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?
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 then, do you truly get ROI for your content.
Launched TODAY live in the Content Shop, I’m excited to offer a content product where I’m so sure we’ll nail the topic you want us to research and create an authoritative piece for, that your money will be given back if we don’t.
This month, I sat down, picked the best four writers out of my team of over 50 creators, and wrote a workflow process and extensive guides where we nail all three of those points. (I even created a five-point structure for winning at every single intro.) Then, I mentored my best writers on the process I wrote, tested them, and trained other team members for the other parts of the process (designing custom graphs, researching the keywords). I was hoping to launch it this week, but the quality process took longer than I expected: and today, it’s live!
You know what?
Four people from my team will be involved in creating one piece of authoritative content. Not counting editors. (Yes, they’re involved.)
Here’s a preview of the input form for Authority Content (activates as soon as the order is placed in the Shop, click the + to expand.)
Second Product Out Today: Case Study Writing & Design (A Full Package)
A content type that is worth every penny of your time and money to invest in is case studies.
And, they’re a hot ticket item in content marketing, if done correctly.
You basically take a happy client of yours, create their story, and repurpose it as content that will sell your leads on why you.
You’ll need to interview your case study participant: if possible, get a direct quote. Take all the information and copywrite a beautiful, flowing case study with actual data. Then design it into a PDF for marketing; create a landing page where people can access it; and, if you really want to go places, write a blog story around it with a link to the downloadable resource.
Everything I just outlined is part of the process in how we create case studies. We have an exclusive, inbound marketing certified copywriter ready to interview and write; and our team designer that will put the PDF together in a beautiful design.
Designed PDF (perfect for your marketing materials)
AND a short story blog about the success you had with your clients.
We even take care of approaching and interviewing your client participant, included in the cost and perfect if you don’t have the data or time to grab a direct quote (we’ll professionally represent you!).
Here’s a preview of the input form that’s live and ready to go as soon as Authority Content is purchased in the Shop (click the + to expand.)
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 to my last point, and it may sound pretty obvious, but it deserves special mention: stay involved.
Read your timelines, study how your favorite companies stay relevant on a daily basis and how they connect with their customers.
Really listen to their tones and how they come across.
Sometimes I even say posts out loud to see if they sound natural. You can really learn how much tone makes a difference when it comes to what kind of impact one has online.
3. Remember Your Audience: They’re Just Like You
I hate stuffy sounding social media. You know what I’m talking about. It sounds like the kinds of emails your boss writes when they’re trying to sound engaging – the ones that make you roll your eyes.
If you’ve been in the position where you’ve read a social media post that’s trying to be engaging and it makes you roll your eyes, then you know that that writer hasn’t found their inner voice.
This goes for professionally-geared social media accounts, too, not just the fun ones. Your posts should sound like a conversation – a virtual handshake to your followers – not a thesis statement.
4. Emojis Are Fine and All, But…
Use them smartly and sparingly.
Same goes for hashtags.
This is 2016 – you really don’t need twelve hashtags and thirty emojis in your tweet unless you’re a spam bot.
Need great social media content? Can’t keep up with the demanding schedule that social media needs for the highest exposure results? We can help! Check out our Social Media Management packages – to have Krystal on your social media, just request her in the order form!
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 5,000clients 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.
Use our code bday25off for an instant $25 off anything in the Content Shop, minimum $100!
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 grow.
Plus, we’re discovering what we’re good at, and refining that process: and droppingfrom our product list what eats up our time and doesn’t make sense for our content experts to focus on.
As We Celebrate 5 Years: What’s Going on in the Content Marketing Industry?
To wrap up this story, a note about the industry we’re in. At the beginning, it was hard. In 2011, a mindset existed online: freelance writing should be cheap, and it should come in volumes. Over the past five years in this industry, I’ve seen a major transition from this mindset. I’d sum up the change in one word: value.
Content marketers—really, any good online marketer—have realized that they have to provide value if they want to publish winning content. True, authentic value, exhibited in the kind of content that would change someone’s life because you showed them how to do something that would increase their earnings nine-fold, or you gave them the best possible resource in existence that answered every question they had on the topic. Neil Patel has been one of the leaders in this regard. Every single post he publishes exhibits this value. Jon Morrow is right on his heels. And Brian Dean is right on the money when he says we don’t visit the 8th tallest building when we tour a new city; we visit the tallest.
At Express Writers, we take inspiration from these leaders, and this year we’ve devoted ourselves to writing and distributing the best content we’ve ever put together, at our own Write Blog and in our new podcast. This is one way we show that we have knowledge in the very product we’re selling: writing and producing truly valuable, life-changing content.
And what’s ahead for us this year? We’re planning a major relaunch in a couple of months we we’re releasing a custom developed team room and brand new, more intuitive online Content Shop. Led by Josh and a team of developers, this has been a system that’s taken than a year to create from scratch. I’ve also been busy in the background across the last few months, writing the training for new content products that I believe will seriously offer a new look into content marketing and a way for any brand or business to discover, find and publish their true brand story. I want more businesses to discover their authentic message of value, and share content in a story form that will actually attract real people, retain interest, and bring real ROI. Look out, we’re on the move!
To get your next batch of awesome content, go to our Content Shop.
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!
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.
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 what your readers are trying to accomplish this holiday season and help them achieve their objectives.
This Christmas, we decided to give back and create the ultimate giveaway of five free days of gifts – for five total gifts. We created landing pages for each of the products after we finished creating the actual product (which ranged from a 10-day email course to eBooks and PDF resources), then wrote a blog and landing page for the entire campaign. We then socialized this like crazy–pinning to our Twitter, posting it on Instagram, highlighting on our Facebook business page, and more. We’ll probably even make a few Twitter ads for it, and we’ve already scheduled an email campaign for it.
2. Target Specific Audiences to Improve Performance
While the bigger brands and media organizations tend to create content that appeals to a wider audience, one of the best ways to drive performance for a holiday campaign is to determine the audience who is most likely to purchase your products and then create content catering to their interests and needs.
Let’s say you are a sports apparel brand, a very general holiday gift guide with products ranging from home décor to high-tech gadgets is far too wide-ranging to capture a particular audience’s attention. Rather create specific posts like “10 Perfect Gifts for The Sports Woman In Your Life.”
3. Make Sure the Subject Matter Fits Your Brand
Here’s another thing to keep in mind: your content needs to address a subject that you and your brand actually have the authority to speak about. Even if someone who purchases a state-of-the-art television set is likely to indulge in a fancy cocktail this holiday season, I highly doubt that customer is going to take much note of a post titled “5 Great Champagnes To Try This New Year’s Eve” that’s been put together by a tech company!
Discussing topics that fall naturally under your brand’s preview means you can give consumers a reason to trust your content and want to read it all the way through to the end.
For a cool example of what does work, take a look at Verizon’s post. In their post they perfectly targeted gift-givers who were in the market for those under-the-radar tech accessories, and the subject matter is perfectly aligned with what the tech company have to offer.
4. A Sense of Urgency Is Key. Your Customers Are Expecting It
One of the main challenges of marketing during holiday time is that you only have a short period of time. If people don’t make their purchase before the end of the year, they’re not likely to return to your brand in January, are they? What’s more, if you fail to be aggressive about converting readers into paying customers, there’s a big chance they will make that purchase from a competitor.
While more blatant sales pitches could turn people off any other time of the year, customers tend to be more receptive to them at holiday time as they’re actively shopping and in fact, they are expecting companies to promote featured product items. So it’s easier to create a sense of urgency with your customers by presenting them with exclusive sales offers that expire within a certain amount of days or hours, enticing them to buy from you before even bothering to see what your competitors are selling.
Even if you don’t wish to use calls to action in your content, you can still create a robust retargeting plan that will resonate with your most engaged audience with a tailored sales pitch later on in the holiday season.
5. Launch Your Content Early and Start Testing It
It’s really never too late to start laying out your holiday content campaigns. Of course you want to get a head start so that you can optimize exactly how you’re going to promote your work in order to reach out to your audience. So let’s say you have five pieces of Cyber Monday content, be sure to give yourself enough time to see which articles perform best in order to allocate more budget towards those winners in the days leading up to your sale.
You can run a range of similar experiments, both on social media and in content recommendations, with your thumbnail images and headlines to see which combinations will drive engagement and therefore conversions.
One of the best things about holiday campaigns is that you know they’re going to come around, so you can give yourself loads of time to create amazing campaigns that will get you the results you want.
Does the idea of creating any kind of content campaign terrify you? Don’t worry, at Express Writers we know how to create and deliver on expert content that says all the right things for your audience, just in time for the holidays!
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!
