At Express Writers, we’re a tight-knit team of content creators that pride ourselves on serving our clients with the best copy on the web.
Since I founded the company in 2011, we’ve served over 5,000 clients around the globe. Watch our video story.
Part of our structure in customizing our content and matching up our writers to our clients for successful results, has been in serving our clients with three specific levels. Our three individual content levels are suited to every kind of budget, expertise level needed, and consistent brand positioning.
To explain our levels better, we created a visual infographic to represent what each of these levels look like. Enjoy! And be sure to scroll down to the content below the infographic to see examples of each content type, written by our creators.
[bctt tweet=”See the three content levels at @ExpWriters #infographic” via=”no”]
General, Expert, Authority: What Differentiates the Content Levels at Express Writers? (Infographic)
Explaining the Three Content Levels at Express Writers
Writer: Your writer passed our hiring tests. Only 2% of applicants do, so they’ve got writing chops. They’re not, however, an expert on the topic and will instead rely on their research and writing skills.
Content Quality Specialist: Your editor follows our unique 5-point quality check to eliminate grammar and syntax errors while ensuring strong word flow and proper formatting.
Thorough Research: Includes statistics, quotes, and/or links that support your article topic.
Benefits of General Copy
SEO-Friendly: Formatted and written to be found by search engines.
Created for Optimal Readability: Content is broken up with subheadings and short paragraphs to make it easy for readers to consume.
Who General Content Is Perfect for:
Small businesses focusing on local SEO
Agencies reselling our content to small, local-focused businesses
Businesses or bloggers in non-competitive niches that need content for their blog or social media pages
Expert Writer: Your writer passed our tests AND has extensive experience writing about your topic. They also have a better understanding of your readers than a general writer would. And, they’re expert in the nuances of engaging writing. Many of these writers have taken advanced courses, live workshops, or coaching sessions on how to write for engagement and conversions.
Content Quality Specialist: Your editor uses our 5-point quality check process AND checks for link quality and research accuracy.
Extensive Research: Using their experience, your expert writer knows where to find the best resources (links, statistics, quotes, etc.) for researching your topic.
Benefits of Expert Copy
Made for Search Engines: Everything, from the quality of the content to the formatting and keywords used, is made for high ROI in the organic SEO rankings, targeted to the real human reader.
Audience-Centric Content: Content is designed to connect and engage with your unique audience.
Positions You as an Expert: After publishing several expert articles, you’ll be well-positioned to start generating organic traffic for the long term.
Who Expert Content Is Perfect for
Businesses or bloggers that want to begin establishing themselves as an expert in their industry
Small or medium-sized businesses that want to start generating organic traffic
Businesses in a niche with moderate competition that are trying to work towards becoming an authority
This content level not only uses the highest level writer and editors in our team, but also has a specialized process, workflow and extra steps for SEO keyword discovery and special image creation.
Content Strategist: Step 1 in the Authority Content workflow. Uses industry-leading tools to perform keyword research and determine which long-tail keywords your content should be built around.
Authority Writer: Your writer, who is an expert on your topic, works with the content strategist to ensure content is written around long-tail keywords that have the best chance to help you rank quickly. This writer has been handpicked out of our best writers and mentored by our CEO.
Content Quality Specialist: Uses the 5-point quality check process, checks for link quality and research accuracy, AND ensures your content passes the quality standards necessary to rank.
Designer: Creates customized images, based on the writer and content strategist’s suggestions, to ensure the content is as engaging as possible.
Benefits of Authority Content
Designed to Be the Best: Everything, from the images and research to the link quality and formatting, is designed to position your content as the BEST available on your topic.
Positions You as an Authority: With our incredibly high standards, the quality of this type of content helps position you as an authority within your niche.
Customized, Engaging Images: Content with images produces 650% higher engagement rates. With the customized images our designer creates, that number could be even higher.
First Page Focus: The goal of this content is to get you to the first page of search engines for the long-tail keyword/s that we’re targeting.
Who Authority Content Is Perfect For
Businesses that are looking for content that “wows” and engages their readers
Businesses in competitive niches that want to get to the top of the search engines
Businesses or bloggers looking to establish themselves as an authority in their industry
Interested in Finding Your Content Level Match? Talk to Our Team!
Content creation tops the list as the most effective tactic for SEO. (Marketing Sherpa)
But if you’re not investing in excellent content for your site, and publishing it on a consistent schedule, the chances of SEO rankings, more inbound leads, and sales drop.
Get off the ground and start flying by investing in custom content for you and your brand!
Want to discover which of our content types is right for you?
Talk to us today! We’d love to help support your content creation.
Every word I write is worth something: money in the bank, bills paid on time, food in my fridge.
Needless to say, when your words are your currency, you have to be able to produce.
Unfortunately, it’s not always that simple. There are all kinds of scenarios that threaten my writing.
Sometimes my dog sits at the foot of my chair and stares up at me for minutes at a time. Her eyes get big and sad.
Eventually, she sits up on her hind legs and reaches out one little paw, giving me a gentle pat on the leg. “Hey, remember me?” she seems to say. “I depend on you for survival.”
At this point, I can only sigh deeply and try to understand what she wants. Usually, this is her not-so-subtle way of asking for a bathroom break.
My dog is the least of my worries, though. There are other barriers to writing.
The worst of them seems beyond my control.
Writer’s block.
This anxiety-inducing state is not only dreaded but unavoidable.
Seconds, then minutes, tick by as I sit motionless, staring at a blank page and a blinking cursor. These two portents of doom taunt me.
This is the point where I have to act, or I’ll never get out alive.
So, what should a copywriter do in the face of this self-created melodrama? Writer’s block can be a hard thing to beat. If you’re still with me, I’ll show you my strategy.
A Copywriter’s Guide to Winning Against Writer’s Block
Writer’s block can be a copywriter’s nemesis. It doesn’t want you to write a word, and it certainly doesn’t want you to get in a groove.
Here’s how to fight back.
1. Focus – No, for Real
I know if I have writer’s block, my mind is elsewhere. If it’s the same for you, I suggest sitting back and discovering where your mind has gone (or when).
Then, yank on it and rein it in.
Put your phone away. No, don’t put it in your pocket or set it within arm’s reach. Get up, go into the next room, and literally hide it from yourself. You’ll thank me when you don’t have notifications pinging at you every 20 seconds.
Next, close every extraneous browser window/tab you have open. Just say no unless it’s essential to your process. For instance, I like to leave a tab open for an online thesaurus. It’s useful for cases of overused adjectives (“great,” “beautiful,” and “excellent” are common culprits).
Once you have eliminated distractions, center yourself. Meditate on the topic you’re writing about. If your mind wanders off again, pull it back, and be firm with yourself.
2. Do You Need Mood Music?
Once your distractions are gone, you may feel antsy. Sometimes, the silence amplifies writer’s block. It becomes a solid, menacing entity versus a metaphor for brain fog.
This infographic from WebpageFX gives you an idea why:
I’m talking about the kind of music that gets your brain quietly but steadily moving, like a running brook. You don’t want waterfalls – unless you prefer that mind environment. If that’s you, by all means.
For me, a quiet, steady, musical movement equals production in an equal measure. Like the music, the words drop at a constant beat and keep coming. It’s not just like a brook, it’s like a faucet turned on to a continual drip.
I require instrumental music. Not angry, dramatic symphonies or complicated melodies, but simple arrangements. A piano, a violin. Clear notes at a moderate pace.
For you, this might be totally wrong. I recommend searching your favorite music app until you land on something that sets your perfect writing mood.
If this sounds incredibly fussy, believe me, I know. However, if your currency is words, you’ll understand.
3. Light the Wick
Here’s another scenario: What if you don’t need music? What if you only need ideas?
Chances are, if you’re a copywriter, you had a topic handed to you. Whether you find it inspiring, the client needs 1,500 words expounding on it.
If you look at the topic and feel dead inside, you probably need a therapist. If you look at it and feel blah, you need to light the wick.
How?
Strike the match. Start by skimming everything you can find on the web about that subject. Read every article, blog, and website you can with the time you have. If applicable, look at pictures, too. Get inside the topic and swim around.
Reading is one the best ways, I find, to get inspired and find your footing. Once you have a better idea of where you are, you can discover an angle to explore.
If you can, make that angle as interesting to you as possible. Not only will it be more fun to write, that interest will bleed into your tone.
Let’s face it: We all know when a writer is bored to death. To combat that bored tone from boring your readers, get in there and find the interesting side.
So, what if silence isn’t bothering you? What if distractions aren’t an issue? What if you have ideas, but the writer’s block is still there?
If you’re blank, you need my last-resort strategy. It requires three steps:
Get out a notebook.
Grab your favorite pen.
Write – in cursive.
I’m not talking about the modern scrawl you use to sign checks and jot grocery lists. I’m talking about formal, cursive handwriting.
Yes, the type they don’t want to teach in schools anymore. The kind you practiced during painstaking sessions of loops and swirls in second grade. That one.
When all else fails, this causes my brain to light up in a new way. I start thinking differently than when I’m typing. Sometimes, I’ll even jot down a whole introduction to my article in cursive. Then I switch back to the keyboard to keep going.
It works like a charm. Try it out and see what happens.
The Number One Writer’s Block Tip? Just Do It
When all the tricks and cursive writing in the world don’t help, there’s one last-ditch cure left.
Just do it.
Nike trademarked this phrase for a reason. It’s motivating.
Sit down and do it. Don’t overthink it. Just write.
Image via QuoteHD
Meanwhile, writer’s block has retreated to a dark corner. It’s rubbing its hands together and whispering, “Until we meet again…”
Did you know that Google actually updates 500 times per year? (Moz)
Last year, I wrote a bestseller on successful online writing, and I was also named a top content marketer for 2016.
My passion, as the creator of this agency, is truly in this very industry of content marketing. It’s been my full-time career for nearly seven years now. I personally help recruit every single person that makes up our team (I can’t tell you how much I love finding a “gem!”). I read the latest books by content marketers, test and try SEO and content theories for myself, and have established incredible rankings for our own content. My staff and I create exclusive, internal training resources to keep my writers growing, and their skills sharp. We have a 5-point editing process I’ve put together that ensures we edit for exceptional content. And, our writing levels are created to exceed our industry competition in getting our clients their best-fit copywriters.
Easily, I’ve increased my own content standards (and budget) for my brand content tenfold in the last few years, year-after-year.
I’ll never drop my standards.
My goal is that every client of ours can be sure of this foundation when they interact with and purchase services from Express Writers.
You’re working with a team that cares about:
Evolution and adapting to today’s standards, both in terms of reader expectation and ever-evolving search engine criteria.
Quality.
Personally head-hunting for the best of the best, in writers.
Molding our writing to current standards.
Constant innovation.
Matching the client’s need, not just their want – even if we tell them “no” because our content isn’t a fit for their business stage.
Creating content that is at the forefront of all the other results in Google.
Launching the best writing level in the industry with Authority Content, which I created as a service in 2016 to answer the “skyscraper content” need.
Developing new products, services, and even a course to match new industry standards.
Ensuring a higher standard of content that will elevate your brand online every time the web demands higher standards..
Dear client, I’m afraid you’re right on one thing you said.
It’s the elephant in the room.
Our content prices have increased, yes – in the last week, our general blog rates went from $35/500w to $45/500w. (Expert rates are $90/500-600w.)
But not to price gouge you.
Not by a long shot.
Think about this…it’s the truth:
If we were here to price gouge you (charge an inflated cost for services that aren’t worth it), in reality we’d charge the same fee, give you crap content that’s not worth a dime in real ROI with Google (not to mention lets down your reader, and fails to support your business by offering content not within industry standards).
Do you see the truth now?
Our fees come from an honest place that reflects how we truly care about the content we deliver for our clients and how our writing standards fit today’s demand.
In reality, our prices are actually more than fair.
Our rates are equal to – or even lower than – the market value charged by many of our competitors, whose rates have doubled (or in some cases, tripled) in the past two years.
But, cheap Textbroker rates just wouldn’t cover what our quality process is now – the process you need for content that matters.
It wouldn’t cover:
– Myself head-hunting for your best writer, and then testing and proving them before we bring them into the team. (See our Values.)
– Our Content Director personally assigning your content to a best-fit writer.
– Our content-marketing specialists and high-level editors reviewing every single one of your pages.
– Halting production of your content mid-stream if it doesn’t match quality standards, and taking the time to revise and re-edit.
‘Nuff said.
To end this letter on a very valid, marketer-mindset point:
What worked years ago in simple, average, link-bait content will not work today.
You won’t get a second glance from Google or a real, human reader for average content.
Our content, even at the “General” level, is created by writers hand-picked and mentored by yours truly in best writing practices, and we continually head hunt, refine, and re-initiate our guidelines to match the ever-evolving trends of content marketing.
And that makes the biggest difference.
Because we care.
Our goal is to serve our clients content at all levels in a way that works.
We don’t want to serve up crap content that will be a waste of your time and money.
I would encourage increasing your content marketing budget to allow for quality. If not, there are certainly competitors that offer cheaper content (a double-edged sword, though, it’s lesser in both quality and price).
I’m the CEO of a content creation agency that has completed over 17,000 projects in content services (blogs, web pages, content planning), since 2011.
In my line of work forging and leading content creation to power many content strategies, I’ve heard just about every complaint and frustration you could possibly hear from content strategists, marketers, and content practitioners:
“I’m not sure this content is worth it.”
“Where do you recommend I publish my content?”
“I’m not sure I can do more than one month of blogging. I’ll look at the budget and get back to you.”
“I can’t afford an industry specialist writer.”
This is a small percentage of the clients that come our way, but I’m stillready to pull my hair out, every time I hear these phrases.
Why?
Because I personally know the value that a great content marketing strategy, and consistent publishing, can bring.
But I also know what it takes to get there: the path isn’t easy. It requires investment, time, and most of all, commitment.
The skills involved in the workload of a content strategist aren’t easy to learn.
But here’s the cool news…
Content can truly bring you 100x what you put into it.
I’ll talk more about that in a moment, but first, here’s a look at what I’ve managed to achieve here at Express Writers solely through high quality, original content creation.
A Content Strategist Success Story: Express Writers, Fueled Completely By Organic Content
[bctt tweet=”Content can truly bring you 100x what you put into it. Read all about @JuliaEMcCoy’s venture into #contentstrategy ” username=”ExpWriters”]
Today, under my direction and content creation as a self-taught content strategist and CEO, my little self-funded content creation agency and staff of 40 at Express Writers has managed to outrank competitors that have $9+ million in outside funding, by an immense 3%+ higher visibility in Google.
We rank organically for over 11,000 key terms, with a presence worth $57,000+ monthly in organic search.
And we haven’t paid a penny in ads—across six years—to gain the majority of our leads and clientele. They’ve come straight from these rankings.
Question…
How well does this content convert?
Because you can’t just have high-ranking content, right? It has to return.
After optimizing my strategy and increasing my content investment this year, we hit the highest sales month we’ve ever had this January. Now, we’re on track to break our first seven figure year as an agency.
99% of our leads come through organic content marketing.
I’ve never invested a single dollar in PPC.
The secret is all in how you go about it (your strategy), and your commitment. It’s not an overnight game, and it’s a steady, slow, but sure process.
It can feel like hard, low-return work in the beginning, but in the long run, content is the best marketing you’ll have ever done.
Content Strategists & The Proven Worth of Content to Advertisers
Today, SEO has basically merged as a part of the wider picture that is content marketing.
When you do SEO, you’re optimizing your content for high rankings in the search results: in content marketing, you market your product or service through high-value, audience-targeted content campaigns.
Optimizing your content for search (SEO) is a crucial, integrated part of content marketing itself. It’s a big part of the skillset of a great content strategist.
If you have the right strategy, the right SEO and the right content consistency in place, take a look at these success statistics that can happen.
Per dollar spent, content marketing generates more than 3x the number of leads than paid search does. (Kapost/Eloqua)
Content marketing costs between 31 and 41% less than paid search, depending on the organization’s size. (Kapost/Eloqua)
Website conversion rate is nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters (2.9% vs. 0.5%). (Aberdeen Group)
Content creation ranks as the single most effective SEO technique. (Marketing Sherpa)
61% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from a blog. (FactBrowser)
Small businesses that blog get 126% more lead growth than small businesses that do not blog. (ImpactBnd)
A Content Strategist Skillset Wheelhouse: 7 Keys to Success
Your content strategy is everything in achieving high-performing, high-ROI content.
Follow these critical steps, in order, for a baseline sense of how to navigate through and set up your strategy so that your content is knocked out of the park and you know you’re getting ROI when you publish content. (PSA: These steps take time. Don’t jump around or rush through them. PSA 2: This takes time. Don’t expect overnight success.)
1. Know your position of authority and differentiation in your field.
It all starts here. Know where your expertise lies, own it, and ten find your Content Differentiation Factor so you can officially stand out in your industry. To get to that, ask yourself, “what would make a customer choose me over my competitor?” Your answer is your CDF. Condense it to one or two key sentences to showcase on your home page (you may need a conversion copywriter to help you express this perfectly).
Brands that have a standout CDF in a variety of niches (scan their home pages—it should, quite literally, stand out there):
This is the first step of a true content strategy, and this step is a discovery that could take some time. But it’s absolutely worth it. Too many brands starting out don’t take the time to make sure they have a standout factor.
To set yourself up for content success, you have to have a reason for the reader (buyer, audience member, lead) to choose you and your content. Don’t skimp here. Having a CDF will 10x the results you’ll get when leads start finding your content.
2. Know your content goals.
What do you want to get out of content? Bucket in three key areas: 1. SEO rankings (you’ll define your terms later in the strategy), 2. Sales and connections, and 3. Brand awareness.
Direct your efforts in content based on where you’re at in your business. If you have leads and customers, you may be able to afford more time and creativity with brand awareness content. If you’re starting out, focus on finding your keywords and creating comprehensive, awesome SEO content—months down the road, when your leads start coming in, you’ll be glad you did.
Go by goals, and every content idea you have, you should be able to bucket that topic or idea into your goal areas. This heavily narrows down the chances of you creating undirected, low-ROI content.
3. Know your audience and who you’re talking to.
Get to know your audience, their language, the conferences they attend and the publications they read. Think of it like “friendly-stalking” the people you want to do business with and earn as customers.
A surefire way to find out persona data is to use surveys and get real-time feedback (use and pay for a Google Survey if you don’t have an audience yet). Ask them to fill out a demographic survey in exchange for a reward (gift card, a free service from you). If you have an existing customer list, pick a customer on that list and offer to have coffee with them, on you, in exchange for a few minutes of their time—or pick up the phone and ask to interview them.
Get comfortable with who your ideal customer is, their likes, dislikes, and you’ll be able to create content that is just for them.
4. Build a persona and a style guidelines document for your brand.
Once you have survey results in and have profiled your ideal client, build a persona. Don’t set it in stone—people change, and traits vary so much (we’re all so unique). So, don’t idealize just one person with a persona. Think of it like getting familiar with their likes and interests, so you can create better content that caters to them.
Then, invest time and resources into building a style guidelines for your brand. Keep it simple – include your audience persona, specify how to use (and not use) your company brand name and colors, the preferred style and tone of voice you want to maintain, linking and content rules. You’ll find this document invaluable when you start investing in content creators. Brand style guidelines can stop hired writers and creators from assuming different tones, in their tracks. And it’s crucial in winning leads and building a loyal audience that you adhere to and use your tone throughout every piece of content you publish. Brand familiarity is ROI.
Check out how Skype specifies their tone of voice in their brand book: “If your mum couldn’t understand what is being written, then it’s not the Skype voice. Humour is an important part of the Skype voice. We don’t tell one liners, but employ a gentle wit to engage our users.”
5. Know your keywords, content topics, & investments to make.
Keyword discovery should be a part of every brand’s content strategy. Go for long-tail keywords and use tools like KWFinder and SEMrush to find your best keywords according to how well they’re scored. Avoid high competition keywords on authoritative sites—they will be much harder to write content around and rank for, if you’re competing against someone who has already done an amazing job at writing content for it and Google is ranking that content #1. Look for relevant, low competition keywords.
Be thorough with your keyword discovery. It takes me about an hour to find eight amazing long-tail keywords that have a real chance of ranking, if I create comprehensive content around them. I look for a score of 40 and below in the SEO difficulty scores.
Don’t just rely on keyword tools for content topics: use tools like BuzzSumo and question/answer platforms like Quora to discover trending topics in your industry. Choose a few you can write on with authority, and add your own thoughts on the subject.
Your topics can and should branch outside of SEO terms. For example:
SEO-focused post: we found out that the keyword “hiring the best SEO content writers” was a long-tail keyword with slim competition, so we created a 1,500 word post titled “How to Hire Your Best SEO Content Writers: 4 Key Qualities to Look For.”
Brand awareness-focused post: Outside of keyword research, I found that a common question on Quora was “how do I create a content marketing plan?” So, one of my blogs was a 2,000 word piece on that topic. The keyword had high competition, but since I have established rankings and leads, I wrote on the topic to focus on high level industry education, which can bring my agency more brand awareness.
Your content investments should be based on your commitment. Remember: it takes 12-24 months of consistent content creation to see results.
Hubspot did a study showing how much the effort of blogging can return 12 months down the road:
And, they did a study on why more is always better:
If you can’t write a consistent stream of content yourself, invest in an industry copywriter. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to find a writer that knows the industry they’re writing in—inside and out. Your reader is smart, savvy, and attracted to your brand/products because they’re in the same industry you’re in. Don’t leave the important process of writing the content your prospects actually read just up to any writer. Besides knowing the industry, your content writer should also know online optimization (keyword placement, format) and have engaging writing skills.
We’ve seen our clients 10x their rankings and results when they invested in an industry knowledgeable, authoritative copywriter!
6. Build your editorial calendar.
Keep this part simple so you focus on the other cores more (research, publishing, promoting). Guide your topics by the high-opportunity keywords you find and the brand awareness focused topics you discover from a web topic crawl (trending in Quora, BuzzSumo, etc.). Get creative and tie topics to seasons and dates (see next point). Use Google Sheets or Trello to store your editorial topics in one place, month after month.
7. Promote, maintain, and audit.
A content promotion strategy should be in your mind from the moment you create content.
For example: back in February this year I had the idea to write a list of women in marketing to follow, and tie it to International Women’s Day in March. I categorized that topic based on where I could best promote it, and ended up pitching it to Search Engine Journal, where it received the best reception in promotion and shares, out of all the publications I could have published it on.
Think of where you can place and promote your content, as you create it. Go outside the box and be creative and strategic. Tie topics to holidays, seasonal launches to guest publication feature dates, and more.
Content maintenance and auditing should be part of your strategy on a consistent basis.
Every month, I check my site positions in SEMrush, and ask three of my best agency copywriters to help me update the posts that start to rank. This has brought a serious return in the amount of lead inquiries we get.
The content I wrote back in 2013 that’s ranking #1 today isn’t nearly as good as the content I can write today, so it’s absolutely necessary for me to update content as it ranks. By improving the quality of that content, updating the meta description, etc., I can seriously improve the amount of visitors that turn into leads from finding these high-ranking posts on Google.
Content Strategist Skillsets: Success is In the Details
Remember: content marketing isn’t something that can be done once, or twice, or even for a few months. In a podcast I recently recorded with Joe Pulizzi, he recommended 12-24 months as the typical turnaround to expect with a content investment. So, as a content strategist, once you invest in a blog schedule, you need to keep at it at least a year to start seeing return.
I’ve talked to influencers and content strategists that have shared their personal success stories, and it’s always a story about long-term success that translates to long term ROI—combined with a serious investment in “10x style” content (content that is 10x better than anything already out there).
The success is in the commitment, and in the details of how willing you are to get good at your strategy and content itself.
Unbounce’ Content Director, Dan Levy: “Blogging was survival for Unbounce in the early days. It was the only way for us to raise awareness of our brand and the need for landing pages in general without spending a ton of money, which we didn’t have.” Unbounce blogged six months before their product launched. Today, they have over 9,800 paying customers—which they’ve acquired mostly through Oli Gardner’s amazing long-form content.
Sujan Patel: “Content takes time, and people just see success stories and don’t realize it’s not overnight. It’s taken two and a half years for me. After that length of creating content for my own site consistently, I’m at a point of earning speaking gigs without even seeking them out.”
Yet, it works. At a Content Marketing World conference, the former senior director for data, content and media at Kraft, Julie Fleischer, said that content marketing ROI was 4x greater than their most targeted advertising.
Get a Visualized, Step-for-Step, 6-Week Content Strategist Certification & Training
This 2017, one of my biggest goals was to turn what I know into teachable, easy-to-digest knowledge in a course format.
I’d taken a few courses, and the ones I experienced all lacked one thing—the practical how-to of “what do I do next in my content?”
Personally, I learned content creation ROI the hard way, through trial and error. And after training dozens of writers with content I wrote just for internal education at my agency, I’ve seen firsthand how this industry is lacking in a practical, hands-on, high-ROI education.
The hows, what’s, and when’s of content creation and strategy as it applies to content marketing–where do you go to learn them?
So, over the last three months, I put hundreds of hours (and all the knowledge from my last six years in the industry) into creating an ultimate Content Strategy Certification Course.
It went live last week. The points I laid out in the six keys above are what I teach, step-by-step, visualized in video lesson demos and taught in hands-on exercises throughout six workbooks that accompany my course modules. In the course, my students learn how to build a working brand strategy, complete with personas, keyword reports, editorial calendars, and more: and my team and I personally review and mentor their results before they progress to certification.
Here’s to changing the industry—one complete, high-ROI content strategy at a time!
This very month, back in 2011, I was plowing the seed of an idea, hiring five writers, and coding my own website.
I decided to launch the idea, and came up with a business name in five minutes: Express Writers.
As we move into our 6th business anniversary (and my 7th in the industry), I thought it would be awesome to get on video and sharing the story behind Express Writers – on camera!
So, for the first (ever) video story that I’m finally doing, I’m sharing the story of how I started out in freelance writing at 19 then stumbled into creating Express Writers out of $75, a hope and a dream.
That was what I started with – and nothing more.
We’ve been bootstrapped all the way, learned some hard lessons, went through some crazy times, and came out stronger from every hard-knocks lesson learned. Today, we’ve served over 5,000 clients, and have grown by leaps and bounds: 200-300% year after year. This year, we were able to break all previous year’s records for client satisfaction rates and monthly income.
But the story behind Express Writers’ creation isn’t complete without the real, raw, personal side of my life that I chose to change for the better (a personal, forced lifestyle that I chose to leave – and if I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t be here writing this blog today.)
Here it is.
The real, raw, true story of how Express Writers came to be.
What made us, what shaped us, and what we’re doing today in the industry.
Enjoy.
The Entrepreneurial Story: How Julia McCoy Founded Express Writers From $75, Grew a Company Mindset, and Life Lessons in Business (Video Transcript)
I run a writing agency, and 7 years ago I started with nothing but $75, a hope, and a dream.
Today, we have the best client satisfaction rates that we’ve ever had, and we just surpassed our biggest month in sales.
So, how have I been able to do it in such a competitive industry? Here’s my story.
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Everything started in my business back when I was 19. I was in the middle of nursing school, and I was failing miserably. One day I woke up, and I asked myself: what do I love to do, and how can I make money doing it?
I knew what the answer was in my heart: it was writing. That went back all the way before I was 12. I was always writing, and by age 12 I had a 200-page medieval fiction on a floppy disk. Along with that, I had early entrepreneurial roots. I figured out how to make money using the internet at 13: I was earning cash doing surveys. And by 16 – I don’t know where this idea came from, it was just in my head one day – I decided to go around the neighborhood and ask people if they needed help using their computer. I posted ads in the grocery store, and within a few days, I had several clients and I was making $40/hour at 16.
So at 19, when I found myself in the middle of college trying to get a degree that I didn’t even want, I decided I would just try to figure out online writing and make a career out of it. And the next three months, I taught myself how to write, and I wrote hundreds of articles for very cheap clients: but that was how I honed my early writing skills. I also started learning a lot of SEO and content marketing back then.
Before I knew it, I had more work than what I could handle. My next logical thought was, why not start a business? And Express Writers was born.
I had one goal when I started my company back then: it was to find a group of writers who had passion in online writing, and who I could teach the elements of SEO and content marketing to, and we could learn and progress as a whole. I noticed a phenomenon back then: a lot of so-called writers didn’t know the standards of how to write for SEO, or the reader. So I started my business with that one goal, and clients began to trust me and to look to me for SEO and content marketing advice. And that’s when I started blogging regularly on my site, expresswriters.com.
But the story is not complete without sharing a personal story. I grew up in a religiously suppressed environment. My dad was the pastor of a church, and at 21, I found myself locked up in my room by my parents and given a letter for my birthday that said I was a disgrace to my family. We were not allowed to lead normal lives, and my business was looked down on. So when I got that letter, even though that environment was the only thing I knew, I knew that it wasn’t normal and I had to get out.
So six months later, my sister and I made the decision to leave in the middle of the night. And we did. It was very hard, but I had the opportunity to go follow what I loved to do, and go follow my dreams and chase my passions once I got out of that environment.
I did that, and completely bootstrapped, without any outside funding, we grew 200% in the next few years. The first year was $50,000, and in the next few years we hit $300,000, and last year we just surpassed $650,000.
As an entrepreneur, you often hear that failure precedes success. And that’s not just a quote or a fun saying, that’s the truth. Early last year, I found out that two trusted managers in my staff were embezzling. I had to fire them, and rebuild the team, and that took 5 months of hard work.
I learned that with a supportive environment, ongoing accountability for your staff, and most importantly, the right people, there is no limits to what you can do as a business. That experience taught me what it means to create a great company culture, and serve our clients with the best customer service.
The CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, said:
“The secret to successful hiring is this: find the people that want to change the world.”
And for me, that was finding people that shared my goal, a gigantic goal, of creating the best copywriting agency on the planet, and giving our clients the best content that they’ve ever gotten.
But in the five months of rebuilding, it was the hardest thing to find the right people. One of my biggest lessons was that it’s not about the roles in your company, it’s about the environment and how your staff support each other.
So when we were rebuilding our company culture that year, and with a goal to give our clients the best customer service we possibly could, I decided to let our commissioned sales rep go. And it was scary, because she was getting us sales, but she was chasing the sale instead of the relationship with our customers.
So I replaced the commissioned sales rep with an expert to do the consulting and the selling at Express Writers. I was honored to find an industry content marketing expert to join the team. After she was working here for a week, I went to one of our clients, and I was very straight up. I asked: Could you rate the difference in experience between the commissioned sales rep and our expert? And he said that the difference was 100x better. I knew we were on the right track.
So last year, even though we went through a lot, and it took 5 months to find the right people, when we found them there’s no limit now to what we can do as a company, because we’re able to learn and progress together. Our team is large but small enough to be able to do that, which gives our clients the best service.
So we’re seeing the highest writer retention rates, we’re able to provide full time jobs for the writers we have, and we’re seeing the highest client satisfaction rates that we’ve ever had as well.
So, 3 lessons in business.
Everything changes when you find the right team. That’s #1. When you find the right people to work right next to you in the daily grind, work becomes delightful because you support each other. I’m so honored today to lead in my staff full-time a group of women that all share the same goal, to serve our clients best and to evolve and progress with the industry.
I encourage communication in my team. Even though we’re remote, we’re so close-knit. We have daily Skype threads that address the different topics we all talk about.
The second lesson in business is: in the trenches of failure, success is often born. Failure is really hard to go through, but I believe that it’s one of the greatest ways to learn the lessons that will teach you growth.
And the last lesson is, success is a progression. It’s not something you hit and plateau at, it’s a continual progression, something you work very hard at every day.
So this summer, a big goal of mine is to launch a course. I’m launching a content strategist certification course. I’m going to certify in content strategy, and I’m putting together everything I’ve learned in the last 7 years of finding the right keywords for your niche, what tools to use, how to use them to get your best content opportunities, how to find trending topics, how to put together an editorial calendar – which is what we get paid to do daily for our clients. So all of that is going into a course, and it will be out this summer. If you want to sign up to get notified, the link will be in the description of this video.
Thank you so much for watching! You can follow me at @JuliaEMcCoy on Facebook and Twitter, and @ExpWriters on Twitter.
Conclusion
What did you think?
Go easy on me in the comments. 😉
I’d love to hear your feedback – I’m an introvert, so, video isn’t easy for me. You just might inspire me to do it more!
And don’t forget…
Update: September of 2017, my course officially launched! Learn about my certification course here: contentstrategycourse.com <—- I’m so excited about this!
