Editor’s Note: this post was originally published in April 2016 but has been updated, refreshed, and republished in July of 2017. Things change quickly in the world of content and digital marketing, and even more quickly around Verblio of late.
Take a peek and read on—see what we’ve got going on behind the scenes.
We consistently get questions about how Verblio’s content writing services work. (Smart, inquiring minds want to know!)
We’ve been in hyperdrive the past several months to improve and roll out so many new features that we’d be remiss not compile it in one blog post—because that’s the natural order of things in this blogging operation. 🙂
While we’ve focused primarily on making the system more streamlined and amped up for our hundreds of trusty marketing agency customers across the globe, we’ve also got some tricks up our sleeve to arm our classic small business customer looking for some blogging tips as well. And to benefit both parties, it’s more intuitive than ever to use Verblio with a revamped customer dashboard.
Sometimes all that hard work gets lost in launch after launch, and we don’t take adequate stock of everything that we’ve built. (Is launch fatigue a thing?) We want to use this opportunity to give you a sense of how (and why) it works and the features that we’ve implemented to make content creation easier for time-strapped businesses and marketing agencies alike.
Let’s get started.
Verblio’s Customer Interface Updates
We’ve given our entire dashboard a couple of facelifts (or should we say function-lift?) for customers to make managing your Verblio account and content a breeze. These are updates so awesome that you’d have to know what Verblio was like before to really appreciate the seachange in speed and productivity.
1. New buttons (& functionality) in the interface (circa May 2017):
“Update: New & Improved Buttons To Ease Your Pains”
2. New ‘Topic Ideas’ feature to help with that coming-up-with-topics heavy lifting (circa December 2016):
“Back With Another Update: Topic Ideas”
Seriously, your preferred writers are more than happy to help you come up topic ideas when you’re stuck. Which brings us to…
3. New ‘Preferring Writers’ feature to find your chosen writing crew and let them know you dig their work (circa July 2016):
“Preferred Blog Writers At Verblio: What It Means”
4. The new look & feel of our customer interface (circa March 2016):
Video: How To Create A Verblio Account & Prompt For Posts In <5 Minutes
Our maiden voyage into the realm of video yielded this short and sweet video to show you just how freakin’ easy it is to start an account with Verblio. This video was borne out of too many conversations with customers who toiled over the exact, perfect setup of their Verblio account.
Really, we’re here to save you the time and headache of being a perfectionist about content. This video should inspire you to get out of your own way and just get your account cracking, pal.
Content Writing Services & Offers For Marketing Agencies
Offer: Demos & Webinars
Agencies are a big deal to us. So much, in fact, that we dedicated an entire webpage to how Verblio works for agencies.
But sometimes, you just want to see Verblio in action. We hear you. That’s why we started offering one-on-one demos specifically geared toward agencies looking to outsource blog writing and content. We figure, how can you know if a content solution will work for your unique instance and pain points without talking it through with an in-house expert first?
The client content needs of agencies only grow and become more sophisticated over time, and agencies’ struggles to scale to meet those needs in short order without significantly growing staff is hard.
If you’re tired of cranking out the blog posts on the regular and want to outsource that stuff, have questions about Verblio, want a peek under the hood, or just talk to real humans, you should book some time for a demo.
(Under construction: webinars making a comeback soon! Stay tuned.)
Download: Agency Content Kit
If your agency’s not quite in the content mix yet, or needs an overhaul on how to get your clients onboard with a content marketing plan, we’ve got a couple of pieces to download in our ‘Agency Content Kit’ that’ll get you off to the races.
The first is a sell sheet of talking points for those first conversations with a client about content: the value it brings (in hard numbers) and what two major marketing problems it solves.
The second is a worksheet for when you nail down a meeting with your client to finally talk content strategy, starting with their blog. Its aim is to allow for engaging, thoughtful, and most importantly, effective conversation to explore goals, priorities, audience, the eventual look/sound of posts, and measures of success.
Feature: Monthly Posting & Flexible Scheduling Plans
Thanks to our agency customers’ feedback for years and years, we put in the extra elbow grease and added monthly posting plans. In place of the old-old Verblio weekly purchasing cadence, you can “frontload” and collect your monthly posts at the beginning of the month at your pace, rather than waiting week by week to claim the posts as you go.
And to such resounding success, this is now the only method for purchasing posts that new customers can sign up with from here on out. (But for you trusty old-timers still lovin’ weekly posting, we’ll keep it around for you loyal folks. Bless you!)
While also available to businesses at Verblio, this is especially huge for agencies. Now you can plan your clients’ editorial calendars and get the content on a specific date and spread it out over the course of the month (or…gasp…plan ahead even further than that).
And now paired with this is even more flexibility with scheduling out your clients’ content in advance. This feature allows you to choose when you want to receive posts on a monthly basis for each client, based on your individual preferences.
Read up on both features here (circa November 2016):
“Hot Off The Press: Flexible Scheduling”
Feature: White Label Content Writing Service
Another feature added because our agency clients asked for it. (Keep the requests coming our way! We like building things that our customers want.)
Now agencies can white label the content they get from Verblio and share it with their clients.
Read up on our free white label feature here:
“White Label Content Writing For Agencies”
And do send us feedback! We’d love to hear more from you and what you’d like to see.
Content Writing Services & Offers For Small Businesses
Download: Editorial Calendar
Getting organized is always such an overwhelming task until you have the tools at your disposal to pull it all together. We pull together an editorial calendar in the form of a spreadsheet every year to help our customers, writers, and really anyone else who needs it, organize their content year.
This tool is especially useful for small businesses who may have never formalized a content strategy before and is an excellent stopgap to loop in appropriate team members, keep keyword strategy in mind, and just to get down and keep all information you need readily accessible.
Webinars
The OG of Verblio webinars. We started this because there were a lot of our customers that didn’t know we have different delivery options. We do! And we thought, “Man, we got to get the word out about how easy it is to go from post to publish.”
If you’re a business looking to flesh out and run a content marketing strategy relatively on autopilot, we’re a useful, cost-effective place to start.
(Under construction: webinars making a comeback soon! Stay tuned.)
Feature: Monthly Posting & Flexible Scheduling Plans For Businesses
We heard time and time again from our business customers that they just don’t have the time to login each week to check out their queues, and that, like many of our agency customers, they’d like the flexibility to choose when their posts deliver on a monthly basis, too.
Ask and we shall deliver! We added monthly posting plans for businesses too, with a minimum plan of 4 posts/month at the 250+ words tier. Instead of receiving posts every week, you can get a batch of posts at predetermined date(s) or the beginning of your billing cycle. That, or you have the choice to claim manually, whichever method works best for you.
Read up on both features here (circa November 2016):
“Hot Off The Press: Flexible Scheduling”
FAQs: Those Pesky Questions That Plague Small Businesses
It’s a continual goal for us to improve our blog to be more and more helpful for the business owner getting started on a content strategy for the first time or trying to really make the most of their blog.
If you don’t already, you can subscribe below to get all the greatest, helpful stuff straight to your inbox. Just give it a shot. Chances are, it’ll make your blogging life easier! So why not give it a shot?
What follows here are some of our more recent greatest blog hits to answer some hot questions we get all the time from businesses.
1. Why should I outsource my content? Can I outsource my content to someone else?
These questions, and so many more, answered in this comprehensive, informative-with-a-capital-I blog post:
“How To Outsource Blog Writing For Businesses: 7 Questions, Answered”
2. Who are the writers?
Our writers run the gamut. Most consistently, our group of dedicated writers are comprised of professional writers, folks who love writing and do it in their spare time but have another full-time job, stay-at-home moms, and retirees. Learn more about our awesome crowd at this page:
3. What’s so great about outsourcing to a crowd of writers, anyway?
We get this question so much, it’s not even funny.
The short answer is that a crowdsourced model enables greater flexibility and scalability, improves reliability and adherence to a schedule, decreases writer burnout and turnover, is more cost-effective, and lends itself to more options and variety than working with just one writer, for example.
In fact, our CEO wrote a whole dang post on it. Check it out:
4. How can I see the greatest success with Verblio? How can I actually build ‘my crowd’ that consistently works for me?
Well gee, we’ve got a blog post for that, too. Complete with plenty of pictures of dogs, of course:
“The Best Ways To Build Your Crowd Of Writers With Verblio”
Okay, here’s a preview:
Still have questions about content writing services for your business or agency?
We want to hear from you. Reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, or on the form below. We respond quickly and would be happy to answer your questions!
