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

September 5, 2022October 25, 2016 by Adam Oakley

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

How to Become a Social Media Manager: A Day in the Life of One, from Krystal

December 31, 2020August 16, 2016 by Krystal Loh

Ever wanted to learn how to become a social media manager, or what it’s like being one? Krystal, one of our talented client social media managers, is guest blogging today with her thoughts on the subject. Plus, she’s sharing a look at her day, writing and creating social posts for our client base. Enjoy! I grew up on the Internet. No, seriously. If you knew me up until college, you knew me as the shy, quiet, artsy anime/video games nerd that had some good ideas, but wasn’t very effective in communicating them. That is, unless we were friends online. Text role play, fanfic writing, and managing online communities was how I got out of my shell and found my writer’s voice. It was a way to communicate that didn’t always flow as freely in person. I learned how to manage folks on MMOs and do customer service via email. These types of things were done for leisure, naturally. I was always a reader and a lover of fiction, but when I started working for an indie bookstore, I was reading ten books a month and bridging the gap between having an online personality and communicating with bookstore patrons in person. Now how, might you ask, did this culminate in becoming a social media manager? How to Become a Social Media Manager: Krystal’s Starting Roots Reading and writing have always been my pillars. I used to do more Fine Arts (I even had a brief stint in art school), but I found that I couldn’t communicate with my paintings and photos as deeply as I could with words. This became apparent to me as I started becoming engaged in online communities such as LiveJournal and managing big raids in World of Warcraft and really excelled at connecting with users and empathizing with them. You learn how to communicate with people in a whole new way, using persuasive and subtle language to create a sense of a virtual community. No matter what online platform I’m on, that’s what I strive to do – create a community, whether it’s with fellow nerds or customers I’m trying to reach out to. It’s like calling a hotline and having to speak to a computer. That’s bad social media. Good social media is connecting with the user on the other end. Great social media is getting them to laugh at the screen and look forward to your tweets or status updates. You want to feel like the person on the other side of the screen is your confidante, ready to answer your questions and guide you in the right direction, whether it’s helping you figure out why your flight was delayed or which ice cream is the hot flavor of the month. Being a Good Social Media Manager is All About Great Research and Writing Of course, there’s more to social media than just being a solid communicator. You have to love research. Having a degree in Applied Psychology, I’m used to spending hours, days, even weeks doing research on one topic. My biggest hurdle when I first started writing copy for social media professionally was getting used to writing copy for topics that I knew nothing about, or –let’s face it—topics I couldn’t care less about. A Day in the Life: Writing for Typical Subjects Can be Fun! But the beauty of loving research and writing is that, in general, you most likely love to learn. This was an unexpected perk when I joined up with the great folks at Express Writers. I was getting clients that were connected to products like luxury vehicles, RVs, beds, and real estate litigation. I happen to own a bed, but otherwise I don’t know anything about any of those. I was pleasantly surprised by how fun it was to research the kind of content that their customers wanted to see, Googling all sorts of articles and such to get people excited about RV safety. Who knew! As long as you check your sources and make sure they’re legit, you can find some awesome content out there. I keep a word document of all the websites I’ve found to be useful depending on the subject, just so I can revisit the ones I know will give me great content if I need to. Tip: Be Conversational in Your Writing Style Then, I get the information out there as if I’m having a conversation with someone. Even if a client wants the tone of the copy to be professional, I try to give it my own personal spin so that every tweet feels like a greeting, a first impression between strangers. I can talk a lot about keywords and SEO, which are all essential in the most fundamental ways, but once you’ve drawn in your customers with the right algorithm, you need to keep them hooked with your personality. This is of course true with actual face-to-face interactions, but when information is flying at users on their Timelines or Dashboards. This is what I love about being a social media manager. It’s the ultimate social experiment of the human condition, only way more fun and interactive than anything you’d read in a textbook! 4 Tips to Share on How to Become a Social Media Manager That’s Worth Their Salt TL;DR, right? Well, I’ve zeroed in on some tips that I think you’ll find useful if you’re thinking of getting involved in the professional social media world: 1. Keep Reading Seriously. Whether its articles online, novels, or even episodic video games – keep yourself immersed in some form of literature, whether it’s Dostoevsky, Murakami , or That-Indie-Graphic-Novel-That-You-Wish-Other-People-Read,-Too. It makes you a better, savvier writer overall and keeps your noodle engaged with language. Draw on the voices in literature to help you cultivate your own. It’s important to do, even if you only have 140 characters to show it. The same goes for writing. If you get an itch to write a little story, poem, or blog, scratch it. 2. Stay Connected to Social Media This is related … Read more

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.

Merry Christmas From Express Writers! Bonus: How To Create Awesome Holiday Campaigns

December 31, 2020December 24, 2015 by Adam Oakley

We wish you a Merry Christmas, We wish you a Merry Christmas, …And a Happy New Year! Merry Christmas From Express Writers! It’s already the end of 2015. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are upon us! I hope that you’re not spending too much time in front of the work screen, but if you are, you should read this one blog. (Insert brazen-faced winky emoticon.) I hope it’ll inspire you and that you’ll leave with some content marketing tips you can start using right now – and bring into your New Year. First: Why Christmas Doesn’t Have To (Ever) Be Your “Slow” Season I’m even more excited to bring you this holiday post and hereby “blog,” or “work,” on the holidays, because, well, December is becoming our hottest month of the entire year! I couldn’t believe it myself, but we broke records and had over 1,000 pages of content ordered in 48 hours, our first week of December. This is the most we’ve had ordered in 48 hours since I created the company, in 2011. Our financial graph for the entire year looks like this: (The lowest point, in January, looks lower than it was because we actually started our online Content Shop then and had all our clients begin placing orders online.) We still have one more half-week in December, and our team is in the office throughout this month still – so we expect the year to end with our busiest month yet! That’s my reason directly to you why December doesn’t need to be your slowest month. We actually saw it become our best month for 2015 – which means anyone can, too, provided they never let go of the hustle and effort it takes to get a best foot forward and put in some real work and passion. Copywriting Tips for the Holidays (and Beyond) Even as the holidays are quickly whizzing past us, there’s still plenty of time to hone your skills for your holiday campaigns and start converting readers into buyers. But before you do, let’s take a look at the top copywriting tips to get your writing into shape. 8 Top Copywriting Hacks 1. 90% Of Your Time Should Be Spent Crafting Killer Headlines There’s a lot to be said on the topic of headlines. Strong conversion copywriters spend at least 90 percent of their time crafting one, or two… or three for every piece. It’s important not to stuff your headlines with keywords. And while you’re at it, throw out everything you were taught by those old-school SEO dictators on how to craft those headers. Make them attention-grabbing, borrow from winning formulas, do what you got to, to reel readers in. Here’s an important tip to remember: great headlines are very often incarnations of the value proposition of the very thing you’re trying to sell. Here’s another tip: ask yourself this about the prospect you’re writing for: “what was going on in their life that brought them to you today?” 2. Write Amazing Headlines Using “Without”, “Even If” and “Data” There’s so much to be said about headlines and that’s because they really are THAT important. Here are a few things you could include to help make your headers stand out: Use an “even if” clause to overcome hesitation Add a little data about the outcome Replace “even with” with “without” – what don’t your readers have to do to get the result? 3. Stay Away From Positioning Statements – Use Value Propositions At its very core, a value proposition needs to express what’s desirable and unique about your offer. Never confuse it with a positioning statement. You should state something about that your product does. You can include an end benefit. But don’t make your value proposition a laundry list of benefits. 4. Get To Know Different Types of Awareness There are a couple of different kinds of awareness your readers will have during the sales process. Depending on the stage of awareness they’re at, they’re going to need different messaging and content: Pain Aware – in this stage people respond to seeing solutions to their pain, or even their own pain. Solution Aware – this is where people respond to high-level benefits, so avoid thinking of the problem and think of the solution. Problem Aware – during this phase, people realize they actually have a problem but don’t know how to solve it. Product/Brand Aware – here people want to know what best and biggest benefit your product has to offer before they’re introduced to the benefits. People love the phrase, “but wait! There’s more!” Completely Unaware – during this phrase, people are completely clueless about their problems. 5. Embracing Similarities Between Taglines and Value Propositions Sometimes the very best taglines are actually your value propositions (as discussed above), just whittled down smaller while being specific. 6. Keeping Swipe Files for Inspiration Never heard of a swipe file? It’s a collection of content that you can use for ideas – all that memorable stuff that’s resonated with you. Save everything you love so when the well runs dry, you have a file full of inspiration. 7. To Write Content That Shocks and Generates Shares, Go Ahead and Pick a Fight! Take a completely accepted way of doing things and go and turn it on its head. Don’t be insulting, though, just provocative. 8. Top X Lists Can Still Work These lists can work well, provided they add something meaningful to the conversation. Try to be better. Aim to be different. 5 Tips for Effective Holiday Content You Can Do Now Here are 5 bonus tips for crafting effective holiday content as you leave my blog today (and go eat chocolates, or open gifts, and enjoy your holiday – in short, get away from the computer :D). 1. What Are Your Customer’s Holiday Needs? One of the best things about the holiday rush is you get to offer your customers great value when you create content that will help them cross something off their to-do list, saves them time or makes the holidays more fun. Consider … Read more

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!

The Power of Copywriting & Content Marketing Today (Case Study)

June 19, 2024July 13, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Understanding how powerful copywriting, and in a bigger picture, all of content marketing is doesn’t require you to look any further than the sheer amount of content that is produced on a daily basis. Content marketing has long been considered a mainstay of digital marketing and marketers. Considered a cornerstone of the industry, content marketing allows businesses to attract and keep a customer base. And a fundamental part of content marketing is copywriting. It’s like the ham to the eggs. Think about it: if your content marketing is a good blog, than your ham to that egg is the written blog. Design, SEO optimization with your plugins, correct categorization, etc. all tie in. Let’s think back to the overall picture. Now as most marketers can tell you, saying something without showing what it looks like in cold, hard facts is simply spouting hot air. The statistics of the matter bear out our original hypothesis: content marketing makes a major impact in the world today. Content Marketing by the Numbers There has been a constant reminder by content marketers that content is king, but only until you realize the statistics that exist behind the statement do you realize how powerful a king content really is. On average per minute— Nearly 2.5 million pieces of content are shared by users on Facebook Instagram has 220,000 new photos posted to its servers YouTube gets over 72 hours of new video uploaded Twitter is used around 300,000 times Over 200 million emails are sent Over $80,000 worth of sales is generated by Amazon And that is only PER MINUTE. Every sixty seconds for the whole day this kind of change happens. And it’s appreciating these massive movements of data that make us realize exactly how powerful social media is to the production and distribution of content. How Has Copywriting & Content Marketing Contributed to These Numbers? It is estimated, according to Content Marketing Institute, that nine out of every ten businesses today utilize content marketing in tandem with their sales force to generate awareness and increase their profits. And you know what the foundation of content marketing is? Good copywriting. Based on what we understand about the interplay between marketing and sales it’s not a stretch to see why these companies have adopted digital content marketing as an aid to raising their sales. The expenditure in advertising compared to the return on investment makes it a no-brainer to use content marketing. Case Study: Express Writers (We Call Ourselves a Content Agency, Right?) Hey – if we sell blogging and content, we better be good at it, right? Yes. But you’d be surprised how many writing agencies don’t care about maintaining their blog. Here at Express Writers, we’ve truly utilized content marketing to a degree of success. We adopted the idea in an effort to increase lead generation and sales through a targeted strategy incorporating guest blogging and SEO to a massive extent. The results we got were far better than many of the competitors in our very industry – we outrank 95% of them – and proves the potency of content marketing in the framework of a modern developing company. I would recommend any business that wants to see significant growth over time to consider content marketing as the vehicle to achieve that goal. You could say we’re among the 89% of companies that use content marketing and testify to its effectiveness. The development of our content marketing plan is: Four 2000-word pieces per week for our own blog, along with 4-6 more pieces per week for major guest blogs including such high-authority sites as Search Engine Journal, Site Pro News, SEM Rush and Content Marketing Institute. We also have over 80 site pages, 50 of which are our main service pages (one for each of our writing services) and are about 500 words or more each. I could tell you all day long how well our content does, how great our team does at compiling it, how we research the topics and develop the concepts, but here’s some cold hard stats for you to digest. We average 500-700 visitors in organic traffic daily, from Google keywords. We have 165 keywords indexed in SEO, 100 of which are in the top ten positions (screenshot from SEMRush): Also from SEMRush, a screenshot of some of our keyword positions as of June 2015: Many of our individual blogs are doing very well in search. For example, this blog written in 2013, “Website Copywriting for Dummies”, ranks #4 in organic search (screenshots via SEMRush): When we take into account the amount of growth our own company has seen over a single year, it’s not impossible to imagine how much content moves per day and how it can affect a company’s exposure and generate leads based off its content marketing strategy. It’s a testament to the kinds of things that we can expect from content marketing in the coming years. Now that we’ve disclosed how much content marketing has helped us, let’s delve into… The Cost of Content Marketing As an industry, content marketing is responsible for a massive amount of expenditure. In 2013, brand management site Brafton estimated that the total expenditure for new content creation for the year would reach about $118.4 billion. That’s billion, with a B. Although based on the amount of new content is produced daily and factoring in a cost like this into it, you can see why content creation itself can cost very little but the sheer volume of its production can add up to so much. Mashable approximates that as much as twenty seven million pieces of content are shared on social media per day. That’s a LOT of outreach for something that could cost you a couple bucks to make. Why Content Marketing Has Such An Impact With twenty seven million shares a day you’re probably starting to see how content can influence consumers to such a level that a message can go viral. As much as 58% of consumers trust editorial content, according to Nielsen. If you could … 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!

What Sets Express Writers Apart From Other Content Agencies?

January 1, 2021February 27, 2015 by Adam Oakley

When clients are looking to find a perfect copywriting agency, they will always ask what sets our agency, Express Writers, apart from other content agencies. This is a valid question, and I wanted to take a moment to answer it. I will show you just how we can help your business’s online presence, amp up views, and give you the chance to boost your overall revenue. Let’s take a look at just why Express Writers is tops and what sets us apart from other agencies in our field! Why Should You Choose Express Writers? At Express Writers, we like to think of ourselves as the “content company with high standards.” One of our favorite mottos is “quality content, all the time”. We take content seriously. So seriously, in fact, on average we look at 200 writing candidates a month and hire 10-20 every month. Our staff is comprised of the most passionate industry persons on the planet, who will sometimes work more than 60 hours in one week. Our SEO Content Strategists stay up-to-date on SEO trends and can perform thorough content audits and brainstorm for our clientele content. Our social media managers can create and schedule out amazing, engaging social content. Also, we pride ourselves on diversity. Our copywriting team has every skill a writer could possess, with over 60 writers including attorneys-turned-copywriters, a Master in Philosophy, a certified coach in holistic health, and much more. We believe in natural writing for people first, search engines second. And, we look for the highest quality experts to match specific industries like technical, legal, finance, and more. While our team is mostly based in the US, we also believe talent isn’t restricted inside four corners of any section of earth: so, some of our hires include Canadian and European as well as American writers. We’re structured for success: privileged to have highly successful, experienced team members that help organize and manage our content flow. Our team has the ability to handle hundreds of pages in a month’s time, that come to you crafted by your matching writer, edited by our editors, and organized. Our Content Strategists can brainstorm your content for you, and our SM managers can author engaging memes and written posts to boost your social media to the next level. In short, you won’t find a more dedicated, passionate, and fully comprehensive writing solution. We believe in what we do, and it’s what keeps us driven and successful at it. Top 15 Reasons We AREN’T Like Other Agencies Let’s take a look at just what sets Express Writers apart and how we can help your business have the best online presence! We’re Solely Self-Managed. We don’t make you find and hook up a writer yourself: we find the best writer fit in our team and internally manage that. Our team of editors will also put all work through Copyscape to ensure it is 100% original and will edit your content before delivery. And all of that for no additional management fee. This helps us make sure you get the best quality work that you will be proud to share on your website, blog, and social media channels. This is NOT something you get with some of our major competitors including Scripted, Copify, etc. With those major competitors you have to choose your own writer, and that can get pretty complicated if you don’t know their writers. We know ours, and we find your best match. We Have A Custom Content Shop. Our online Content Shop helps you order content, send your product details, and get your content on delivery. It’s a custom developed platform all 100% by us for our clients, and extremely simple, easy and fun to use. All you have to do is sign up for free and take a look at all that we have to offer. Once you’ve created an account, you can request what you need and the project will start. Once you’ve finished and your content has been delivered, you will be able to download the files and look them over, ensuring they are exactly what you need. The Best Writers. We have some of the best writers on the planet. We know this because we go through thousands of applicants to find the top. Our quality goes beyond the average writer sourcing company or content agency. We have a big passion for what we do, and along with experience that’s our key to our success. See more about our incredible, dedicated team and why you want them to your next content project. Content Strategy. We have content strategy services that go beyond just content creation. We know that creating content is vital, but we also know that you will need more than product descriptions or blogs. Within our content strategy services, you can get a content audit to ensure all of your existing content is the best it can be, as well as content curation. Take a look at our content strategy services to see just how we can help improve your site, boosting views and even social shares. We Believe In Growth & Learning. We are continually improving. Internal training goes on behind the scenes to develop our Content Strategists further in their SEO content auditing and curation, our writers in their SEO content creation, and our staff overall. We test our team members on their knowledge of proctored online tests to ensure they have the best training and knowledge. We also update our training manuals and resource materials for our team frequently to keep everyone on top of all the latest research. Content Isn’t Limited to Just Blogs & Product Descriptions. In the marketing world, we here at Express Writers know that you need everything possible to have the biggest impact on your industry. Because of that, we make sure to cover more content fields outside of the standard blogs or landing pages. You can get social media content from our social media management team including written social media … Read more