their living with the written word. The Chicago Manual of Style is by far the larger reference work, with over 950 pages. The AP Stylebook has only 330 pages. The Chicago Manual of style is the guide for authors, editors and publishers of books, periodicals and journals. The AP Stylebook is the prime reference for those in the news and public relations fields.” The fact that both entities agree on many of these changes means an enhanced sense of cohesion for writers everywhere! A Good Day for Grammar  The recent changes on the part of the Chicago Manual do one thing: help unify online and print writing for the sake of journalists and copywriters everywhere. By syncing grammar rules with digital grammar style, they help reduce confusion and make good writing easier for everyone. The print version of the AP Stylebook will be available May 31, 2017. While this guide is updated annually, the Chicago Manual of Style is updated less frequently, and the last update was in 2010. Check back with both entities regularly to stay on top of future updates! Are you looking for a professional … Read more

New for Spring 2017: Customized, Build-Your-Own Blogging Plans, Revamped Content Planning, & Content Consultation

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New for Spring 2017: Customized, Build-Your-Own Blogging Plans, Revamped Content Planning, & Content Consultation

You simply can’t be a self-serve menu, when you serve up content. One size does not fit all. We know this to be all-too-true, and it means that our Content Shop – and entire lineup of content services – change all the time. And the needs of our clients drive these changes. I love that this is one of our abiding principles, at Express Writers. We act when we see a demand – and learn, fit, and adapt to the changes necessary for progression in the industry, and to make sure the services that we sell to our clients are always one step ahead. Behind the scenes, it means a lot of work for our boot-strapped business. I’m constantly working with Tara, our Content Development Specialist, Katria, Tamila, Hannah, and our CTO to map out, create, and plan the changes – and adapt our entire sales and editorial management team to the changes. In the end: it’s more than worth it. We see real results from the hard work put into our improvements, and happy clients! Keep reading for all the changes out in the Content Shop this April. The Shortlist (TL;DR) of our Content Shop Changes: Biggest Changes, Biggest Benefits Don’t have a lot of time? Here’s a TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) list of the changes and the key benefits of the changes in our Shop. For a full in-depth list, scroll down for the per-product changes! Blog Plans: We’ve heard for ages now that “that package just doesn’t fit me,” so we completely rehauled our preset, three blog packages. Now, you get to completely build your own, by: 1) picking your writer level, 2) word count, 3) one (or both) of two addons for images/topic and SEO keyword planning, and finally, 4) quantity (telling us how many posts you want per month). Hit “add to cart.” Congrats! You’ve just configured your monthly blog plan! (If clients aren’t sure what they want, we can build a plan for them, starting at $280/cart. See more details in the sections below.) Content Planning: Biggest enhancement here? All blog titles are now analyzed according to Advanced Marketing Institute’s Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer, one of my favorite tools on this planet. (And to solidify that we’re on track, we use Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer, too.) When I implemented checking every headline on the EMV Analyzer by AMI, our blog shares and overall traction went up by 25%+ on every post with the analyzed title. In the planning service itself, you get a ready-to-go editorial calendar for the month, a list of best SEO keywords (researched using top tools), and a BuzzSumo topic analysis. Content Consultation: For $350 (a low, low price, considering the value of what this could bring you), we now offer a content consultation with one of our highest-level, most experienced Content Strategists (his bio is below!). The session comes complete with a Discovery Report including an analysis of what you can be doing better with your content, and an SEO and topic analysis report, highly customized to the findings in the consultation call. Price: The price of blogging plans and content planning went up a tad. (We discovered, especially in the blogging plans, after doing some math that we weren’t able to cover the payment for our high level, content-marketing minded editors and expert writers. The WordPress posting was far too cheap – below $10 per – in the plans. We couldn’t pay out at that rate.) But with content planning blocks still starting at $120, and blog plans as low as $280 at the first configuration, you’re still paying below average rates here – even after the small increase. Jump on our services! The industry keeps changing, and skillset expertise increasing. I’ll be upfront: we simply can’t retain quality or work at low rates. And now for the in-depth breakdown. 1. Content Consultation Call with Reports Built into the Content Planning service is a new variation: Content Consultation. I’ll be real: content consultation was a long time coming. There’s been a serious demand for it. We hear this a lot: “What should I be doing with my site? Can you analyze and tell me?” “Can I get a dedicated consultation?” “Can I get some keyword reports and talk to a Strategist about what I’m looking for?” “I know I need content, but I have no idea what I’m doing.” What’s more, we’ve noticed, for a steady eight months now, a major need in the content marketing industry: Customization.   All the way from quotes at a unique, per-word level, down to increased requests for a highly customized, per-site analysis – revealing exactly what you need, down to new site page recommendations, blog title and headline ideas, to the best keyword opportunities and what your competitors are doing that you could be doing better. Then, ongoing content publishing – a customized content recommendation at an ongoing basis. So, FINALLY, content consultation sessions, complete with full content discovery reports, are live! I just finished building a behind-the-scenes workflow that will ensure success at every step of the way, and hand-picked one of our most successful Content Strategists for the dedicated consulting call and report creation. Check it out: I’ve even written the interview guide that my consultant will be using, with questions that are guaranteed to elicit the best information so we find your “sweet spot” in creating content that answers your audience’s (and customers’) biggest questions, and positions you as an authority in your industry. Meet John G, our dedicated team member who will be working 1:1 with every client that needs a guided consultation: John is awesome. He’s been such a team player at Express Writers, and I have no doubts that he’ll knock the ball out of the park handling our content consultations. Check out the Content Consultation page for a checklist of the reports that come with a consultation.  2. Blogging Plans: Customized to Your Online Presence & Needs Completely, 100% customizable, create-your-own blogging plans are now available! Let me go back a little to explain … Read more

What’s New at Express Writers for February: Storytelling Images & Custom Blog Headers, Social Media, Editing (Copy and Developmental), Project Management & More

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What's New at Express Writers for February: Storytelling Images & Custom Blog Headers, Social Media, Editing (Copy and Developmental), Project Management & More

This February, we’ve added some seriously powerful content services to our Content Shop repertoire. All of our continual changes and updates are based on specific needs from our clients, and a strict adherence we personally have to always maintain the edge of the curve in our industry. Here’s a shortlist / TL;DR of February’s new updates (scroll down to read about each): Storytelling Images & Custom Blog Headers. Our design team has been creating these for our own brand with great results in more brand awareness and content traction, so we decided it was time to launch custom image solutions, including beautiful storytelling variations and custom blog images, for our clients! Social Media Plans Update: Revamped social media plans to new standards, including content curation using BuzzSumo. Editing (Copy and Developmental). At both copy editing levels. Professional Interviewing. In this service, based on one simple interview fee, we now have staff Project Managers who are experts at interviewing subjects and obtaining key information that leads to a wonderful interview. Project Management. This new service takes care of a lot of “monkey work” that goes into organizing and maintaining content marketing. Client 101s. These are completely free for our clients, and are being written and designed as we speak! The first one, a Process/Content Order Lifecycle 101, is live! We’re working on a Meet the Team 101 next, where we explain how everyone’s staff role fits into an order and how clients can contact each of us, a Writing Levels 101, and several others. What’s New at Express Writers for February: Everything You Needed to Know on 5 New/Revamped Products & a New, Free Client Resource 1. New Custom Images: Storytelling Imagery, Blog Header Sets, & More Ever thought to yourself… “I wish I had a REALLY cool branded header for my blog and a variation to share on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook…” “I wish I could visualize a step in my customer journey/buying process with a cool, engaging illustration…” “It would be awesome to boost engagement with a cartoon strip for this industry controversial blog…” We’ve got you covered on all of those visual needs in our re-launched Custom Imagery service, live in the Content Shop. Clients can choose from a custom, beautiful, blog image set put together by our design team in Adobe InDesign, complete with a full-sized header and an inset to share on social media, or a storytelling graphic that would fit nicely in a process for your customers to visualize their journey/how it works page (example: our process). Want to see how cool these get (read: how amazing our design team is)? Here are a few: Killer, right?? We’ve literally designed thousands of these images for our own brand by now – the samples above are a brief preview of what we can do – and we thought it was high time to allow clients to buy it as a product. With custom imagery, we’ve seen massive results… We a huge CTR boost with a cartoon strip on our SEO post – a 25% boost in actual reads. Influencers picked up our content and shared it on Twitter WITH the image attached, boosting views to our content by another 25%. Never leave your images last on your to-do list again. Let us help you create better-than-average custom imagery to accompany your content! 2. Social Media Plans During this month, we also did some heavy updates and restructuring, much-needed, to our social media plans. I sat down and created new guidelines for our Social Media Experts, which condenses down to these three key, important changes: We now create and post 3/images per week at the minimum level (3 IG posts) instead of 1. Images, and Instagram, are hot! You can’t miss out on either, so we’ve increasing the volume at all levels on all plans. Our SMEs are now trained on how to use BuzzSumo to curate industry influencer content, and position your brand as an authority by sharing content that your fans will love and identify with. Choose whichever social media platform you’d like us to manage, now straight from the product itself! Our Social Media Plans have also been renamed to Level 1, 2, and 3 instead of Basic/Guru/Enterprise. 3. Copy Editing Our revamped Copy Editing service in the Content Shop now includes two levels to cover every need, developmental and copy editing services, starting at one hour (up to 3,000 words). We have senior, expert editors at both levels ready to take orders! See a guide to knowing the two differences of copy vs. developmental editing from our Content Development Specialist, Tara, on the Write Blog. 4. Professional Interviewing For one simple interview fee you can now have an incredible interview organized and done (check that off your list!) by our professional interviewing team. We now have staff Project Managers who have background expertise in interviewing and journalism, and have seen amazing results from the interviews done so far. See a post co-created by our Project Manager Hannah and Content Development Specialist, Hannah, on why interviews matter to content marketing. 5. Project Management Just launched last week, our new project management service offers a wonderful solution for a lot of our marketer clients who are continually overwhelmed, swamped, and lost beneath the work they have to do on their content marketing get-done list. Did you know that only 30% of marketers say their organizations are effective at content marketing? An actual decrease of 8% from the previous year.(source: Content Marketing Institute’s 2016 Benchmarks) Even less have a strong, documented content marketing strategy. Yet budgets, goals, and creation itself in content marketing actually increased by a large percentage during the same year. Our solution in offering project management is to help a real need we see that our clients have. Project management is a serious drain on them, yet a vastly crucial part of content marketing not to be overlooked. Scenarios Where Project Management Fits In Just a few of the problems our clients have given us that we can now solve with our project management service include: “We’re thinking about hiring a part-time staff member to handle all of these content needs and work with you, but it may not be in the budget, or we don’t know … Read more

What Differentiates Our Writing Levels at Express Writers (General, Expert, Authority)

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What Differentiates Our Writing Levels at Express Writers (General, Expert, Authority)

Here at Express Writers, we’re all about quality, at every level. And that’s a major reason why many of our clients select us over our competitors. We make it simple with three writing levels: General Expert Authority (for those who want to be an online rockstar) On the other hand, many of our competitor writing agencies go by a “star” level. One-star writer, two-star writer, three-star writer. It makes me dizzy when I read the one-star explanation: “May contain grammar, spelling, and wording issues. Will require editing. Not suitable for most clients.” Why would you spend money on content you have to “fix” before you publish? It’s like buying a pair of shoes with holes already in them. Plus, you’re wasting your valuable time when you have to fix, rewrite and edit, while saving a few dollars. It doesn’t add up. We break the mold, because as a writing agency, we completely skip even offering the levels that many of our competitors start at. Keep reading to learn more about these levels, see real-time examples, and find out why I built my agency this way. We Revolve Around Quality When I created my writing agency back in 2011 (see our values), I had one key fundamental: discovering writers who had a real talent for writing. If they loved doing it, I always found a matching level of quality in their work. Then, my goal was to perfect my team and process, and train and mentor my team members in new SEO and content trends and tactics, so that I could grow my company into one that was writing and creating the best content on the web. It has been hard as heck to keep that standard high. The entrance tests I’ve written for our interviewees rule out all but 2% of our applicants, on average, today: and even after they pass my tests, there’s yet another test to see if they have reliability and ethics. But if there’s anything I stay firm on, it’s these very standards. We don’t create crap content. We continuously take these standards seriously. We Are the First Ones Adapting to Trends As the company’s chief executive officer, I’m the first one sharpening my skills day-to-day. I’ve been named a top 50 content marketer, have written a bestseller on online writing, and maintain The Write Podcast as well as a Twitter chat. We adapt to industry trends and grow at every stage. When Google launches an algorithm update, we learn about it as a team (we attend tech events), we blog about it, and we write in-depth studies on the SERP changes. Internally, we add new experts as trends and content marketing evolves to match those needs, and we create inside mentoring just for our writers to read and grow. We take a look at new SEO and content marketing tools on the market when they come out, and integrate them into our content strategy where we can. Today, we’re taking an inside look as to what sets our two writing levels apart, what level your business and web presence might benefit from investing in, and some case studies of how far expert writing can take you. The Difference of our Levels: General vs. Expert vs. Authority See more on this: Our Writing Levels. While all of our writers have significant experience in creating high quality, search engine optimized content, expert writers have expertise in a particular set of topics. Especially if you’re in an industry like software, medical, or law, you understand that there are significant, precise details involved. Expert writers understand those. I sat down with Tara Clapper, our Content Development Specialist, to get her thoughts. She explains this in a really good light. Tara: I find it easiest to describe the difference between general and expert content to our clients by using my own experience as an example. I’ve been writing search engine optimized content since 2003. Like most writers, I have a few focused areas of expertise, including marketing. When I write content about marketing, my background in the topic allows me to find and present a fresh angle in that field. I know exactly where to go to find reputable statistics and facts, too. I would qualify as an expert writer in marketing. If I instead decided to write about database programming, I’d be lost. While I’m still an experienced writer, database programming is not my field of expertise, and it would show in the writing. When it comes to that subject, I’d be a general writer. How We Select Writers at Every Level All of our writers are personally selected by myself. Only 2% make it through the selection process, and once they’re in, we assess and track their interests and areas of expertise. Our editors continually evaluate and mentor the writers, continually helping them improve and refine their craft. Through this process, we identify writers capable of creating expert content – and we match your content needs with those experts once you make an order. Here’s another way to explain how different businesses have different needs: Scenario 1: A restaurant owner has a website and needs copy for their web pages. Their food isn’t specialized. It’s good old American pub food, and the copy should appeal to hungry customers looking for some local grub. A general writer would be suitable for this topic. Scenario 2: The owner of a company producing point of sale systems for restaurants needs a blog plan dedicated at selling their system to restaurant chains. They’re speaking a lot about the details of the restaurant industry as well as the software itself. This kind of topic would require some expertise – and it should go to an expert writer. General vs. Expert (Bonus: vs. Authority) In Action To represent exactly what we mean by our levels here at Express Writers, let’s look at some actual content quality ordered at the different levels by our clients. Client A: General Law Article This client opted in to our $35/500w general blog level, … Read more

Want to Be An Online Success? You Need to Be An Authority (& The Backstory of How I Launched Authority Content)

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Want to Be An Online Success? You Need to Be An Authority (& The Backstory of How I Launched Authority Content)

Around Thanksgiving of 2016, I launched a new content level after training my staff for a few months on how to deliver it and having Josh, our CTO, develop a matching product in the Content Shop. Authority Content. Before then, we had two levels: general, and expert writing. For my new Authority level, I trained a handful of my best expert writers and built a structure around it that kind of looked like this (my rough internal sketch): It’s far more than what I can represent in one circle, though. In one piece of Authority content, no less than five of my team members at Express Writers are involved in creation: our team content manager, a Content Strategist doing a tad of SEO research, an Authority Writer that I’d personally trained, our designer to create themed graphics for it, and a high level content marketing editor to review it all at every stage. I work with our content director to help train and pick the Authority writer, so you might as well say six. Why did I launch this? It wasn’t just to launch a content level with a high price tag (this is our highest cost service yet, ranging from $300-$900+ per piece). It was after I spent a year studying, watching, and listening to the trends in content in online marketing. I digested thousands of articles, analyzed even more headlines, and wrote hundreds of blogs myself. Some of which rose to the top, some of which didn’t. I saw a formula starting to distinguish itself. I saw something repeat itself over, and over. Those that were practitioners of this emerging formula were creating this level of content, and promoting it in their niches. Content tailored correctly, to the right audience. But beyond just catching my eye, if the content was created right, at a true authority level, it held my gaze – and I subscribed for more. [Keep reading for the full story.] Content Creators That Reach Authority Level Are the Ones that Win Online Let me give you two examples of the content I came across last year that held my gaze. Last year, there were a LOT of new bloggers coming on the scene. I mean it when I say a lot. For example, I’m in a Blogging Newbies group, with the member numbers in the 100,000+ range. I saw day after day, sometimes moment after moment, an announcement from someone about their new blog going live. In my LinkedIn groups, I saw the phenomenon, group after group. I saw it across my connections online, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram. New blog up! New blog up! [MarketingProfs says that 2 million blogs are now created every day.] It’s kind of scary, isn’t it? Almost a doubt that can whisper in your ear: there’s no way to stand out. But there is. Out of all those new blogs from last year, quite literally millions, two bloggers still stick in my memory today. TWO! So yes, you can stand out, but you can’t be any less than an authority to do so. Let’s talk about who stood out. The Two Bloggers that Stood Out in One Year, Grabbed My Eye, & Held My Gaze 1. Tor Refsland This dude grabbed my eye early in the year. I invited him on the Write Podcast and published his guest episode in October last year. (Check it out here.) In 2016, Tor was known as timemanagementchef.com, but now he’s over at torrefsland.com. Which is smart, because I mean, look at this list…he’s a celebrity with a known name by now: Top personal development blog of 2016, Wisdom Times Award Won Most Epic blog post from one of my favorite bloggers, Jon Morrow himself Top 100 personal development blogs Wrote a blog that generated 20,000+ page views in 6 days! Public speaker on stages with gurus like Rand Fishkin Featured everywhere…podcasts, guest blogs, just Google his name These feats were accomplished by Tor within his first 12-18 months of blogging. So he’s a pretty epic authority. What caught my eye was one of the content pieces he published. One of many with a very similar structure. Read it here. Thousands of words, and Tor’s unique style: a TON of one-liners. 3,000-5,000 words on average and tons, tons, tons of scrolling – but it’s so easy to read, you don’t even notice. (Don’t get any ideas that that’s the “emerging formula” I’m talking about, by the way. That’s just Tor’s epic style.) Check out one more blog Tor did last year that I loved. Does that grab your eye or what? The blog itself is very in-depth and there are some fantastic lessons for all bloggers (read here). 2. Michael Pozdnev Michael caught my eye from an Inbound.org post mid-2016, and I’ve been following him since. His blog iwannabeablogger.com features incredibly long-form, intense blogging guides that are jam-packed with information. The crazy part? He’s been creating for 15 years, so this guy is by no means new. But something he created in 2016 and shared on Inbound.org made waves enough to catch and grab my attention. Here’s the title of that post: Dude. This post ROCKED. I read a few of his other blogs, grabbed his free ebook, and I realized this guy was an authority to be reckoned with. I recommend following Michael on Twitter: @MPozdnev. And go check out his content. Why We Remember, Learn, Use, and Share Content Online Why do you share content? I can bet you it falls in one of these categories: Simply put, it’s the answer to a question you searched. It’s the most thorough answer. You learned something. You’re going to put to use what you learned (create that garden, build that birdhouse, promote that blog, build that website). Simple? It sounds like it. But creating content that triggers the “remember / share / use / love” button from a reader isn’t simple, by any means. Content that is created at Tor’s level, at Michael’s level, and at the level of all … Read more

2016 Content Creation Report: A Retrospective Look at One of the Busiest Years for Express Writers

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2016 Content Creation Report: A Retrospective Look at One of the Busiest Years for Express Writers

2011: the year I founded Express Writers (with $75, a bit of hope, and a lot of goal-setting: full story here.) The next five years: we grew, busted through seams, grew again, busted through seams again. We found and built our own systems to manage our growing company in 2015: a Content Shop, a writer teamroom. (We’re building even better systems today, set to relaunch in mid-2017.) 2016: we found our roots. Seriously. We’re ending the year with some deep, high caliber roots in place, and I’m glad about it. In the level of expertise our staff members have today, a perfect content fit in each of their roles: in the quality and dedication of the writers we have, and the standards we’ve been growing to perfection all year. So, it’s fitting that 2016 is the first year we took the time to create this end-of-year report, a showcase and look back at all the content we create. (Idea credit goes to Tara, our Content Development Specialist.) In 2016, we created the most content we ever have, not just for clients but for industry resource and learning materials. We worked hard all year: reinvented our editing standards in May, launched serious changes over November that improved our entire team, content quality, and clientele, and rounded up the year with some fabulous content. We launched our new #howtowrite learning category, launched an incredible Twitter Chat, #ContentWritingChat in January that made it to #4 on Twitter, and I was able to launch my book, self-published in April on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and our Write Podcast published in March. All in one year?! Time to delve in to our first ever full content creation report! Grab a coffee and join me. We’re detailing our total content output for our clients, and what we created to add insights and resources just for our audience and industry. (Keep scrolling past the infographic for the full lowdown, and a recap of our best posts of the year.) Download the Report (PDF version). From 171 Million Words Created to Launching a Twitter Chat, Book, Podcast, & Writer Mentoring No way all this happened in one year, standing here and looking back. Yet it did. And, it’s actually short of the goals we had for 2016. Crazy, right? Let’s start with what the brunt of our workload looked like for the year, as content writers. Client Work (a brief synopsis of the busy nature of our year): 3,451 orders placed (one order could range from 1-5 web pages to 400 articles at a time) 262,000,000+ words estimated written by our team in 2016! That’s roughly 524,000 500-word articles. Included in that word count besides articles and blogs: press releases, ebooks, ad copy, product descriptions, landing pages, web pages, slides, scripts, emails–to name a few. Our top content service sold for the year: blogs! Our top two expert writing categories in demand: legal and technical. Industry Resource Creation (what we launched in industry resources this year): Unprecedented grassroots success creating and running our Twitter Chat #ContentWritingChat, launched mid-January this year, managed by our fantastic Social Media Manager, Rachel. We see up to 1,000 tweets during the live hour now! Our Twitter chat was #42 trending on it’s first week back in January 19th, and by August, trending at #4. In November, we had our first sponsor! Launching the Write Podcast in April, making relationships with people like Sujan Patel, Steve Rayson, Mark Traphaghen, and many other fantastic content marketing influencers and leaders through it. Launching my book So You Think You Can Write? The Definitive Guide to Successful Writing (400+ copies sold, word-of-mouth only!), in April, and seeing it hold strong in #4 bestseller category in Amazon for months. Writing and creating internal training for our writers, with a custom 101 library of more than ten individual resources just for them, tailored to the weak points we saw that kept cropping up. Getting personal notes of thanks, and seeing tangible proof in their improved writing skills to show us the mentoring helps, is seriously rewarding. Launching the How to Write category with over 15 up-to-date guides published late 2016, teaching all things online content writing. Personally, my highlights running Express Writers in 2016 have been: Launching my book, podcast, and Twitter chat, and seeing amazing successes between them all, especially in our live hour with #ContentWritingChat. Getting our biggest client ever, and being able to write their orders with liberty (very few strict guidelines, a lot of creative freedom – dream client). Having the honor of hiring Tara Clapper, the former blog editor at SEMrush, an all-around content marketing guru that I’ve been talking to online for years. Training and guiding a successful editing team to work with our writers and help guide them to their best skills. Visiting the SEJ Summit in NYC with my team members Tara, Krystal, and Josh. Despite a lot of rough patches this year in the customer-facing support team with other representatives, this November I was able to reach out to and re-hire my sales manager Tamila McDonald, who worked with us in sales and content management all the way back in 2013 (and was fantastic at it). She’s been fantastic in the role already, helping our customers achieve success with content needs. And… Straight from the heart: thanks to all of you who have helped us grow this year! To our clients: We value each and every one of you. There were crazy things to deal with in the support staff this year, but they weren’t anything that a successful company hasn’t experienced at some point or other (non-loyal staff). We appreciate you so much, and will continue to work hard to earn your business and create the best content money can buy. To our amazing writers and staff: Working hard and tirelessly to deliver amazing content means the world to me and our clients. Remember that great things are coming for us all in 2017: stick with us, and you will, without a doubt, grow with us. (We have a huge relaunch of the Content Shop and our teamroom in development now, due out in the New Year!) A Look … Read more

November Update at Express Writers: Bidding Goodbye to Private Label, New Writing Industry Experts Added, & More

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November Update at Express Writers: Bidding Goodbye to Private Label, New Writing Industry Experts Added, & More

Today’s an awesome day! We’re super excited because our Private Label system, where you have to put down a deposit to activate a pricing level, is no more as of today! We’ve rolled out many other changes, all for the better of our quality and deliverables, listed below. What’s more, we made all this happen before Thanksgiving (Josh, my CTO, Josh’s development team and I worked on it for 24 hours straight yesterday, till about 5:30 am today). Coffee will be sorely needed today, to say the least. Without further ado, here’s a lowdown on what you can expect going forward with our services and pricing structure. Massive Changes for the Better this Thanksgiving at Express Writers Our Content Shop underwent all these changes last night, and was down for about 12 hours during the upgrade. Here’s a checklist of what went live as of today: It’s a consensus: many of our clients agree that Private Label + the two pricing tiers, with one dependent on a deposit, is confusing! We’re officially removing Private Label, doing away with two pricing tiers, and consolidating to one that makes sense and is equalized across the board. Former PL users, your Private Label deposit is going nowhere. And, you can still put down a deposit at any time! Your discount just doesn’t depend on it. You will still have all your funds in your account, within policy. Better cover rates will be in the Shop, as will better word counts and product presentation. It’ll be easier than ever just to buy what you need, at any time. I’m super proud of this one. I’ve gone through our rates with a fine-toothed comb and set better, cheaper cover rates than what we formerly had – that makes sense across the board. In some cases, we narrowed down our insanely long word range choices from 13 ranges to 8. Also, the layout of our Packages is so much cleaner! Pre-built carts (an easy way to quote out your custom content services) is happening! Have our team send you a pre-built cart at any time now. (Woohoo!)With a few clicks, you can check out with exactly what you need, with no rate levels to worry about – just one. For grandfathered rates, you’ll simply use a custom coupon our support team will hand you. Quick Customer FAQ What are the new rates? Here’s a few of the new prices. For a full list, see our Pricing page, updated 11/22. Blogs/Articles 350-500 $35 Word range costs: Up to 100 $10, 100-250 $20, 250-350 $25, 350-500 $35, 500-750 $55, 750-1000 $70, 1000-1500 $105, 1500-2000 $140, 2000-3000 $210 Level 1 Blogger $325/month: 8 blogs/month (2 weekly), 450-500W, SEO optimized + basic imagery + meta descriptions, published. Level 2 Blogger $500/month: 12 blogs/month (3 weekly), 500-750W SEO optimized content with custom branded imagery + meta descriptions, published. Level 3 Blogger $980/month: 16 blogs/month (4 weekly), 750-1000W SEO optimized content with custom branded imagery + meta descriptions, published. The new cover rates are lowered up to 15% from previous cover rates, and up from Private Label rates by a minimum of 15%. (To compare: Private label was $25/500w blog, cover was $45/500w.) On all our web-based content products (web pages, product descriptions, blogs): we’re now offering more variations on the lower word range, and a larger bracket to choose from on the other ends to allow our skilled writers to write with freedom and cut fluff more than ever. Can I have my Private Label rates? We are individually reviewing accounts and grandfathering those that fall into eligibility for discounts, for the next three months.  For those who are missing the rates they had on Private Label, we’ve made cover rates the new standard, but lowered and equalized them across the board. If you need to inquire about keeping your Private Label rates, we are happy to review your account and approve if your current rates aren’t too cheap. Remember, our goal is quality, and we simply cannot staff quality at cheap rates. For review questions, get in touch at info@expresswriters.com. But we’d ask that you consider checking out with the new rates. The new rates, which are still on the low side of the industry if you do a comparison, with no added fees for editing and management, set a standard for us to retain stronger editors and writers, overall. Remember that not only do we retain writers, but we mentor and edit them constantly. When writers drop, it can be a full-time job in a week to field for new ones, since we never compromise and skip our personalized candidate testing process, which rules out sometimes 80% of applicants. We are the only writing team in the industry that offers exclusive mentoring content to our writers, created by our content marketing team – we stay on top of every standard and tell our writers when anything changes, down to the new meta length that Google announced. This is easily a full-time job, as well, and the new rates will ensure this mentoring continues to happen. Our new rates will allow us to: Pay editors a higher hourly wage Retain an HR person, trained by Julia on how to pick and find the best talents in the freelance writing world Provide us with the necessary bandwidth to make sure ongoing writer mentoring happens (extra management hours) We’re always rolling out better features. Coming up, we have a Loyalty program in the works, and in 2017 a brand new way to buy content online with a beautiful, coded-from-scratch system on the works! Get services sent directly to your inbox, it’s a few clicks to approve and checkout! Confusing deposits and checkouts, NO MORE. We now have the ability to send anyone a prebuilt cart, with a few clicks of the button, that includes a custom message from our team and all the services they need in one place. It’s a few more clicks for you to approve, review, and checkout with exactly what you need! Here’s what your email notification will look like, when you get a pre-built cart: And, services … Read more

We Participated in #NaNoWriMo16! A Cinderella Content Marketing Story by Julia McCoy & addmustard

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We Participated in #NaNoWriMo16! A Cinderella Content Marketing Story by Julia McCoy & addmustard

#NaNoWriMo16 is upon us! For those of you that don’t know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, sponsored by a nonprofit organization. It’s a worldwide, “virtual” contest for writing a 50,000 word novel between November 1 and November 30. If you’re successful at that many words inside a month, you earn the NaNoWriMo badge and trophy. It’s a cool idea to get writers out of their shells, great books written, and creativity out into the open. Express Writers, NaNoWriMo16 & Cinderella I hadn’t participated since I was a teenager on Writing.com, but this year when I received an invitation from our content marketing friends at addmustard, I couldn’t resist! They were putting together a 10x style content marketing series and were inviting the top content marketers to get involved and contribute a fairytale-esque piece with top ideas for 2017 content marketing, running one story each week of November for NaNoWriMo. Mine was the feature for the first week. The story I put together for addmustard was: How Well Does the Shoe Fit? 5 Strategies for Finding Your Content Sweet Spot. I correlated the Cinderella story with finding your niche audience-fit as a content marketer. Addmustard turned it into a beautifully designed book! In my Cinderella-inspired content marketing piece, I discuss five key strategies to find your sweet spot as a content marketer (like putting on Cinderella’s shoe): Fit your content to the unique attributes of your reader (know your reader’s demographic and behavior) Focus on just one person instead of a group (similar to going house to house, person to person, to find the perfect fit for the Cinderella shoe) Narrow down your niche to find your exact-match, and find the keywords that bring in this traffic Know the competition trying to squeeze into the same shoe (so you can do better and be the successful shoe messenger) Know the magic of your shoe (what to offer your customer when the shoe fits–their ideal products should align to what you offer them) I had so much fun participating in #NaNoWriMo with addmustard, and creating a piece around a story in my favorite genre, fiction. (One day I’ll retire and just write fiction.) Writers: thinking of getting involved? Need a way to hone your writing skills and join a community of like-minded writers? It’s only mid-November, and NaNoWriMo is open! Get involved at NaNoWriMo.org. 

This October at Express Writers: Expanded Team, Two New Services

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This October at Express Writers: Expanded Team, Two New Services

Hi, blog readers! Happy October, and thanks for joining me today…you’re in for some fun stuff. First up, I’m sharing all about the staff changes and implementations we’ve done here at Express Writers this month. Next, it’s all about the super cool new services launched today in the Content Shop! Ready? New Staff Members & Improved Quality Processes This month, at Express Writers, we’ve been through some serious changes…although it’s been an absolutely crazy month, we’re ending on a very strong note. For the past three weeks, I’ve been busy prepping and training our writers and managers for our two new services that are now live today in the Content Shop, Authority Content & Case Study Creation. The training I wrote and put out for Authority Content is super detailed – over 20 pages of exclusive, directional content that you won’t find anywhere else. I’ve worked one-on-one with our case study specialist, an inbound marketing expert, to craft the perfect case study for us before we started formulating how to sell it. So, needless to say, I’m super excited about these two new high-ROI, turnkey content marketing services–read below for more details on both. And, this month, we’ve been on-boarding and training new faces in the management staff to support the volume of incoming client inquiries and high-level project support. It’s been extremely hard to find reliable, high quality team members in the staff that can fully pass our rigorous tests and nail every part of the process, and be in our team every day working hard. We’ve had several people in staff come and go this year, who weren’t devoted to performance and the hard work it takes to survive in this industry. It’s taken us a while to find the right people, but we’ve been able to onboard a fully dedicated staff editor for large projects ($8,000+ per month client spend), and a dedicated WordPress posting editor, besides our regular editing team. Bringing in a wealth of experience on all fronts, our new editors have our quality at heart! Earlier, in September, I had the honor of hiring the talented Tara Clapper, who comes from SEMrush and brings a wealth in years of content marketing experience to Express Writers, from knowing the ins and outs of online content strategy to hosting webinars and networking at events. Tara has been very successful at helping us on the editing team and giving our clients spectacular insights for their content success. Janeka, one of our social media experts, was recently multi-tasked with the role of Content Support Specialist, and she’s been rocking it out. New Logo & Content Shop Icons As most of you know, we’re on the verge of a major relaunch we’ve been building for 1+ year: a custom developed Content Shop and teamroom. Till then, we decided to run with some major brand improvements early! Our new logo is an expression of how our brand has truly taken flight this year, despite all the difficulties in our way. ✈️ As a content agency, we are constantly evolving, adapting, and growing. Writing is a skill that takes great mentoring and lots of practice to perfect. That is what we believe in, and our goal and mission as a content writing agency. This year, we’ve never been more focused on our mission and more capable of delivering amazing quality – the content that 2016 marketers need. It was time to take our paper plane and let it fly! New look in the content shop: 40+ brand new icons for each of our services, shaped and colored in the flat, poly style of design that our new logo is in. Our designer rocked these out in less than a week! Other fun stuff: we’re going to be hitting up the Search Engine Journal Summit in New York City on November 2: my CTO Josh, Tara, myself, and our SME Krystal! (Want 15% off tickets and a chance to get a copy of my book for free? Check out the details here!) Come say hi if you’re in the area. We’d love to meet you! Now… ready to hear about our new services that went live today? What Are the Two New Writing Services at Express Writers This October? Let me start the new product discussion (yay!) by asking you a question… Does there ever come a time when you write, create, publish, publish, rinse, repeat… And you stand back and realize: Where is the ROI in all this content that I put out? There’s so much information out there about how to do it. More content, not less… but hey, let’s not forget quality over quantity… How do you trim the fat? Create powerful, effective, meaningful content that WILL get ranked well and read, shared by real people who actually got something from your content? There’s only one way: by creating the most authoritative piece on the subject. But that means a ton (and I mean a ton) of work has to go into it. First, you have to research to find your perfect low competition, high volume long-tail keyword before you even write it. Second, you have to write an authoritative, expert, long-form post (1,500-3,000 words is what Google ranks the most) that nails the specifics of what the topic should give the reader, and is written in an engaging, readable, optimized style. Thirdly: you’ll need to create custom graphics and visuals for your long-form piece to represent the key points, and finally, a feature graphic branded to you that will go with it everywhere on social media. The Answer to Your Most In-Depth, Amazing Content Need: Authority Content I took those points into consideration, picked the best four writers out of my team of over 50, and over the past month I sat down and created a workflow process where we nail all three of those points, called Authority Content. You know what? The workflow means four people are involved in creating one post. That’s what it looks like nowadays when you want to nail content. Be the biggest name in the book. Outshine every other result in the SERPs and be THE result people WANT to click on… And when they click through, present them with the content piece that answers every question they had on the topic. Then, and only … Read more

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