Producing tailor made content that better leverages each client’s business
Audience Ops is a Connecticut based (just 1 hour north of NY), content marketing service focused on tailor made content like articles, blogging, email newsletter, other …
The interview starts with a reference to some key points pertaining Outsourcing content that companies do wrong, namely and from Bryan’s perspective:
- Not having content assets in place – meaning, once a company has an offering portfolio in place, with defined prospects and clients, it is time to maintain interaction with the market. That means blog postings and articles that speak about the problems one’s product solve, hence maintaining both the brand name live in prospects and client’s minds while conveying value added information.
- Not leveraging such content assets via Social Media – Social Media provides the best way to leverage information that adds value to the audience, so it is a huge mistake not to leverage such channel towards clients and prospects. It is significantly more effective than merely advertising and … it’s free.
- Going for the cheapest offering towards content creation – some companies hire people for $5 an hour to write stuff and have content. The problem with such option is that the outcome will not be either in depth quality content or something that adheres to one’s company culture or attitude. Because those freelancers won’t perform proper research.
Now, knowing that there is a colossal amount of available content it is vital to make good, adding value content stand out and Bryan refers to the key steps to achieve that as:
- Identifying one’s target audience/ market (demographics and cyclographic)
- Identifying such people’s major pain points and aspirations.
- Develop content that addresses all the previously mentioned, hence conveying the feeling of “you got me” to those prospects that will make them bound with the brand.
- Continuously try and adapt it, making it better and more focused.
The Process
The work process comprehends all the “heavy lifting” components of content production, meaning planning, writing, editing, producing and distributing, yet maintaining the client aware all the way through so that feedback may be gathered to fine tune the final product.
The process tends to run in Auto-pilot mode within a couple of months of working together and one best practice/ enabler that Bryan has “learned” to apply is to dedicate one single writer to each account so that knowledge about such client becomes deeper and rock solid.
Bryan points out that the best writers are the ones who master interviewing and research skills, therefore being able to grasp the essence of a client company. On the 1st month of collaboration, during the onboarding process, Bryan submits newcomers to a series of research calls (with a client) and independent research where the new writer is coached towards getting the relevant details on the client.
Distributing content
Besides publishing content on the client’ own Blog according to a previously agreed schedule, an introductory email is produced that will introduce the new content to the client’s email list and prepare a “best of” collection that is forward to new customers with the “welcome package” so they become aware of your best produced and most helpful content.
A series of Tweets and Facebook posts (containing different quotes and excerpts from the article’s text) is pre-scheduled to act in support of each released article so prospects and clients can be teased about the newly available content. This happens not only within the release/ go-live week but also over the following weeks so that both recursive traffic, as well as new traffic, may be generated.
Some clients will additionally run Facebook adds on the content that was produced.
It is also common to have clients coming to Bryan asking support with “guest articles”, meaning some magazine or on-line publication invited the company to produce specific articles about some topic and the client will ask Bryan’s team support on such endeavor.
Social media wise, merely posting links to content is likely to get you nowhere. But if the time and effort are dedicated to providing a personal perspective and feedback on the link content, plus interacting and answering to people’s Q&A, that will constitute and high engagement channel where you will be interacting with potential prospects.
Again Social Media as other communication channels require experimentation to assess the most effective process, and for that purpose on complementary relevant strategy is to post the same content in different time frames so that one may both reach different audiences as well as a wider range of people within a given audience type while assessing the most effective schedule towards a specific topic.
Content should fundamentally be timeless, meaning it should be helpful for the audience independent of date and time
What is the process for hiring via Outsourcing
Bryan’s team is about 17 people, all U.S. based although all remote workers from writers to editors/ proofreaders, project managers that interface with both the client and the team members.
Sourcing focuses on several hiring boards and platforms like “weworkremotely.com” and “authenticjobs.com”
The process initially comprehends a long form, that is forward to a Trello Board which is then analyzed by a team member who performs an initial interview; then there is a “test project” followed by a second interview and finally the onboarding process (which comprehends both training and coaching).
All the “mechanics”, meaning setting up the blog posts and scheduling, formatting, other … is handled by a team of Vas from the Philippines. Additionally, there are a couple of Software developers from eastern Europe that support the entire team.
Working with a remote team is all about communication