Updates - Express Writers

Celebrating 5 Years at Express Writers: What It’s Like Working Here, From Our Team

January 1, 2021May 26, 2016 by Adam Oakley

5 years ago, I had a dream. My dream was to build a community of writers under one umbrella; a boutique firm that would be devoted to high quality content. My one aim was to hire writers who were excellent at their trade, who would further a mission of creating great content across the entire web. And, to never drop my content quality standards for any reason. And I can’t believe how that dream has been fulfilled today! This week, Express Writers celebrates a five-year anniversary. It’s been a wonderful, crazy, enlightening journey. We’ve seen over 5,000 clients walk through our doors, and have 70 copywriters, content strategists, social media managers, and editors by now (tested and hired out of thousands of applicants); and have written hundreds of thousands of pages to date, across press releases, blogs, web pages, product descriptions, social posts, and much more. I won’t lie: it hasn’t been easy. To stay at the top in today’s fast-paced content creation industry, featuring smarter consumers than ever before, you have to a) work without stopping, b) learn every day and c) grow constantly. Evolving, adapting is the name of the game. And my team and I have stayed devoted, nonstop, to maintaining and growing our presence. I’ve written more entrance tests and training manuals solely for our team use than I can count, and I refine them every few months. We don’t want to just be a content creation agency: we want to be at the forefront and be the best provider there is for great content that will fuel today’s content marketing needs. To celebrate our five-year mark, we’re showcasing some of our staff and why they like to work at Express Writers (see below). Without our talented team of managers, writers, content strategists, and experts, we wouldn’t be able to offer the high quality content deliverables we’re able to. Plus, a little gift for our clients: $25 off anything in the Content Shop! Use the code in the image below to redeem. Celebrating 5 Years at Express Writers: What Our Staff and Writers Say About Working Here Writing isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s not a trade just anyone can be good at; without the inborn talent for writing, every word reads forced, and doesn’t flow. Our writers have been hand-picked out of hundreds, and have passed multiple entrance tests to enter our team. We’re grateful to every one of our talented team members: they make up the core of how we tick, and how we stay consistent in delivering quality in the human-centric, difficult product of writing. We’re proud to represent quality and stand behind our mission of delivering audience-friendly, real-value content across the web! (P.S: Keep reading from a brief story from me!) Founder’s Perspective: Our Story A little thought, fueled by passion, and a lot of elbow-grease hard work was at the root of Express Writers’ beginnings back in 2011. I began life as a freelance writer at just 19 years old. It was an idea that hit me like a lightning bolt when I woke up one morning. I changed my lifestyle, direction and career path solely driven by discovering my passion. I wasn’t feeling fulfilled at all in nursing school. Within three months of self-teaching and learning the trade of online writing, fueled by the fact that I was jumping into something I absolutely loved, I was able to quit nursing school and McDonalds and jump full-time into running Express Writers, a little company I created at 20 years old, in May of 2011. The best part? I was doing what I loved with my life: writing. And it was through a channel bigger than I’d dreamed of as a little kid, who loved to fill every last scrapbook page with words. I was writing content that would be distributed across the world wide web—and how useful, good, intelligent, and worthwhile my writing was translated to how people across the globe would further interact with it when they found it in Google. That was inspiring to me. What if I could make the web a better place by simply offering a solution for it’s fundamental key: the quality of great writing, for any type of business that needed to fuel their online marketing? Our Growth: Crazy Big Strides, Short Amounts of Time Over the past five years, Express Writers has grown from a baby company where I was the manager, editor, and salesperson, with a team of five writers, to a global agency with over 70 writers (hand-picked out of thousands), a staff of nearly a dozen people, and a 98% success rate in content deliverables, a feat considering the difficult human process involved in what we do everyday (from matching individual client styles to picking the best writers, managing deadlines, and so much more). We’ve seen a lot of growth across the years; from launching our online Content Shop developed by Josh in early 2015, to our latest internal growth spurt just this May. Interestingly enough, this month’s growth was fueled by the termination of our two head managers. We discovered that they were dropping our quality, pushing our writers to extreme deadlines, and overall going down a road counter-intuitive to the process and creation of quality content. In the following seven days after they were let go, I reinvented our content quality process, replacing editors with a more targeted, trained role of content reviewers; came up with a content turnaround expectations chart, that is now included in our policy page, and allows for the time our human writers need to create quality content; and trained three new staff members. We’ve already seen a 10% increase in the overall morale and production of our writing team, exhibited in clientele project approval and praise across the board, since we’ve lessened the urgency of their deadlines. I have no doubts that as we progress to training more reviewers and as our new Content Manager Katria works through her third week here full-time managing the assignments and refining which writer is best matched with a project, this production quality increase will only … Read more

May Changes Update From Express Writers: New Reviewer Role, Turnaround Expectations and More

December 31, 2020May 19, 2016 by Adam Oakley

This May, Express Writers has been through some serious stages of change and growth, in the realm of personnel and internal standards. Overall, it’s been a valuable time of discovering and implementing quality enhancements—which will improve and boost our content creation process long-term! What Happened in May, and How We’ve Significantly Improved Our Process I greatly appreciate each and every one of our clientele and writers who had patience with us during a difficult week of transition, May 5-10th, when we had to let our two staff managers go, and pick up the pieces behind them. We discovered on May 6th that they were not only embezzling company funds but also dropping the ball throughout our content quality, and writer treatment, and terminated them that day. I know there are no excuses: I’m absolutely holding myself accountable for wrong staffing decisions. I can tell you that I’ve learned my lesson! No more complacency. I’m proud to say that even though it was one of the most difficult weeks of our lives, it was one of the most productive weeks in terms of growing Express Writers’ content delivery process. Over 70 hours of work that week was devoted from each of us in the management front: me in writing new training, staffing and hours of Skype training, up to 6 hours at a time, with new staff; auditing everything we do, our content process, and implementing how to make it better; Katria in managing our content assignments and learning how to fill the shoes as a content manager; Josh, CTO, for picking up new client inquiries; and Sarah, our content specialist, in handling every phone call and client inquiry via chat and email. It’s a week that will go down in history! But, I’ve been genuinely delighted at the fruits of our hard labor. Within that week after we terminated our staff managers, we’ve implemented some serious changes to Express Writers’ content process, which means that better processes are starting to happen now in our team. Great customer service is our #1 priority, and we are working overtime still to ensure all of our orders stay fulfilled right now, and fix everything. We want to make Express Writers the most effective and efficient writing service in the industry—and I know we can! Two Major Changes to Express Writers’ Internal Content Process Structure Here’s a lowdown on what we’ve built and added inside the past week and a half. Change #1: Content Turnaround Time Expectations Chart You can’t have a good writing team without a good writing environment. We discovered that our former managers were pushing writers to the grounds with deadlines: a reason why writer retention was low! In the past week, I’ve developed a Content Turnaround Time Expectations Chart, after rounds of meetings and planning with our content management and writers. Writers can now know what to expect in terms of turnarounds for everything; our content manager can direct the writers in a way that gives them time to produce talent; and our clients can know what to expect when they place orders! It’s also built in our policy page now. Change #2: We’ve Developed a New Quality Review Role We’ve implemented a new quality review checking system for our staff editors. After an audit of our staff roles, I found out that many times, our editors were inserting more errors than fixing errors from our writers. We hire really strong writers; the tests I’ve written in fact rule out 90% of our new applicants. So, with strong writers, editors can in fact be a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. To replace the disorganization of editing, I’ve created a focused role of reviewing and hired brand new Senior Editors, trained in my new review process. Our new editors have been trained one-on-one by me to review the content for five-six main checks, including client specifications, correct wording, fact-checking, a Copyscape search for any duplicate hits, and more; and, vitally important, on how to grade our writers constructively to help them grow their skills. We’ve hired two Senior Editors for this process: and we’ve already seen this system work! I’m also continuing to refine the role and guidelines based on client feedback. I believe we’ll see a much higher success rate in this targeted quality check system as opposed to a very general, non-directed editing review. We’ve also hired four new staff persons in the course of the past two weeks, all of which are highly qualified to handle both our clients and our content orders. We’re confident in their skills and dedication to helping our content deliverables stay within high quality standards, and professional, fast responses for our clientele and writer base. A Message to Our Clients If you see anything that’s wrong with your content, in terms of grammar, poor optimization, or lack of matching your specifications, we can’t improve unless we know! We would greatly appreciate you dropping us a line: send a note with your order ID along to our company content manager, Katria (email: katria@expresswriters.com) and we’ll all put our heads together to ensure better quality success for you and further content deliverables. We want to strive to make Express Writers THE best one-stop solution for every content need. You can bet we’re working our hardest everyday to make that a continued reality. For great content for your blogs, web pages and more, visit the Content Shop.

What’s New at Express Writers: Our Paper Plane Logo Rebrand, Upcoming Books & More

June 19, 2024November 11, 2015 by Adam Oakley

At Express Writers, we absolutely love adapting and growing. What we don’t like to do is stay still. So, for the past few months, we’ve been working on a lot of things behind the scenes. Here’s a recap for you on just what we’ve been up to! I Fly Like Paper, Get High Like Planes Our calligraphy pen point has been our foundational visual logo for years now, and we were brainstorming together on how to take it to the next level, staring at different pen points and unique illustrative representations. I looked at my team member, COO Josh, and instantly had a thought: a paper plane shape. Then, we decided to take things up a notch and put the paper plane in motion – pointing directly to our name, flying, and “aloft.” We knew we loved it as soon as the idea came to mind. The final designed product was done by our own COO Josh McCoy. Our paper plane represents the modern standards we’re continually adapting to, and a standard of onwards/upwards that we have been upholding for four years now. Just to put into reality how and why we work hard to symbolize the onward and upward standard in the industry of content writing. We are continually honing our services, and working towards the best content agency on the planet. The paper plane fits our mission statement in a big way. Express Writers Announcement From Julia McCoy, CEO Posted to our @ExpWriters Instagram account, here’s an announcement about all these changes at Express Writers from Julia: What’s in the works at Express Writers! A personal message from our founder, Julia McCoy (@ceomommy1) #podcast #bookstagram #published #author #ceo #announcement #marketing #googlesearch #webtraffic #optimization #content #seo #seoproblems #success #entreprenuer #sales #copywriting #writing #contentmarketing #blogging #inboundmarketing #growthhacking #googlesearch #webtraffic #optimization #copywriting #writing #instalike #instagood #instavid A video posted by Express Writers (@expwriters) on Nov 9, 2015 at 6:09pm PST I’m working on: Books Besides our logo rebrand, which has officially launched as of today, I’ve been working on two books: a complete guide on how to be an online content writer & a beginner’s guide to blogging. Both will be out before Christmas, so stay tuned – look for an announcement from us with published Kindle book links. Podcast & Twitter Chat We’re launching: The Write Podcast #ContentWritingChat I’ve already created our first episodes and scheduled in some super cool guests. I can’t wait to share all my content marketing knowledge and that of my guests’ with you. Here’s to growing together in content marketing!

How Express Writers Gained Over 300 Keyword Positions In One Day in Google (Case Study)

December 31, 2020November 9, 2015 by Adam Oakley

The other day, I was poking around in my favorite SEO analytic software of choice, SEMrush, checking on our rankings. My team at Express Writers has a Guru subscription there that allows us to see detailed analytics of our site–and I mean detailed. We see a ton of keyword position data down to the most recent keyword ranking change of our site in Google, as of just an hour ago. (If you haven’t already, go check out SEMrush here.) Well, a couple days ago I was doing my biweekly SEO audit of all of our keyword positions and pulling keyword data for new content. I was shocked to see that the positions changes mapped a huge spike: as of October 28, 302 new keyword gains. In 24 hours. And our traffic had spiked up to the most I’d ever seen: 1,251 people on one day. What Exactly Are We Doing In Google? Let me give you a little look at exactly how we’re getting and maintaining our positions with Google before I delve into the recent major keyword growth. 1. Content We write and publish about 3-4 blogs on our site a week, ranging from 1,000-3,000 words each. So since 2011, we have 642 blogs published on our WordPress site (this one makes 643): This isn’t counting the hundreds of guest blogs I’ve placed on places like SiteProNews, Search Engine Journal, Social Media Examiner, and more. Also, we have about 50-80 website pages, maybe 400-800 words each. 2. Traffic So, with that insight into just how much we publish, now it’s time to see what the results are. We have some serious organic traffic. I’ve never placed a Google paid ad in all my four years of business; and never will. I believe in great content brainstorming, writing and publishing, and it is what is keeping us strong. And sometimes just this process can take me 40 hours a week. It isn’t easy, but it is thoroughly worth it. SEMrush puts our traffic at a value of $6,800 (what we would pay if we were paying for ad clicks). We have 3,000 keywords indexed in Google, with over 100 in the top 5 positions of Google. We’re outranking a large number of our competitors in the content creation niche. Let’s look at the graph on the right a little deeper: Whoa! This month we have the most site traffic we’ve ever had, with 1,251 people visiting in a single day the first week of November. 3. How We Gained 300+ Rankings In One Day Here’s what I saw that stopped me in my tracks the other day. I clicked on Position Changes under Organic Research, in SEMrush: See that? 302 new rankings in a single day! Clicking on what was “new,” some of these showed we were position 11 for “modern copywriter,” #3 for “copywriting companies”, and #19 for “website content”: The orange bar below showed we’d lost 200 keywords. But clicking on that, I saw they were mostly unrelated keywords—like “express for her,” “sprinkles icing,” and more. Except for a few pivotal ones we’d lost a few positions on (looks like I need to refresh some old SEO content), the “lost” weren’t too bad. How The Heck Did We Get 300+ Keywords In One Day? I have a couple theories. First, Google RankBrain is out. It came out two days before our rankings showed a major spike. Read my blog on RankBrain here. RankBrain is an AI system that basically could be replacing Google’s old way of doing its algorithm, and it exposed 15% of the web that Google hadn’t shed light on before. I’m sure RankBrain is showing a lot more website owners rankings they didn’t know they ever had. RankBrain means we’ll all be able to see a whopping 15% more in analytics and positions online that our sites and content are ranking for—all the more reason to start publishing great content! Secondly, Google has still been rolling out Panda, AND, topical trust flow has recently been making big waves (it’s replacing PageRank and focuses on reporting relevant content in higher rankings). Topical trust flow weight could be mostly likely why we lost our unrelated rankings, too. All this is probably tied into the quality of the RankBrain AI. Lastly, we’ve been working hard on our content. Over the past month, I’ve revamped and improved our blogging and content publishing quality. Here are just a few of the changes: SEO audit of our blogs (I just corrected 35 “bad SEO” blogs, rewrote their meta descriptions and edited the copy, over the last 3 weeks, and took them to green SEO on the Yoast plugin) More SEO research and keyword planning with SEMrush for each post Heavier research and analyzing of topics and what goes into each post Custom drawings and illustrations, like this one, for many of our posts At least one infographic written, designed and published per month Re-purposing of infographics into SlideShares, RSS content to pull guest traffic Email marketing bi-weekly that sends a blog roundup to our subscriber list We Know What It Takes To Help You To end this post, I’d like to emphasize that any one of our clients can see these results. We’re not only writers with pens over here. My team not only writes great SEO optimized content, but we plan it, too—and we use SEMrush! Our team includes strategists that map out monthly editorial calendars for our clients, audit websites to remove anything that could be hurting websites, and similar services. We’ve seen content success truly happen for us – this post proves that – and we know exactly what it takes to get even a brand new website client onboard with publishing great content that gets both the eye of a reader and Google (albeit if Google, a robotic eye). If you’re ready to get serious about content and thus, your rankings and readers, check out our Content Shop!

Buffer Suggestions Gets Shut Down: Another Case For Original Content

June 19, 2024October 20, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Originality – it’s what we all crave, isn’t it? Whether it comes in the form of fashion, food, fitness, or content, original content (useful, unique, engaging) is important to consumers everywhere. And 2015 has been a buzz of news about moves on the parts of major content platforms when it comes to providing original content. Buffer is joining the ranks of Google, Facebook, and YouTube, providing clients with great, new content hot and fresh daily (just like your favorite baked goods). These companies are focusing on reducing the amount of filler in their content and making things significantly more substantial (who wants an apple turnover that’s just apple jam?). The Latest In Original Content Happenings: Bye-Bye, Buffer Suggestions Since the content world is ever expanding, that means there will always be some new newsworthy things to share with you. The latest on the content front is that Buffer is making a change to their content and will slowly be getting rid of their Suggestions panel. The Buffer Suggestions panel was a great way for people to come up with content ideas based off of a few suggestions added to the panel. It wasn’t necessarily to give exact topics, but more so a pool of inspiration. This might seem like something Buffer really should keep around, so what is their aim in getting rid of it? Why is Buffer Retiring Its Suggestions Panel? In their announcement linked above, Buffer states that the choice was to help bring about more natural and authentic content and shares. As they point out, the Suggestions panel promoted sharing content over consuming content. When it came to sharing content, a lot of people were sharing the suggestions instead of other content, which made Buffer feel like they were missing the mark. While you won’t have to say adios just yet, it will be phased out until it no longer exists. Never fear; there are plenty of other ways to gain inspiration and come up with excellent content ideas without the Suggestions feature. Original Content is the Way of Content in 2015 Buffer isn’t the only one focusing on original content over generated, bland content that would get shared instead of consumed. Who are some of the others making changes when it comes to content? 1. Facebook is Implementing a New Newsfeed and Long-Form Content Platform Facebook is making changes to make people’s newsfeeds fit what the user wants to see. This is an often-discussed part of Facebook, and giving the users more power is important to the company. The new newsfeed means that there is every chance that users aren’t going to see your advertisements, and if they do, they’ll just skip right over. This is why creating excellent original content is vital to Facebook because it will be shared more. However, it won’t just be shared but it will also be consumed, which is what we all want for our content. In addition to the newsfeed changes, Facebook is also redoing notes and creating a powerful native long-form content platform similar to Medium. This gives you the ability to put your excellent original content directly on Facebook, making it easier for your clients to access. Is this even beneficial? Well, Facebook’s native videos might just be the best example. According to Brent Csutoras from Search Engine Journal, native videos reach 2 times the number of users as a 3rd party video, which brings in quite a bit more traffic for businesses. This means that the new long-form content platform is probably going to be just as successful. And both of these show just how important original content is. 2. Upworthy is Leaving Aggregated Content in the Dust Upworthy is known for the random bits of content they’d find, throw out at will to users, and watch as the viral numbers spiked higher and higher. They were the epitome of the viral world, and something many aspired to be like and for good reason. Soon, however, Upworthy started losing its famed numbers due to many changes in algorithms and aggregated content. And they had to revamp their approach. They ditched the once famous, but now dead, aggregated content and went for a better approach. What was that approach? Ding ding! You got it – original content! 3. Google Phantom Means You Need to Amp Up Your Original Content Google Phantom isn’t someone hiding out in the bowels of an opera house (though if you want to start singing, I won’t stop you). Phantom isn’t quite as terrifying as it sounds, but it does mean that you need to focus on creating great, original content. It is looking out for the dreaded filler content, which isn’t something that really provides value to readers and users. Google wants all searchers to find great content, and that means doing away with ranking filler. 4. YouTube is Seeking to Launch an Original Content Effort by the Year’s End Another website that is looking to remove filler content and push people to create original pieces is YouTube. They’ve announced that they are working on an original content effort that they want to release by the end of the year. This is going to encompass a wide range of video and business types so if you’re on the channel, it’s time to focus on great original content. All of these great websites are making wonderful changes. And, all you need to do is focus on making great and original content for your users and clients. 6 Ways You Can Create Original Content “You keep talking about the importance of original content, but how do I create it?” Great question; I’m glad you asked! Let’s take a look at a few tips to help you on the way to great content your clients will love. 1. Plan Your Content and Create an Editorial Calendar Making sure you have a great pool of unique ideas can get overwhelming if you’re coming up with it on the spot. Instead, make sure you create and … Read more

It’s #SocialMediaWeek! Here’s How We’re Celebrating

December 31, 2020September 16, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Did you know it’s #socialmediaweek? What Is Social Media Week? Social Media Week (SMW) is actually a platform—a global one that aims to connect content, people and conversation around the latest trends in social and mobile media. It also is the main sponsor of the annual #SMW event. Every year, SMW brings hundreds of thousands of people together through social and mobile media. It provides numerous learning experiences that aim to advance our understanding of the role social media plays in today’s society. Held for the first time in February 2009 in New York City, SMW was originally launched as a distributed conference with event being held throughout the city. More than 2,500 people attended and thousands participated online. How We’re Celebrating We’ve started our very own Instagram, @expwriters. We only set it up two weeks ago with this post and we’re just in awe of the traction we’ve already started getting. Instagram has astounded us. We’ve had nearly 40 likes on a single post, something we’ve never got in over 3 years on Facebook. 1. Local Business Gets Our Thumbs Up At Express Writers we pride ourselves with keeping on top of the latest trends, having an incredible international workforce and supporting local business. So for starters, we’re kicking off #socialmediaweek by featuring a #localbusiness. We’ve already started with this post. Being pretty mobile, we love heading out to local places here in Austin to work for the morning or just catch a break from staring at a screen for a while. Keen to find out who the featured local business is? Stay tuned to our Instagram page to see who it will be. Don’t have an Instagram account yourself? Here’s how to set one up really quickly and start following us. 2. #virtualworkforceculture Hashtag what, you’re asking? We have amazing team members from all corners of the globe, so we’ve decided to start a weekly hashtag photo session. With #virtualworkforceculture, we will be featuring one of our team members each week. What better way to celebrate social media week than featuring our very first #virtualworkforceculture? Our aim is to bring our entirely remote team together through the powers of Instagram. Below is one of our busiest full-time writers, Ashley A, featured in our #virtualworkforceculture hashtag: To help you get to know the team behind Express Writers, we’re going to be sharing a photo and a quote from some of our employees as part of our #virtualworkforceculture series! Our full-time writer Ashley, who works out of Montana, says: “Working as a freelancer allows me to write from home and enjoy hiking with my dogs and riding my horses during the breaks in my day!” It sounds like the perfect day to us! We love having her as part of our incredibly talented team! ? #expresswriters #workfromhome #copywriting #copywriter #writer #writinglife #writerslife #writersofinstagram #writersofig #writehackr #writersblock #freelancer #publishing #blogging #blogger #contentmarketing #marketing #content #inboundmarketing #growthhacking #entrepreneur #business A photo posted by Express Writers (@expwriters) on Jun 10, 2016 at 1:43pm PDT Now, let’s go into studying Instagram—why it’s so powerful, and how to successfully use it! Why is Instagram so Powerful? Instagram is quite literally the Twitter of pictures. It lets people post photos, have followers and follow other people to see their photos. The site was one of the most successful startups with an explosion in traffic shortly after the app was developed. So why did Instagram smash it so quickly? For starters, if you want to develop an incredibly successful website, or even business, you need to target people’s most important psychological needs. Instagram has many valuable uses, but the main reason for its rise to stardom is that it targeted two essential human needs: the desire to feel important and the desire to show off. It’s Human Nature to Want to Be a Show Off When was the last time someone said you were boasting? When last were you told you’re showing off? While a lot of humans won’t admit it, we all want to show off in one way or another. But since many do it subtly, others learn to criticize those who blatantly show off. So why would anyone post a photo on Instagram? To show off how good he or she is. Every picture carries a hidden message. I have beautiful friends. I look gorgeous today. My car rocks. Hey, I’m having a fancy dinner. If we didn’t have the desire to show off, Instagram would never have got off the starting block. Satisfying the Ego Who doesn’t want to feel important? The chance to have followers is arguably one of the most brilliant ideas that helps people satisfy their egos. People want to see their followers increasing so they become addicted to sites built on this system. 7 Steps to Instagram Success Have we got you fired up about Instagram? Check out these 7 steps to making it on the platform. 1. Create a Profile The first step is to pick a clear, attractive avatar. Use the same username as your Twitter handle so people can tag you easily. Use keywords in your bio for the sake of searchability. Change the URL in the bio to reflect what you are doing. Let BITLY help you track your traffic and customize it. 2. #Strategy Instagram lets you use up to 30 hashtags per post. So stick a few in the original post and add more in the comments. Be consistent with the hashtags. Take time to build a hashtag strategy to be consistent. Create hashtags that will build a hub for your content. 3. Build a Posting Strategy Create fun videos. Use a report app to share other posts. Add quote graphics. 4. Encourage Engagement Create real relationships with your followers. Give shout outs to friends and thought leaders. Delete spammy comments. Tag people in photos so that they get notifications. Make it easy for people to find you. Double tap a post to like it. Make sure your account is public if … Read more

A Tribute To The Regular American Hero (In Memory of 9/11)

December 31, 2020September 11, 2015 by Adam Oakley

September 11, 2001, early morning. Four airliners left California, with hijacked targets. Two of them (American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175) crashed into the North and South towers of the New York City World Trade Center. Our 47-story World Trade Center was destroyed that day. A third plane crashed into the Pentagon in Virginia, causing a collapse in its’ west side. A fourth plane was headed for Washington, D.C, but was stalled when it’s passengers tried to overcome the hijackers. All in the plane died when it finally crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. (I lived an hour and twenty minutes away from Shanksville PA at the time.) A Tribute To The Regular Hero (Flight 93, 9/11/2001) I know all of those four 9/11 aircraft attacks (individual tragedies, stories of their own) hold many, many tales both of fear, courage, incredible heroism, tragedy, and incredible acts on the part of Americans. But what I want you to think about in my tribute post is the incredible story of what happened aboard United Airlines 93. What happened aboard this plane was the result of the actions of several regular, everyday American heroes. I call them regular heroes because these were the type of people that have it in them to simply do what is noble, just and good—and if that means saving lives at the detriment of their own, so be it. These good people that still walk the earth are a gift of God to us as mankind. They are living angels, these regular heroes. The True Story of United Airlines 93: 33 Passengers, 7 Crew Members, 4 Hijackers The plane left that morning from New Jersey, delayed by 45 minutes due to air traffic. It was headed to California on a typical early-morning departure schedule, at 8:42 am. No one knew yet that the World Trade Center would be hit minutes later. Less than half the max capacity were aboard the plane: which was lucky, considering none of the thirty-three passengers, seven crew, and four unexpected hijackers would survive the plane’s finale that day. Around 9:28 the terrorists made their move. They crept into the cockpit: the air traffic controllers back at the home station heard a struggle, and “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” over the radio from Captain Jason Dahl (media source: Wikipedia): A second Mayday call went over the radio, and the hijackers took over the plane, a moaning Captain faintly heard in the radio background. Ziad Jarrah was the terrorist who took over flying the plane. “We have a bomb on board. So sit,” were some of his words. His first announcement (Wikipedia): His second announcement: A female flight attendant struggled with them, and was silenced either by death or a blow. Around 9:35, Jarrah directed the plane, on autopilot, to turn around and head east. Air traffic controllers immediately worked to move traffic out of its way, as it ascended over 40,000 feet in the air. Flight 77 had just impacted the Pentagon. Air traffic didn’t hear from United Flight 93 again. Over 35 phone calls were made from passengers to loved ones, emergency contacts, and officials in the subsequent hour, using mobile and GTE phones. Tom Burnet, in rows 24-25, called his wife and told her about the hijackers, explaining that they had a bomb and he thought it was a ruse. His wife told him about the Twin Towers attack that just happened: Tom shared the news with those around him, saying “Oh my God. It’s a suicide mission.” He last words were: “Don’t worry, we’re going to do something.” Others called facilities and reported the hijacking attack, including flight attendant Sandra Walsh who said that another female flight attendant had been stabbed (the one in the earlier struggle). Mark Bingham, a 6’5” rugby player, called and told his mother that the plane was hijacked. Jeremy Glick, also over 6’ tall, and described as a “teddy bear” by his siblings called his wife. His first thought was to lighten it with a joke about stopping the terrorists with his butter knife from breakfast. But he turned serious, telling her how much he loved her many times over. He stayed connected with her till the end of the flight. Todd Beamer, row 32, tried to call his wife but was routed to a GTE phone operator, Lisa. He described the hijackers and the bomb that appeared to be strapped to the waist of one of them. CeeCee Lyes, a flight attendant described as a tough cookie by those who knew her, and a former cop, called her husband, who was also a cop sleeping after a long night shift. “I hope to be able to see your face again, baby,” she said. If you feel like crying today, listen to her recording (source, Wikipedia): When she called him again, she was able to reach him, and he stayed on the line with her. Lauren, a pregnant passenger two months along with her first child, left a heartbreaking message for her husband and love of 16 years. “Jack, pick up sweetie, can you hear me? Okay. I just want to tell you, there’s a little problem with the plane. I’m fine. I’m totally fine. I just want to tell you how much I love you.” During this time, Flight 93 passed only 1,000 feet away from a military re-fueling aircraft. The pilot of that NASA Boeing said later how weird the dead silence on the radio was as he passed 93. The passengers voted, and decided to revolt. Beamer was on the phone reciting the Lord’s Prayer with the GTE operator. His last words were: “You ready? OK. Let’s roll.” Others were beside him, praying. Felt called 911 and described the terror attack to a T. CeeCee told her husband the passengers were forcing their way into the cockpit. Beamer was last heard to say: “You ready? Ok. Let’s roll.” Another passenger, Elizabeth Wainio, told her mom they were rushing the cockpit. … Read more

Why Upworthy Just Ditched Aggregated Content: The Necessity of Original Content

December 31, 2020July 24, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Upworthy is a site best known for video. Once a king of viral content, the site rose to fame by unearthing uplifting videos from the dredges of the web, pairing them with attention-grabbing and highly shareable headlines and sending them out into the world of Facebook, where they garnered tens of thousands of shares almost immediately. The video content format was so popular, in fact, that by November of 2013, the site had gained 90 million unique readers in this fashion. It wasn’t all gravy, though, and by August 2014, Facebook had altered its policy on clickbait headlines and Upworthy’s readership began to take an alarming plunge, due to the aggregated content. The site has since recovered its former level of popularity but, in order to do so, it had to make a somewhat uncharacteristic move. Rather than aggregating content and throwing it out to the Internet at will, Upworthy was forced to begin creating original content, which quickly allowed the company to get back on track and revitalize its subscriber numbers. The Upworthy saga, as it turns out, is perfect anecdotal evidence as to the power of original content and dozens of brands, blogs and companies would benefit from taking notice. The Dangers of Content Aggregation Aggregation is the act of gathering together existing content and repackaging it for new use. Although it is a royal flush in terms of convenience, it’s not ultimately a sustainable tactic, as Upworthy recently learned. The reason for this is that aggregation relies heavily on sensationalism. In order to be effective, aggregated content needs to be sensationalized enough to draw clicks and shares. This process of sensationalism often entails taking run-of-the-mill content, affixing a jolting, curiosity-grabbing and sometimes misleading title to it and then pushing it out onto the web. Before its recent turnaround, Upworthy did this very well. Upworthy has long been known for its carefully crafted headlines. They are immediately recognizable: long (often up to three sentences) and demanding, these headlines call upon people to recognize a social or cultural injustice, click for a miracle cure, learn an incredible secret in six seconds or simply to be amazed by a video display of human compassion or ignorance. It is obvious that Upworthy’s headlines follow a carefully crafted format and are geared towards eliciting the maximum amount of reader response in the least possible time. An example of Upworthy’s sensationalist headlines was included in the Fall 2013 roundup of the site’s most shared articles: “This Amazing Kid Just Died. What He Left Behind is Wondtacular.” This headline is a perfect example of the baiting and hyperbole that underlies aggregation. Although the practice of sensational headlines is misleading and often criticized for being exploitative and underhanded, tying dramatic headlines to dull, aggregated content was wildly successful…until it wasn’t. Upworthy began to realize the dangers of aggregation when its content began being filtered by Facebook’s spam guards and the social media platform moved toward auto-play video. When this resulted in a massive drop in readership, Upworthy realized it was time to take a tip from the Phoenix and rise from the aggregation-induced ashes. They did this by making the radical and very wise move from curation to content. The Transition to Original Content Thanks to its previous position as a powerhouse of the curation and aggregation field, Upworthy had a unique and intimate understanding of what its readers and subscribers would relate to and choose to share and they brought this understanding into their mission to create original content. While the company still deals heavily in video, the videos are now methodically framed, edited and distributed so as to invoke the highest possible emotional response from readers. Additionally, Upworthy now has a team of writers on hand to craft original content. The reason for Upworthy’s switch to original content comes down to the fact that aggregated content is easy to copy and, with so much content flooding the net on a daily basis, being easy to copy is a death sentence. As Upworthy gained popularity, other sites caught on and began applying Upworthy’s viral headline format to their own content, which lead to Upworthy being outranked and overlooked in favor of the copycats. While aggregated and curated content is easy to copy, original content is not, and Upworthy was forced to take notice. Upworthy’s transition toward original content was first reported in June of 2015 and, since then, the company has enjoyed an uptick in traffic. This goes to show that, as the web at large pushes harder and harder to move away from mass-produced, shallow content, and Google continues to update its algo software to versions like Panda and Phantom, sites that produce original content are more likely to take the lead. The Battle for the Lead: Curation vs. Content With such a deluge of content available on the web today, it’s clear that original content has the power to overtake and undermine curated content. While aggregated and curated content may be easy to produce and capable of attracting a huge number of readers in a short period of time, it is not a sustainable system and ultimately runs like a boom and bust economy. Spammy content only works for so long and, eventually, spam filters, reader preference and the press of high-quality content will catch up. While it may seem like a quick road to readership, aggregation and curation are not in a company’s best content marketing interests. If there’s one thing we can learn from the Upworthy saga, it is that there are no free lunches and companies, brands and blogs are much better served, in the long-term, by outfitting their brand with high-quality, original content from the get-go.

Express Writers Re-Launches June 2015: Our Membership Program, New Products, and Quality Updates

June 19, 2024June 13, 2015 by Adam Oakley

This June, our little ol’ team at Express Writers is becoming bigger and better than ever before. We’ve spent some serious time and resources (might add, blood and sweat to that) to update our major content products and launch some brand new things. One thing you can say about us—we are not your typical content writers. We’re a firm that’s dynamic, ever updating, and developing new things internally that are ahead of the curve. Our staff is passionate and involved, and we all love what we do! Ready to hear about all our new changes? Express Writers Re-Launch This June: What Are Our Major Changes & Updates? For about three months now, our CTO Josh McCoy has led his team of developers in creating an ultra-custom Membership system that will be accessible to our ongoing clients. As our CEO, I’ve sat down and recreated our major Content Strategy training and written tests for all our Strategists, as well as wrote and launched content standard quality tests for every single one of our writers and editors. Our team is better than ever before, and we’re staffing more people almost every week to keep up with our growth. 1. Membership Platform The long-awaited Membership platform and program is finally here! Custom designed on a platform built from scratch by our development team, the Membership system replicates our Content Shop with an online ordering platform only accessible to clients who deposit and spend a minimum of $1,000 a month. When the deposit is placed, it activates the platform and clients will be able to see and order with their ongoing membership rates on every product. Besides the discounted rate access, membership clients will have easier input forms that allow them to simply upload monthly project specs: and we’ll also dedicate a project Editor to each membership client account that comes in with a style guide. Membership Benefits: Membership platform, allowing clients to access and order all the discounted products. Dedicated Staff Editors, exclusive to Membership accounts only: we train one of our staff Editors on your style guide and requirements for long-term, specific editorial attention. This is an optional add-on, starting at $85 for 20 pages. No contracts, ever. Just deposit and spend $1,000 per month. Consistently lower rates on all our products – up to 20% off! Learn more and sign up here. 2. Content Quality Standards Update We’ve completed training and testing our entire staff of writers and editors on the proper use of high quality citations, checked with the MozBar, in all our blog content. We’ve also updated our content formatting rules to include high quality headlines and sub-headers that will better attract and engage readers. These fundamental quality updates will ensure your blog content meets and exceeds Google’s content standards. See our Content Shop Blog Prices. 3. Content Blogging Plans Update We’ve done a thorough audit of how our blog plans work, and found that a word span within 1,500 words works best for the average blog. (Longer words are always favorable for Google rankings, as long as it’s quality: we recommend buying or creating single blogs over 2,000 words a few times a month for posting on your blog.) We’ve also created an additional plan for more versatility. All blogs will include high quality citations and text formatting. Lastly, we’ve introduced add-ons for blogging that include the revamped Content Planning service (a full monthly Editorial Calendar and more); as well as optional premium designed images that we can create for every blog. View our Blog Packages in the Content Shop. 4. Content Planning Replaces Content Curation Formerly called Content Curation, our Content Planning is an entirely re-vamped product in our Content Strategy lineup, available as an add-on for all of our blog plans, single website pages content planning (research and title creation), and fundamentals package for clients with new websites or blogs. Our revamped product, Content Planning, adds a new section to the Editorial Calendar we deliver monthly, as well as overview reports, called BuzzSumo Analysis. In this analysis we conduct research on your industry influencers and what is currently trending on the web (the people who are succeeding at content in your niche) and using BuzzSumo, we’ll look at what content they are writing, how many shares it gets on what platform, and prepare a topic analysis report. Finally, our Content Strategists will identify any competitor and influencers shortcomings and notate how you can do it better with a few top suggestions and takeaways. Tools we used: BuzzSumo, SEMRush, WordTracker, Hubspot/Portent title helpers, Quora, human eye of our Content Strategist. Content Planning Offerings (view the Content Planning product in our Content Shop) Content Planning Package: This is where you’ll experience the most out of our content planning products. Our ongoing Content Planning packages are for those who have our blogging plans and are looking for total content planning, organization, and creation. We’ll analyze what content is currently trending in your niche using BuzzSumo, research keywords and topics, and create an Editorial Calendar mapped out for best monthly content. Clients also get to talk to their Content Strategist in a 30-minute monthly strategizing meeting. Content Planning Fundamentals: This is a packaged plan for those who do not have an existing content plan, blog, or web content going: or are looking to re-vamp their current content. Our Content Strategists will deliver a Content Planning Overview excel report with page or blog suggestions, full keyword analysis report, and a BuzzSumo Content Analysis. Clients can (optionally) meet with their Content Strategist for a 30-minute discussion. Content Planning For Websites: Perfect for the new (or revamping) website owner who doesn’t know what pages to plan for and add to their website. We’ll conduct keyword research, deliver a BuzzSumo Content Analysis, and create an overview report that suggests categories and specific pages to add for successful web content. Clients can (optionally) hold a 30-minute meeting with their Content Strategist to share input. 5. Social Media Improvements We’re now creating custom, branded & designed images with Canva, using our stock image subscription … Read more

Express Writers Turns 4: Four Lessons I’ve Learned In Four Years of Business

March 24, 2022May 22, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Today, May 22, 2015 marks the 4th year Express Writers has been around. Our Stats At Express Writers For 2015 We create on average about 250 pages in new orders a week. That’s more than 125,000 words between blogs, web pages, marketing material, press releases and more every week. For 2015, we have served 913 businesses and consumers around the globe. The US, Sweden, France, India, Australia are a few countries where our clients hail from. Our customer map for 2015 looks about like this: What I’ve Learned From Four Years of Business 1. It’s actually easier to start a business than you think. I can’t believe I’m saying this. But really: I believe the hardest part of making a business is the actual doing of it. When you sit down, create your company name, file that fictitious name with the government, advertise and get your first client. 2. The more work you put into the first years, the better. In 2011, I coded my own website. It took me 12 hours straight and I didn’t leave my office chair that whole time. (I don’t recommend that for health reasons.) That week I hired my first writers, one SEO writer and one marketing writer, after interviewing about 20 people. My standards were that they had to be as creative and talented a writer as I, or more so. (I got lucky—they were more so.) In 2012, I hit an income of six figures for that year (at a gnarly 28% profit), and I was constantly putting in 50 hours of work plus in a week many times. Some of it was fixing forest fires when I had to write and deliver content myself when half my team of writers disappeared (this actually happened a couple times). I also researched, built, and studied my industry of content marketing, blogging about it. Those days were the days. They were intensive. My wrists burned at the end of the day. Sometimes I forgot to eat all day. I wrote, delivered. Then I’d cold call and do Craigslist ads to get clients. We survived. We started thriving. 2013 and 2014 were our growing years with a growing team, with some exciting things that happened, like writing product descriptions for Walmart, GAP, Skyping the upper management team in Sweden to discuss writing content for the Bank of Austria. In 2014 Josh built our Content Shop, which we launched this January of 2015. 3. You better hire people, and they better be good. It’s all well and good to be working hard and doing everything yourself the first year, but if you don’t hire people to work for you, you’ll go under. You won’t grow. Period. I hired my first manager in 2012, Tamila. She happened to be a driven military officer and was up with me brainstorming and building all hours of the day. When she left, I spent many hours in prayer on who I would pick. I wanted long term people, as driven as myself, in order for my business to succeed long term. Enter Annie and Alecs. These two sisters reside in the European region. They work together, from home. I hired them initially as writers. They earned the best feedback, client success and retention, and were some of the most creative writers I had ever seen. I asked them if they wanted to be a manager. They said yes, and the rest is history! Annie today is our full time Content Manager, and Alecs is our Client Accounts Coordinator. In 2013 we hired our first Sales Representative, our Client Coordinator Sarah, from Colorado. She’s a wonderful people person, a great sales lady, and has handled large client accounts very successfully. We’ve seen her experience incredible growth with us, too. 2015 marks the year of the most staffing we’ve ever done. And these people are awesome individuals – we’ve had amazing writers AND staff join our ranks! 4. The more you uphold a standard of quality, the more you will succeed. My standard has always been only the highest quality. That’s why we hire maybe one out of ten or twenty applicants. I have never invested in things like black-hat SEO tactics, and I’ve only earned my rankings by creating my own effective content. This week, though, I really learned the lesson of upholding only quality. One of our very own Sales Representatives gave me an honest wakeup call last week. “I’m sorry, but I can’t sell this product to clients,” he said. “It’s too crappy.” I thanked him and re-developed the product. Guess what? I can sleep better now. I know I’m offering my clients something that’s way more valuable. Never, ever stop enhancing and prioritizing the value your business offers to clients. Express Writers Year 4: On To New Things To each and every one of you reading—I’m grateful. I’m grateful for our awesome clients. Our incredible staff. Our creative, talented writers. For 2015, we’re working on even bigger things (I probably overuse that phrase, but we really are). A new White Label program and platform. A seamless, custom team room developed just for our own team and salespeople (a cost of $30k and 6 month development). New marketing and lead endeavors to reach the people who need us. I want to blog on Forbes this year. Better standards across the board for creating only the best content. A new product called Storytelling. And many more things. Our team will only grow and increase—with the help of real, passionate, and driven people. Here’s to many more years ahead of successful business!