Wondering whether a white label platform might be right for you? Wondering how Verblio’s white label feature works? Wondering what white label content even is?

We’ve got you covered. Read on to learn the nuts and bolts of white label content, how it works, and how Verblio makes content creation easier than ever for agencies with its white label feature.

White label content marketing FAQs

First, let’s address some common questions about white label content.

What is white label content?

Verblio’s white label content is written content (think blog posts, white papers, web content, thought leadership articles, product descriptions, etc.) that has nothing linking it to Verblio or its author in our platform.

When you purchase white label content from Verblio, you can publish it as your own or sell it to a client. Nobody will know you didn’t write every word of that Pulitzer-worthy blog post yourself.

What does white label mean in business?

White labeling refers to a company removing any branding, like its name or logo, from a product that it produces. Another company can then sell that product as its own.

In Verblio’s case, our product is high-quality content.

Is white labeling legal?

Nope. They call us the “Content Desperados,” and we’re wanted in 13 states. And Guam.

Just kidding. Yes, white labeling is legal, and it benefits everyone involved:

• Our white label content services allow you to serve more clients without having to create all that content yourselves. Instead, your team can focus on strategy, social media marketing, technical SEO, email—all those other marketing efforts your clients rely on you for.
• It allows us to sell more content without having to work directly with your end clients. (We’re shy by nature. We like staying behind-the-scenes.)
• It lets our writers spend more time writing and less time looking for clients. As a former freelance writer myself, this is huge.

Win-win-win.

How can we control quality if we use white label content?

There are two steps to making sure your outsourced white label content is up to par:

1. Choose the right outsourcing partner.
2. Have a process for editing and providing feedback to that partner, especially in the beginning as they learn your preferences.

When it comes to choosing a white label content service, you have options depending on your needs and budget. There are plenty of ways to begin working with reputable freelancers, or you can leave the quality control/vetting of writers to a content writing platform to further reduce your agency’s workload.

Wondering how to judge the quality of a content writing service? Pay attention to their process. Ask questions about what their freelancers need to get started and what tools you’ll have to provide feedback and edits. You can also steal some questions from your clients or prospects’ playbook. What are the toughest questions they asked when vetting your agency? What quality checks are important to them, and therefore to you?

What’s the financial impact of outsourcing white label content?

The cost of white label content will depend on the outsourcing partner you choose. In most cases, however, outsourcing is significantly more cost effective than having your in-house copywriters do all the writing.

Want a very personal relationship with a writer? Go the freelancer route, and expect to pay a premium for their time.

Want a streamlined content delivery process that harnesses the power of a crowd to deliver unique, high-quality content, every time? Consider a solution like Verblio, with our flexible subscription model.

Congrats, you now know the basics of white label content. Read on to learn about the white label options you have with Verblio and see exactly how our white label content feature works for both you and your clients.

Verblio’s white label content, explained

Verblio’s white label content is original content created by our network of 3,000+ freelancer writers for digital marketing agencies to resell to their clients. The “white label,” as you now know, means that your clients never have to know that you’ve hired Verblio. (Though some of our clients are willing to shout it from the rooftops, and we love them for it.)

As a veteran agency partner, we know every marketing agency handles its clients and content differently. Far from a “one-size-fits-all” approach, we’ve created a flexible white label platform that can fit seamlessly into (and expedite) your existing workflow. 

1. White label content creation for hands-off clients

Some agencies provide final content to their client or publish it on their behalf without going through rounds of feedback first. If that’s you, you can simply source your content from Verblio and your client never has to interact with our platform. 

The content we provide is original and written for your specific request. You’ll be able to ask for any edits you need from the writer before you purchase a piece. After you purchase it, you can send it to your client, publish it for them, tell them you wrote it, tell them your dog wrote it, use it in your novel, wallpaper your house with it…anything you want. It’s 100 percent yours, and nobody has to know it came from Verblio.

2. Our white label content platform, for clients who like to be involved

If your client is typically the subject matter expert, or if they simply like to be more involved with edits and feedback during the content creation process, you can use our white label platform to get edits and feedback from your client before the content is purchased. 

You’ll always own the content 100% after purchase, regardless of whether you set up the white label feature or not.

How our white label platform works

Here’s the TL;DR:

1. You request content for your client.

When you request content on the Verblio platform, you can provide a brief, a style guide, SEO requirements, internal links to include—anything a writer needs to create great content. You can also set up different subscriptions for different clients to keep things organized for your team.

2. A Verblio writer drafts the content according to your request.

Our marketplace of freelance writers will review your request. Whoever thinks they can knock it out of the park will take it on and submit a draft to you, typically within 4 to 6 business days.

2. Content is posted to your agency’s white label site for review.

You’ll be able to see your drafted content directly in the Verblio platform. If you want your clients to review the content, too, we’ll mirror that content on the white label site (with your agency’s own custom domain in the URL) for them to see as well.

3. Client reviews, sends feedback and edits, or provides thumbs up/thumbs down

If you’ve set up the white label feature, your clients will be able to access their content queue and provide feedback or request edits, if necessary, prior to approving their content. Your internal team can also request edits from the writer.

4. You decide when to purchase or reject a piece of content.

Just because we’re making it easier to collaborate with your clients doesn’t mean your agency loses any of its control over your content. Regardless of your clients’ feedback, you can always choose to request edits, purchase, or reject a piece from our writers.

Step-by-step instructions for setting up your agency’s white label platform

We’ve done our best to make our white label feature as easy and intuitive as possible. Once you have it set up, expect smooth sailing for you and your clients with seamless collaboration and an efficient, optimized workflow.

After you’ve set up your Verblio account, here’s what to do to take advantage of our white label services:

1. Navigate to your White Label page in the drop-down menu under your email address.

You’ll see three tabs there: Clients, Users, and Settings.

2. Set up your white label account under the “Settings” tab.

Your clients will access their content at a custom domain at [yourbrandname].editspace.com. You can change the URL here, as well as upload a logo.

You can also decide whether new submissions will be automatically visible to your clients as soon as writers submit them, or if you want to review submissions first before allowing clients to see them.

(What’s that about? If you have a pool of Verblio writers that you trust, you can speed up the process by having their submissions go directly to your clients. Checking this box keeps you from having to review every piece yourself before getting your clients’ feedback.

If, however, you want to make sure your clients aren’t seeing any content that you haven’t personally reviewed for quality first, leave that box unchecked and each submission will appear in your client’s queue only after you choose to make it visible there.)

3. Add your clients on the “Users” tab.

You can choose which subscriptions each user has access to, so they’re only seeing the content for their business. Once a user has been added, they will receive an email with instructions to create a password and log in to view their submissions at your chosen URL.

Pro tip: Add yourself as a user so you can see exactly what your clients are seeing.

4. Manage your accounts on the “Clients” tab.

Here you can see a list of all your clients and view the users that you’ve invited to each account, in addition to editing the display name that they’ll see when they view submissions in Edit Space.

You can also quickly change whether clients can view the white label platform at all. If you’re still getting your logo set up or want to work more with our writers before showing any submissions to your client, you can toggle their visibility off. 

5. Make submissions visible in Edit Space

In your list of submissions, you will now see a White Label toggle for each submission. Once you toggle a submission to ‘visible,’ your end client (that you’ve added as an Edit Space user) will receive an email notification, alerting them that there is a piece ready for them to review.

Pro tip: Have clients bookmark your Edit Space URL for easy access to their visible submissions.

Curious to see what your client will see? Check out this video for a look inside the end user experience.

6. Review your client’s edits

When your client has completed their edits, you’ll be able to see their feedback in your submissions.

The great news is that your client’s notes are just suggestions. You can add to their feedback by including your own edit requests before sending it to the writer. You can also delete their edit requests and comments if you don’t think they’re necessary.

7. Rinse and repeat as needed

Our white label feature allows you to go back and forth with your client until you feel that the piece is ready to go back to the writer for edits.

Once the writer has edited the piece based on your feedback, you and your client will both be able to review their submission again and follow the same process for edits and feedback if the piece isn’t yet exactly what you’re looking for.

Ultimately, your client can decide to approve or reject the final piece, and you can purchase or decline based on their feedback.

You’re still in the driver’s seat

As an agency, you were hired by your clients because you are the marketing expert. While our new white label feature was created with agency/client collaboration in mind, the ultimate decision to request edits from a writer, purchase, or decline a post will always belong to the agency.

If your client approves a post but you don’t think it meets their needs, you still have the ability to decline it or request more edits. Similarly, you can purchase a piece that has been rejected by your client.

And, if you’re used to calling all the content shots yourself, you can still choose to use Verblio without setting up the white label platform. Simply submit your content requests, review and edit our writers’ submissions as needed, and provide the final purchased content to your client yourself.

Have additional questions or need support?

As a white label content writing platform, we’re always here to help make content marketing easier for you. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please let us know.

Want to see it in action and talk through your specific use-case with a Verblio specialist? Get a peek under the hood with a 30-min demo.

The post White Label Content Writing for Agencies appeared first on Verblio.

“We need to be using AI more. Make it happen.”

In 2023, over half of the in-house marketers we surveyed told us they’re under pressure from their boss to use AI to create content faster and cheaper. (Check out more results from that survey, if you’re curious.)

To truly capture the exponential efficiency gains that AI promises, though—and the saved time and money that business leaders are pressuring their teams for—one writer going back and forth with ChatGPT to draft a blog post isn’t going to cut it.

The techniques we’re going to discuss here are focused on content at scale. Think hundreds of local landing pages, thousands of product descriptions for an e-commerce website, or dozens of new service pages for agency clients.

AI is perfect for these use cases because using humans to write thousands of product descriptions, for example, is cost-prohibitive, but having those descriptions is still important for SEO. More importantly, by using AI to craft high-quality descriptions, you can actually provide value to your audience in an area where your competitors are likely just using MadLibs style templates—if they’re doing anything at all.

Trying to use ChatGPT out of the box for this, though, will drive you nuts. Combine the API of your favorite LLM with an automation tool like Zapier plus some advanced prompting, though, and you’ve got magic.

This type of process doesn’t work for all tasks. With the right use case, though, leveraging AI in this way allows for exponential efficiency gains, rather than the marginal gains that come from an individual user working with ChatGPT directly.

The challenge of this heavy-duty usage is that it requires a deeper understanding of how to get what you want from AI. You no longer have an individual person going back and forth with an LLM in an interface, able to adjust prompts and ask for changes on the fly. You need to build prompts that work for all the different situations in which they’ll be used and that get you the results you need, even when there may not be human intervention until the final step. 

We’ve been using AI in this way for certain tasks since September 2022 and have learned a ton about what works and what doesn’t. Using these six tips can save you hundreds of hours of work and dramatically improve the quality of your content. Some of these are good strategies no matter how you’re using AI. When you’re using it at scale, though, they become that much more important and might require you to think about them in slightly different ways.

1. Use variables to customize prompts

This is the basic building block of prompting at scale. Rather than using a prompt like “Write an outline for a 1500-word article about brute force attacks,” the prompt you write will be something like this:

USER: Write an outline for this article.
Topic: {topic}
Word length: {word_length}

When running this prompt, I’ll then replace the variable {topic} with “brute force attacks” and {word_length} with “1500.” (Well, *I* won’t—the program or Zap I’ve created will do it for me. That’s the beauty of using prompts programmatically.)

Creating prompts that use variables in this way requires a “greatest common factor” approach. For any single given topic, there will no doubt be a prompt that could do better—but it wouldn’t do as well for other topics. The goal is to find a prompt template that works decently well across all the topics you’re writing for, and then make use of variables to customize it.

In-house marketers: If you’re creating content for a single brand, your prompts can likely be more specific because all the content you’re creating falls within the same industry and should follow the same style guide. 

Agency folks: If you’re creating content for multiple clients, your prompts will have to be more general, and you’ll likely make greater use of variables for things like voice and industry.

2. Use the right size buckets

While testing a prompt to create outlines for articles of different lengths, I might find a prompt that works well on long articles but not on shorter ones. At that point, I’d have to decide whether I want to maintain two different prompt flows and send articles one way or another based on their word count, or find a prompt that works decently well for both.

This is the constant tension when using prompts at scale: How big should your “buckets” of use cases be? The larger your bucket, the more variables you’ll need to use to customize the prompt for each use case. You may also see a decrease in quality because you’ll be using the same prompt in situations where a different prompt would perform better. You will, however, save time on testing and building different flows.

Here’s an example at one end of the spectrum: Instead of using a dedicated prompt to create outlines, I could use a single prompt to create outlines, introductions, articles, etc. That prompt might look something like this:

USER: Write an {content_type} for this article.

topic: {topic}
word count: {word_count}

In addition to filling in the other inputs like topic and word count, I would then also replace {content_type} with “outline” or “introduction,” depending on what I needed.

In my experience, the time I might save from only having to build a single prompt flow for all those content types is not worth the drop in quality I would see across some of them. In other words, that bucket of use cases would be too big.

On the other end of the spectrum, I could use a different outline prompt for every word count increment. One of those prompts might look like this:

USER: Write an outline for this 1000-word article. There should be about six main sections, with appropriate subheadings in each of them.

topic: {topic}

By using a different prompt for each word count and designating the approximate number of sections each should have, I might get better (or at least more consistent) outlines, but would they be enough better to merit the time spent building those different flows? Probably not.

In this case, my bucket of use cases would be too small, and I’d be doing a lot of unnecessarily repetitive work. I could probably use a single prompt for every word count (by includng the {word_count} variable) and still get close to the same results simply by reminding the LLM to make sure the outline is an appropriate length for the word count.

Despite the officialness of my Goldilocks diagram, it’s worth noting that the right-sized bucket isn’t universal.If you’re creating two types of articles that should each have a very different structure—for example, tutorial articles that should follow a step-by-step format with a list of what you’ll need at the top vs. case studies that should follow a problem/solution/results format—using a single prompt for “outlines” could be too big a bucket for you. Instead, you’d likely want to create two different prompts for those two kinds of articles, with each prompt detailing the specifics of the format you’re looking for. This approach would give you better enough results to make it worth the effort of building those two flows.

The most extreme example of a small bucket is no bucket at all, ie. using a unique prompt every single time. Again, in many cases you can get better results that way, but you lose all the efficiency gains of using AI at scale.

3. Take advantage of few-shot prompting

“Show, don’t tell” is one of the golden rules of prompting. You can get better results by providing a few examples of what you’re looking for, rather than trying to describe what you want. This is known as “few-shot” prompting as opposed to “zero-shot” prompting, which is when you ask it to do something without including any examples of what you want.

Let’s say I work for an agency creating content for twelve different clients, and I’m using AI to create outlines. I want every outline to have a few common elements:

1. The first heading should be “Introduction”
2. The second heading should be “What is ” + the primary keyword
3. The last heading should be a call to action that references the client’s business

The best way to get AI to give me what I need consistently is to include examples of what I’m looking for in the prompt. Each example outline should meet all those requirements and show what a “good” outline looks like to me.

My final prompt might look something like this:

USER: Write an outline for this article.
topic: Understanding the Risk of Brute Force Attacks
word count: 1200
primary keyword: brute force attack
business: Hank's Digital Security Solutions

1. Introduction
2. What is a brute force attack?
3. Common types of brute force attacks
 A. Credential stuffing
 B. Password cracking
 C. Distributed brute force attacks
4. Impact of Brute Force Attacks
 A. Data breaches
 B. Financial losses
 C. Reputational damage
5. How to protect your business against brute force attacks
 A. Strong password policies
 B. Two-factor authentication
 C. Account lockout mechanisms
 D. Intrusion detection systems
6. Prevent Brute Force Attacks with Hank's Digital Security Solutions

Write an outline for this article.
topic: How a Brand Ambassador Can Boost Your Marketing
word count: 800
primary keyword: brand ambassador
business: Magic Marketing Solutions

1. Introduction
2. What is a brand ambassador?
3. The role of a brand ambassador in marketing
 a. Raising brand awareness
 b. Engaging with your audience
4. What to look for in a brand ambassador
 a. Professionalism and positivity
 b. Passion for the brand
 c. Excellent people skills
5. Find Your Next Brand Ambassador with Magic Marketing Solutions

Write an outline for this article.
topic: {topic}
word count: {word_count}
primary keyword: {keyword}
business: {business_name}

LLMs are great at following patterns. By including examples of what I’m looking for, the model will pick up on the common elements—that the first heading is always “Introduction,” the second is always “What is” followed by the keyword, and the final section always mentions the business—and incorporate those elements in the outlines it writes.

One important note here is to use a range of examples in your prompt, lest the model pick up on a pattern you hadn’t intended to convey. If, for example, you use three examples that are all “how to” articles with a numbered list of steps to teach the reader how to do something, it might try to follow that same pattern of creating a step-by-step guide even when asked for a different type of article. (To think of it in terms of “buckets” again: This is a situation where, depending on how many different types of articles you’re creating and how distinct they are, you may want to use separate prompts, each with their own examples, rather than a single prompt for all of them.)

Bootstrapping your way to good examples

Coming up with a few examples of “good” to use in your few-shot prompts can feel like an annoying waste of time. Depending on what I’m trying to create, I often will use AI to bootstrap my way there:

1. I’ll ask ChatGPT for an outline without providing any examples. I’ll then edit that outline extensively until it aligns completely with what I’m looking for. 
2. I’ll add that edited outline as an example in my original prompt and ask ChatGPT for another outline. The single example will help it get closer to what I want, though I will still need to spend some time editing this second outline as well.
3. I’ll use both edited outlines as two examples in my prompt, and ask ChatGPT for a third. This time, the output should be even closer to what I’m looking for, and I can likely spend less time editing it.

I’ll repeat this process—using as many edited examples as I have in my prompt to generate the next one, and editing each new one until it’s “perfect”—until I have as many examples as I want.

It’s worth noting that I likely wouldn’t use this approach for something like introductions. I would want those examples to be fully human in order to get the best outputs from my prompt going forward—otherwise what I get back will be more likely to sound like AI. For something like outlines, though, which are less about the voice and word choice and more about the logical organization of information, AI can give me a decent starting point for those examples.

4. Ask for an analysis first

Also known as “giving the model time to think,” you can get better results by asking the model to analyze the task at hand before providing you with any deliverable. 

Here’s an example of what that could look like:

USER: You will be writing an outline for a given topic. First, analyze the searcher intent. Consider the specific information that readers are seeking based on the topic and keyword. Think about how to optimize the headings for SEO. Provide your analysis inside <analysis></analysis> tags.

Then, create an outline that addresses the topic with specific headings and subheadings, ensuring that each section will directly answer the searcher's intent and contribute to the content goal. Provide the outline itself inside <outline></outline> tags.

topic: {topic}
keyword: {keyword}
content goal: {goal}
target audience: {audience}
word length: {word_count}

By telling the model to put its analysis inside <analysis></analysis> tags and the outline itself inside <outline></outline> tags, I can easily parse the response to get only the part I care about, ie. the outline.

When using the prompt at scale, I can ignore the analysis and only save the outline itself. While testing prompts, however, it can often be helpful to look at the <analysis> portion of the response as a way of understanding how the model is approaching the problem. If it’s referring too much to one portion of your instructions and missing something else, for example, that could be a sign that you’re trying to have it meet too many requirements at once. In that case, you should pare the prompt down to focus on the most important requirements.

5. Use a prompt chain rather than a single prompt

A prompt chain is when you use multiple prompts in a row, threading them together to provide more context for the model.

This approach can often get you better results than using a single prompt. It can be especially helpful in breaking down different things you want the model to focus on. I’ve found it works best if my first prompt focuses on the general principles I want the model to follow for whatever the piece of content may be, and the second prompt focuses on specifics that I do or don’t want.

For example, using the prompt above as my first prompt, I would get an outline that has taken the searcher’s intent into account and contains the most valuable information a reader would be looking for. However, I might have some other requirements I want the outline to follow, too, and I could include these in a second prompt.

USER: You will be writing an outline for a given topic. First, analyze the searcher intent. Consider the specific information that readers are seeking based on the topic and keyword. Think about how to optimize the headings for SEO. Provide your analysis inside <analysis></analysis> tags.

Then, create an outline that addresses the topic with specific headings and subheadings, ensuring that each section will directly answer the searcher's intent and contribute to the content goal. Provide the outline itself inside <outline></outline> tags.

topic: {topic}
keyword: {keyword}
content goal: {goal}
target audience: {audience}
word length: {word_count}
ASSISTANT: {model's response, containing both the analysis and the actual outline}
USER: Now review the outline. Make the following changes as necessary:
- The first section heading should be "Introduction."
- There should not be any references to case studies or testimonials.
- Make sure the outline is tailored to the topic, providing specific names where applicable. Avoid using placeholders like "Item 1" or "Service A" and instead use actual names and descriptions that are current and relevant.
- Make sure the outline is appropriate for the requested word length and not too long.

Return only the revised outline inside <outline></outline> tags.

In my second API call, I would include all three of these messages in order (blue, yellow, and blue).

By breaking up the requirements of what I want in this way, I’ve found the final outline will do a much better job of meeting them than if I put them all into a single prompt. You’ll also notice I put all of the specific formatting requirements into the second prompt. This is because if you split them between the first and second prompt, at times it might inadvertently “undo” requirements from the first prompt when revising the outline in the second prompt.

Using multiple prompts is also an easy way to allow your flows to work across more use cases. If I were an agency, for example, I might use the same first prompt across all my clients, and then customize only the second prompt with each one’s specific style guide requirements.

Note on the last line in the second prompt: It’s possible the original outline could already meet all my requirements. In that case, if I hadn’t included that final line about returning only the outline inside tags, the model might respond with something like “This outline is well-suited to the topic. It includes specific names and is appropriate for the word count” etc. Because I’m using these prompts at scale and will be delivering the output of the final prompt directly to the customer, I don’t want it to tell me the outline already meets my requirements—I just want it to give me the final outline. By specifying that I only want it to return the revised outline, I’m ensuring that I’ll get a consistent output I can use without having to review it.

6. Test your prompts

I’ve already written about my process for testing prompts, and I highly recommend coming up with your own system if you don’t yet have one.

LLMs have gotten good enough that the first prompt you try will likely get you an okay response. But when you’re using AI at scale, the difference between “okay” and “great” on hundreds or thousands of outputs can add up to hundreds of additional hours of human work needed to make your content publish-ready. It’s well worth the time spent testing to find the prompt that gets you “great” out of the gate.

It’s also important to remember that LLM behavior can change over time, so a prompt that works for you one month might get different results later. Test early, test often.

Using AI to create content at scale is an entirely different ballgame than becoming a ChatGPT power user. If you’re working on your process and want to chat strategies, roadblocks, writing your own shitty functional python code to access the OpenAI API, the risk of human extinction by AI, or anything else, reach out at megan@verblio.com.

If you don’t actually want to deal with this stuff yourself but need to get your boss off your back about using AI, check out our hybrid human-AI content to get all the efficiencies of AI without having to write a single prompt.

The post Tips for using AI to create content at scale appeared first on Verblio.

• Getting buy-in from clients in slow-moving, bureaucratic industries like hospitals and medical equipment manufacturers
• Meeting regulatory issues set by state and federal governing bodies
• Ensuring high-quality healthcare content that’s accurate and feels authoritative to the doctors, scientists, researchers, hospitals, experts, or equipment buyers who will be reading the content 

If you manage medical and healthcare content marketing and are struggling to find the best medical writers, you aren’t alone. We chatted with some of the top marketers, SEO experts, and content experts who work in the medical space or healthcare field, and they all shared six very common challenges. 

However, buying and publishing quality medical content continues to be one of the best ways to increase traffic or conversions on your landing pages or website. Don’t let these challenges stop you. We’ll show you how.

Top 6 Challenges For Hiring Medical Content Writers and Creating High-Quality Medical Content

1. How Do You Find High-Quality Medical Content or Healthcare Content Marketing?

Quality remains one of the top-cited problems for healthcare content marketers, and several medical field professionals suggested a few reasons why they struggle with creating expert medical content that engages readers and boosts traffic:

• Many hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers, and healthcare organizations don’t have a robust SEO plan for their content, in part due to regulatory challenges or client buy-in
• Many doctors, researchers, scientists, and in-house experts are too busy to create the content themselves

“The first challenge is getting healthcare organizations to buy into producing keyword-rich content that provides basic healthcare tips,” says Chris Craft, the founding editor at Inspire First. “This is understandable from their end because of compliance concerns and the challenge of producing one-size-fits-all content related to medical conditions.”

“Also, it’s a challenge getting the doctors to contribute to these types of articles because of their very busy schedules,” adds Craft. “The unfortunate result is typically a blog feed that’s filled with news items and company announcements that have a very short shelf-life.”

“The second challenge is creating helpful medical content that’s both easy to understand and authoritative,” warns Craft. “The reality is that most medical content for healthcare organizations is produced by marketing people and not medical professionals. And this poses a significant challenge in terms of content authority.”

That last point is critical for bother the readers’ trust, as well as the way that search engine algorithms now prioritize authoritative content written by true experts.

“With more scrutiny placed on the accuracy of online medical content as well as the reputation of its author/source,” points out Greg Bullock, marketing manager at TheraSpecs, “greater attention is having to be paid to the quality of the final output—especially for smaller businesses that are trying to compete with well-established authorities like WebMD or Mayo Clinic. This has translated to challenges for TheraSpecs in finding the right resources (both internally and externally) to create our content.”

For Bullock, his medical content quality problems typically arise because he wants to recruit and hire medical content writers who are able to:

• Identify and gather the appropriate research references with minimal guidance;
• Holistically understand the topic and explain it in a user-friendly way; and
• Carry the brand voice in a way that is consistent with other articles on the brand’s site

“We’ve definitely closed this gap over time through continued experimentation with different vendors and communication approaches, but there is still a good distance to go,” says Bullock.

Unlike other content marketing platforms, Verblio’s A-to-Z solution ensures your healthcare or wellness content is written exactly to your specifications by the world’s best medical content experts. With options like a dedicated account manager and built-in editing and SEO, we can help you to find and product the best medical marketing content that meets your high quality standards – hire our medical content writers today!

2. How Do You Find Healthcare Content Writers With Specific Expertise or Niche Medical Training/Certifications?

Some content verticals and industry niches can get by by hiring content generalists. But if you’re managing content marketing in the medical or healthcare fields, you need to find and hire medical content writers who truly understand the science, research, and terminology.

“Creating medical content has a few fundamental challenges,” says Chris Allen, head of marketing for Firm Tree. “It’s tough to corral the expertise required to get meaningful expert input; plus, it’s a high stakes game. What if you do all the research and still get it wrong? What if your expert got it wrong? This isn’t high-fashion or fitness information, this is a regulated industry.”

Allen says many agencies who work with medical or healthcare clients also struggle with scale. 

“The more challenging the subject matter and scarcity of expertise, the more scale can be limited,” adds Allen. “This is why conducting expert interviews to create and validate concepts and the all-important substance review of the work product are essential. Finding a way to do this at scale is where the real treasure exists.”

SEO analyst Andrew King at Klood Digital agrees. 

“The main challenge we have faced in getting content written for clients in the medical sector is finding someone qualified and knowledgeable enough to outsource to,” explains King. “While our in-house team can write more simple and generic pieces, the articles that were more technical needed to be outsourced to ensure they met our client’s standards. We had to look outside of the existing freelancers we used to find a content writer with the medical knowledge to satisfy our client for more in-depth pieces.”

At the same time, the expert writer needs to also maintain accuracy while making the content accessible to both readers and the search engines’ various algorithms. “I work as the primary content creator for a mid-sized HR tech company,” says Meisha Bochicchio, content marketing manager for PlanSource. “Our main pain point for creating great content is […] demystifying and simplifying the complexities of modern healthcare and technology.”

Bochicchio’s firm, like many other companies in such a technical field, is twofold: HR managers and benefits brokers. Thus, the medical content writers she needs to find, vett, and recruit have to speak to readers of varying backgrounds, motivations, and expertise levels. 

“We have to do a great deal of research and then have to convey these complex ideas and concepts in a way that is easy to understand,” adds Bochicchio. “Healthcare and employee benefits aren’t getting any easier, so this is a challenge we anticipate to increase over time. We’re tackling this issue by tapping more internal subject matter experts as well as the sales team to ensure our messages are clear, concise, and, most importantly, correct.”

Verblio can help you find fully-vetted healthcare content writers who are true experts in your specific niche or industry. And yes, we’re scalable and flexible: both our technology and team are designed to flex based on need, and to accommodate special projects and other spikes in demand. See the Verblio difference and hire a healthcare content writer today!

3. How Do You Write SEO-Optimized Medical Content That Performs Well in Search Results?

Every year, Google releases a few core updates. These tend to have profound implications on SEO and content marketing, and the Medic update released a couple of years ago was no different. Many healthcare and medical websites saw themselves falling rapidly in the SERP for their targeted keywords, with many brands saying they lost most if not all of their traffic.

This has made it that much more important to find medical content writers who can write SEO-optimized content that addresses Google’s major changes. 

“Creating content for medical organizations has become more challenging since Google’s Medic Update went into effect,” says Clair Belmonte, the founder and CMO of Belmonte Marketing. “Before, a talented writer with research chops could create meaningful medical content, but that led to health and wellness websites creating optimized content with unsubstantiated medical claims. This content could surpass less detailed but more accurate medical content from credible medical websites.”

“With this update, it became more important that content be authored by medical professionals with on-site bios detailing their experience,” says Belmonte. “Those expectations make finding writers willing to write affordable content challenging, as those writers are sacrificing a byline and frequently charge more for ghostwriting.”

Belmonte adds that to maintain high search rankings, medical content should be:

• Detailed
• Heavily researched
• Include multiple internal and credible external links, to increase the likelihood of ranking

“Finding writers with the experience to write this content and taking the time to have each content piece reviewed for accuracy by a doctor or medical professional can be time-consuming, so content strategy must account for lengthier lead times than previously necessary,” concludes Belmonte.

Sadi Khan, content marketing manager at RunRepeat, has similar warnings to anyone who wants to recruit healthcare writers and create medical content that ranks highly. “Medical and healthcare sites fall into the category of YMYL sites [and] these sites need to have a high E-A-T rating, which stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness,” says Khan. 

“So, the content needs to be factually correct and backed with proper scientific evidence,” he says. “At the same time, you cannot create something dull and bland like medical journals because you want your content to get social shares, mentions, and backlinks. The biggest challenge is to find people who are qualified enough to write on these topics and they can also create interesting and engaging content that will do the job.” 

When you partner with other content platforms, you may find that a lot of your medical content is plagiarized or too similar to other pre-existing medical content. This further sabotages your SEO and can cause Google to penalize your entire website. 

“A lot of my clients are in the health industry,” says Jessica Mehta, owner of the content marketing agency Mehtafor. “ The biggest challenge for me is getting content to pass Copyscape (and not because of actual plagiarism). Medical language is often unique and quite long-winded. Plus, when you’re being asked to write on subjects like the opioid epidemic, it’s really tough to create genuinely unique content because most things have been said in every possible way. It’s a lot of tweaking to both get in the long-tail phrases while also pleasing Copyscape.“

All of Verblio’s medical content writers are well-versed in SEO and the implications of Google’s ever-evolving algorithm. Simply provide your full SEO requirements, including target keywords, and they’ll weave your SEO strategy into your 100% original content. Get started with Verblio’s healthcare content experts today – you can even add an optional SEO package for further optimization.

4. How Do You Buy Medical Content That Reaches Your Target Audience and Grows Traffic?

“The biggest challenge for healthcare content marketing is creating enough content tailored to the needs of the consumers,” shares Illia Termeno, director at Extrabrains Marketing Agency. “Our clients from healthcare organizations often provide extremely complex technical requirements to the content, and there are a lot of limitations as well due to the high levels of regulation in the industry.”

The medical content writers you hire must be able to straddle this scenario carefully. They need to ensure the right terms are used while also writing your healthcare content in a way that uses everyday language that ensures your content shows up in front of your core audience. 

“It’s not easy to find a copywriter with medical background and experience to ensure that content is written professionally in a language that ordinary people can understand,” warns Termeno.

Verblio can help you find fully-vetted healthcare content writers who are true experts in your specific niche or industry, while also knowing how to write in a professional and approachable way so your target audience sees your content. See the Verblio difference and hire a healthcare content writer today!

5. Prices: How Much Does a Freelance Medical Writer Charge?

When you’re trying to hire a healthcare medical writer or content expert, some of the first questions that may come to mind include: 

• Can I afford it? 
• How much does a medical writer get paid? 
• How much should my medical content writing budget be?
• Is it expensive to buy medical content for my website?

“One of my frustrations with getting medical content written is the price,” agrees Stacy Caprio, founder of Growth Marketing. “To find someone who knows what they are talking about and can write an engaging, accurate article, the cost is much higher than normal content.“

Get started with Verblio, where our scale and large pool of vetted, trustworthy medical content experts means you get access to quality content without breaking your budget. Prices are based on your requested word count requirements, and are fully backed by our 30-day money-back guarantee. 

6. How Do I Get Stakeholder Sign-Off and Ensure the Right Medical Edits Are Made?

Once you have your expertly written medical content, you typically need to review it for quality, brand voice, SEO, and other key criteria. And that editing process can be tedious if you aren’t using a platform specifically designed to optimize and streamline the content editing and approval process.

“Health-related content can be extremely difficult to create for customers because…it usually has to go through a number of revisions with the customer to make them happy,” warns Ryan Bednar at RankScience SEO.

Stakeholder buy-in is also tricky. “Some healthcare professionals are highly skeptical about the whole concept of digital and content marketing,” says Jamie Cheng, co-founder of Digital Alpha Agency. 

Receive, review, and edit content seamlessly with Verblio and our robust tech platform. You will only ever buy the content you like. Most clients get their first piece of content to review within 48-72 hours. Review your drafts and accept, decline, or request edits as needed. Publish fast with simple WordPress & Hubspot integrations.

…But It’s Not All Bad: The Biggest Opportunities in Medical Content Marketing

Despite all the above, recruiting and hiring expert medical content writers is key to your success.

“When it comes to working with medical and healthcare organizations, one of the biggest challenges SEOs and content marketers face is ensuring that the content that’s written is accurate, unique, and informative,” explains Audrey Strasenburgh, an SEO strategist at LogoMix. 

“These days anyone can go online, start a blog, and spew out ‘medical information’ to the public—but the danger of doing this is that it leads to users being misinformed,” she warns. “When optimizing a website for medical and healthcare organizations, you want to make sure that your client comes across as the expert in their field.”

Verblio’s proven track record in helping you to find and build a team of expert medical content writers ensures your success, especially when it comes to research and quality assurance.

And while you might be focused on SEO and other technical factors, never forget the human side of things. That is key for connecting with your audience, and that connection is what drives engagement and conversion.

“The greatest challenge for content marketing agencies working with healthcare organizations, in my experience, is storytelling,” explains Autumn Sullivan, a content strategist at Big Sea Design. “I can do the keyword strategy and hire a freelancer to write another high-funnel blog based on that keyword, but how do you make it stand out from the crowd? The answer is storytelling, and that requires working with the client and their patients. To capture attention and keep it, you need exceptional, professional-journalism-level stories that contain organic keyword AND resonate with the reader.“

Any of this sound familiar?  If you’re fighting an uphill battle in a quest to get high-quality, medical focused content created for your practice or client, give Verblio’s medical writing services a look.

While we can’t always recite negative drug interaction pairings by heart, or perform open-heart surgery, for that matter, we do have 120 writers with 5+ years of expertise in healthcare in our knowledgable community. Their expertise ranges from dozens of registered nurses to a director at an Alzheimers’ unit, physician assistants, professional counselors, and EMTs.

Ditch the headache, cut the cost, and get started with experienced expert writers from Verblio. Contact us today to see what solutions we can offer for your agency and your medical content creation challenges.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2019 but has been updated in Spring 2022 to reflect and include current healthcare content marketing trends and the modern needs of medical and wellness content writing.

The post Hire a Medical Content Writer: How to Overcome the Top 6 Challenges When Creating Quality Medical Content appeared first on Verblio.

Tell ’em, Char:

White Label, What?

Hold up. Rewind. If you’re not already familiar with Verblio’s white label feature, here’s a quick summary:

1. It’s included for free with every agency account.
2. It allows you to show drafts to clients and get their feedback before you purchase content from Verblio.
3. It’s your agency’s super secret content weapon, so your client will never know you’re using Verblio.*

What’s New

Previously, in-line editing was only available to Verblio clients, meaning that you as an agency were able to highlight specific changes you wanted in the content, but your clients were only able to leave general comments and feedback for the draft as a whole. 

Now, the same in-line editing functionality is available to both you as an agency and your end clients. Your clients can highlight specific words and phrases they want changed or comment on one particular passage, in addition to leaving general comments. Then, as before, you can review their feedback before passing it back to the writer for revisions.

What’s the Same

As always, the ultimate decision still lies with you as the agency. In addition to requesting edits, your client can choose to accept or reject a piece, but nothing is purchased until you say so. You can add your own edits, or even delete your client’s edits if you think they’re missing the mark. Your client hired you because you’re the expert, and our white label feature will make sure that expertise always stays in the driver’s seat.

Want to dig into the nuts and bolts of our white label service? Get more details (and more Char) at our White Label help page.

Why It Matters

Whether your client is the subject matter expert or just has a lot of opinions, their having the ability to make in-line edits means three things:

1. more specific, tangible feedback for your writer
2. better content for your client
3. happier clients for you

…and that means happier customers for us. (Not that we have any ulterior motive here.)

Did we mention this has been our #1 requested feature?

The things we do for you guys.

Already a customer? Request some content and try our new white label for yourself!

Not a Verblio customer but want to be? Schedule a demo and see our platform in action.

* If your client is a codebreaker for the NSA, they *might* be able to figure out you’re working with us. But if your client is a codebreaker for the NSA, we have other, more important questions.

The post In-Line Editing for Everyone! appeared first on Verblio.

We’ve answered these questions and more to help you determine the best method of providing quality content and copy for your clients, in a way that’s sustainable for your agency. First, though, we have some basic distinctions to clear up.

Ready? Let’s jump in!

What Is the Difference Between Content Writing and Copywriting?

Content writing and copywriting have two different goals. Put simply, content is designed to drive traffic, and copy is designed to sell. Content is the blog post educating readers on the different types of skincare ingredients and their benefits. Copy, meanwhile, is the persuasive pitch on a sales page that convinces a shopper to buy your skincare products.

Content engages. Copy converts.

Content is the bait. Copy is the hook.

This brings us to our next question…

Which Do My Clients Need: Content Writing or Copywriting?

In today’s world of inbound marketing, a good marketing strategy needs both components. Punchy, memorable ad copy alone doesn’t cut it anymore. Your audience is too savvy to be swept off their feet by a single tagline — even if it’s as memorable as “Breakfast of champions” or “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” They may buy your product or service once, but you’ve done nothing to keep them coming back for more. Audiences today want more value, more information and more entertainment, and less overt self-promotion.

On the flip side, however, if you supply oodles of informative, engaging content but never convince your readers to take any action, you’ll never get what you need from them. They’ll never even know what you want. Content needs copy, whether it’s in the form of pushing a particular product or simply asking your reader for their email address.

Like most relationships, the one between a business and a customer is a dance of give-and-take. Combining copy and content to find the balance between offering value and asking for something in return is tricky but essential for any content marketing strategy.

What Is the Difference Between a Copywriter and a Content Writer?

As you’ve likely guessed, copywriters and content writers possess different skills and bring different approaches to their work. When you hire a copywriter, you’re getting someone who specializes in short, snappy phrases designed to move and convince. They’re a flashy sprinter, tearing up the track and bringing the crowd to their feet.

A content writer, meanwhile, is the marathoner. They engage the audience through miles of quality content in blog posts, articles, ebooks, and more. They by turn inform, entertain, and inspire, engaging a loyal fan base all the way to the finish line.

But wait, you might ask — can’t a sprinter run a few miles, too? And can’t a marathoner sprint every once in a while? 

You bet your Nikes they can. A good content writer will keep the business’s ultimate aims in mind and craft their content accordingly. Finding writers who understand both prongs — content and copy — allows you to have a marketing strategy that weaves the two seamlessly together throughout your website. It allows you to find that proper balance of give-and-take, from your landing page to your blog to your customer’s shopping cart.

What Projects Do I Hire a Copywriter For?

Any online business needs someone to write the copy and content on their website. If your agency is in charge of a client’s website and marketing, that means you need someone to write that content. Too often, digital marketers underestimate the value of quality writing, instead slapping a product description together at the last minute or assigning the company blog to an intern.

Don’t.

Both copy and content can be incredibly powerful marketing tools, when used correctly. That means having somebody who knows how to pair top-notch writing with SEO best practices to drive traffic and convert leads. Anytime you’re dealing with writing that is going to be read by potential customers, you owe it to your clients to hire a copywriter who knows what they’re doing.

How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Professional Copywriter?

Okay, you say — so creating quality content and copy is important. That means my agency should hire a professional copywriter full-time, right?

Not necessarily. The benefit of adding a copy and content writer to your in-house team is that they’ll be there anytime you need them. The downside, however, is that you’ll be paying a premium price for that convenience. The average full-time writer of web content makes around $75,000 per year writing regularly for one company. For many agencies, that figure represents a significant portion of their marketing budget, and it means less money to spend elsewhere.

Can I Outsource Copywriting?

What if you don’t have or aren’t willing to spend the kind of money needed to hire a copywriter? Is there another way to get your clients the content they need at a price you can afford, without sacrificing quality?

We’re so glad you asked!

As it turns out, outsourcing content is increasingly common. The latest research by Content Marketing Institute shows that 55 percent of B2C marketers — and nearly as many B2B marketers — outsource some of their content marketing.

Of course, outsourcing content creation can have its own challenges. It can be hard to know where to find great copywriters, or your freelancer might go radio silent just when you need them most. You may have to try multiple writers before finding one that works with your client’s brand and tone — and then you may have to find an entirely different one for a client in another vertical.

Fortunately, you aren’t stuck with the choice between a full-time copywriter who breaks the bank, and random freelance copywriters for hire. There are services available that provide both copy and content when you need them, from a community of writers who have already been vetted. For many agencies, these blog and content writing services offer a flexible and affordable alternative to hiring a full-time professional copywriter.

How Do I Find a Good Copywriter?

Finding a good copywriter — one who understands the current marketing environment and how to write effectively and authoritatively — is no easy feat. Add in the fact that they need to understand your client’s industry and its unique considerations, from construction to healthcare, and trying to hire a copywriter can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack.

The good news? There’s a magnet you can use: Verblio. (We also got rid of the haystack for you.)

We know we’re only as good as the writers we work with, which is why we’ve combed through thousands of applicants to bring you the top 4 percent. Our writers have experience in everything from IT to music to insurance, real estate, and more, and they combine that industry expertise with five-star writing chops.

What are the Advantages of a Content Writing Service?

Call us biased, but we think there are a number of benefits to working with a content writing service like Verblio, as opposed to having all your content and copy written in-house.

1. You only pay for what is actually written — not for a writer’s downtime.
2. Have clients in different industries? Work with multiple writers with expertise in different areas, so every client gets the content they need.
3. Scale your content volume indefinitely as you acquire more clients, without having to hire more full-time writers.
4. Ditch the hassle of vetting, hiring, and onboarding writers, and skip straight to the part where you provide stellar content that makes your clients wonder what they ever did without you.

A content writing service bridges the gap between shelling out the big bucks for a professional in-house copywriter, and dealing with untested freelancers or turning to low-quality content farms. In addition to blog posts and other digital content, you can get web copy to build out your clients’ sites from top to bottom, complete with SEO and clear value propositions that drive both traffic and sales.

If you’re looking to hire a copywriter, why not opt for a community of over 3,000 of the best and brightest? Read all about our options for agencies or learn more about how to sell a content marketing strategy to clients.

The post Hire a Copywriter or Not? Your Questions Answered appeared first on Verblio.

They’re responsible for so much of it — and yet they often don’t have the time to devote to perfecting how it gets done. 

And yowzah, does it need to get done. 

But when agencies talk content, they usually focus on two areas:

1. Content quality
2. Turnaround times

Which is all well and good, but dialing in on only those two focuses means the industry often misses a massive element:

Scale.

Or in other words, how do you, as an agency, create so much content at a high level without diminishing your other agency offerings?

It’s an issue that Verblio is highly conscious of, and is pouring our time and energy into helping agencies fix:

So let’s all take a step back, because if there’s one thing we all can do is learn more about content and how to create it (and that’s coming from people who like to debate about Oxford commas). 

We’ve reached out to industry leaders, content experts, and in-the-trenches creators and asked them for their insights on how they’ve adapted to create top-notch content at scale for their clients. The answers they gave us seemed pretty thematic, so we’ve curated seven tips for you — completely based on what they shared. 

Here’s the long and short of it, which you’ll read from our industry experts:

• Don’t treat content as a separate part of your strategy (especially with SEO).
• Come with a plan.
• Source strong (or niche) writers.
• Find a solution for content approvals, then enforce it.
• Build a better process that works for your company.
• Think outside the box.

If these tips resonate with you, you’ll love diving into what our experts have to say. Let’s take a look!

Tip #1: Merge Your SEO And Content Creation Efforts

“The biggest problem we have in SEO content creation is the fact that we are actually writing for three different audiences – our clients, their end clientele, and the search engines. To make matters more challenging, we only get direct feedback from the first audience, which can easily dwarf the importance of the other two audiences. 

For instance, a client may take a lot of pride in the fact that they are a third generation business. The search engines and most end clientele couldn’t care less. 

A client may take a lot of pride in their company history, but that can actually interfere in the proper user experience on the website. The end clientele, meanwhile, only wants to know if the website can solve their problem/address their desire, and they typically want to know that (or at least get a strong indication of that) in the first 50 words they read. They often prefer short, pithy web pages that are easy to skim. 

The search engines, meanwhile, are trying to match web pages with their interpretation of user intent. That usually favors longer pages with lots of information and keyword-centric content. Balancing these three audiences can be extremely challenging.

Add in the fact that there may not even be agreement within each audience, and the balancing act becomes even more complicated. All too often, there is not even agreement internally on what messaging is important to the client. This can stall SEO content creation indefinitely, and requires delicate management by very good consultants. 

Different clientele prefer different user-experiences. Even on the same keyword, it may be beneficial to have pithier content on one page, with a short video for the clientele in a rush, and longer content, heavily linked to other resources for the clientele in research-mode.

Now imagine trying to get a writer, who typically never speaks with the client, to be able to balance those three audiences for each of the 5 or 10 clients they write for in any given week. This helps explain why SEO writing requires such extensive revision.”

Derrick De Yarma — Director of SEO at That! Company

“As an agency, our clients come from a wide variety of sectors – beauty, recruitment, HR, IT and we’re always going to have unique challenges with every one of them. Whether it’s a commercial copy for sales or building content pillars, there’s no one size fits all when it comes to content.

The biggest challenge is to integrate our SEO strategy with the Content Strategy. We found out that most writers lack SEO acumen. Striking that balance between creating pages that actually generate traffic and are also engaging to read is a balance that’s hard to do. The best way to get that synergy in all your content pieces is to create a spreadsheet — or some kind of tracking — with all the SEO guidelines where everyone keeps track of what they do.”

“Sometimes, it can be tricky to find the right kind of topic that makes for readable content while maintaining an SEO function too. 

The idea is that you write about high search volume topics that matter to the potential audiences of a client. We also need to make sure that it is informative and different from the other content pieces out there, and use this content to develop an authoritative profile in the eyes of a search engine. 

Balancing all of this can be tricky because you might find something really technical to write about, which is great for authority, but too complicated for some to understand.”

Tip #2: Scaling Content Requires Diligent Planning

“One challenge with getting content written at scale is making sure every piece is part of each client’s bigger overall strategy, and not just slapped onto the total blog post count for lack of having anything better. 

Making sure all posts support each other and the existing posts and fit within the overall plan for the client’s long-term growth is tricky to manage across a number of clients and websites at once and can be a challenge when not organized or planned properly.”

“It’s challenging to produce unique and actionable content on a wider scale. In most of the cases, finding a unique topic is the major issue in producing the content. A lot of the authority companies and SMEs already have written engaging stuff on those trending topics.

For this, one should look at what small to mid-size enterprises (SMEs) are doing for specific topics, subjects, and experiences, and the various techniques they use to practically produce their content.

Other than that, the best solution I’ve found to help solve the high volume content creation challenge is to simply be prepared to deal with the content marketing costs (whether in-house or outsourcing). Take a good look at your resources and capabilities, and decide which solution fits you best.

Nancy Kapoor — Senior Digital Marketing Associate at Grazitti Interactive Company 

Tip #3: Find Flexible, Expert Writers With Strong Research Skills

“Last year I was working as an SEO manager at an SEO agency where I worked with writing teams to get new content written and published for my clients. I now work as an inhouse SEO, but still work to get content published with our marketing team. 

The number one issue I saw at my agency with outsourced content was a lack of quality in the posts we wrote because our writers didn’t have the expertise in that specific industry. This is especially a problem when you have a client in a very specialized or technical niche. 

One client of ours who worked in the automotive parts industry canceled their contract because they would always have to rework the content our writers produced. I think a lot of companies in technical niches feel more comfortable creating content internally where they have the expertise to make valuable and accurate content.”

Mason Stout — SEO Specialist at Senior Leaf

“One of the perks of content writing is getting to know a little about a lot. We get to write content for all sorts of businesses, industries and sectors so we’re always learning something new. 

But writing a content piece without any prior knowledge of a topic is challenging. Often clients forget that you don’t know as much as they do about their sector and don’t bring you up to speed. 

That’s where our expert research skills must come into play. We have to scour websites, identify competitors and understand the latest insights to develop the right content angle. It’s demanding of your time and attention but the amount you learn is always worth it in the end.”

“The challenges that I and my team face in creating content for Client are:

Writing high-quality content: Writing a content piece that includes infographics, stats, videos, references etc. Every time presenting a content which is not only informative but engaging and serving the user’s query is quite challenging.

Meeting Client’s Expectations: It’s quite important to fulfil the expectations of the one who is giving us paychecks. But bridging the gap between the client’s perspective and content marketing trends is a tough job.

Multidisciplinary: Finding a resource who is capable of curating technical as well as non-technical content. 

Delay in Feedback: The feedback of the content being shared with the client should be prompt so that the content can be published within the timeline.

Content Aesthetics: Because of the old version of the CMS or poor UI/UX, the content writers face issues in attractively publishing the content, the way they want.”

Tip #4: If You Can’t Find Flexible Writers, Find Niche Writers

“There are 2 big challenges we experience when producing content at scale.

The first challenge is finding a quality writer who understands how best to create content for SEO. It’s not just about putting keywords in the content. Content pieces need to have a good user experience and keep people on the website as long as possible. This means there needs to be images, video, internal and external links, short paragraphs, and more that keeps the reader scrolling through the entire post.

The second is finding writers for different industries. Finding a great writer is hard enough, but finding them for multiple industries can be even harder. We have found that a writer we loved did not produce the same quality content when they worked on a different industry. So we basically have to start from scratch again finding that quality writer for that industry, which can be very time consuming.”

Tip #5: Don’t Let Content Approval Issues Bottleneck Growth

“Our biggest frustration is getting content approval. 

We often wait for weeks for clients to approve content as they don’t realize the urgency of a constant and steady feed. It also makes it difficult for our team to set up weekly task lists, as we never know when we might eventually get unexpected approval on a whole batch of articles at once. Freelancers also often forget about deadlines.

We’ve solved the problem by breaking up monthly content requests into weekly priorities.This ensures that we get content from our writers continuously and don’t send it all for approval at once. We also follow up on content approval twice per week. Both writers and clients respond well to this approach.”

“Evenbound is a full-service digital marketing company that does a lot of work with industrial and manufacturing companies. As you can imagine, a lot of the content we write for these clients is technical, and these are busy companies — they’ve hired us because they don’t have time to write this content themselves.

Early on, our team saw the most trouble getting blogs approved. We’d write content only to have it sit for months in the pipeline before we could get someone on the other team to look at it.. This is a problem for our efficiency, but also for our client’s ranking potential. Since they weren’t putting out regular content, they couldn’t build authority on search engines.

One great workaround we’ve found has been creating standing meetings with those busier, more technical clients. We set up a standing meeting once every two weeks with the team members who have approval power, and we use that time to discuss what should be covered in upcoming topics as well as approval for completed content. Just making the space on everyone’s calendar has made a significant improvement in our process, and it’s helping our clients build that authority they need to rank well online.”

“At any given time, we have over 50 pieces of content in process per month, everything from new website landing pages, press releases, blog posts and articles, and PPC landing pages. Taking those pieces from ideation to publishing can be challenging, especially if each client has their own unique process or method for reviewing content.

To move content through the publishing schedule on time, we set up the expectations for regular publishing at the very beginning of an engagement. Moving the needle on inbound campaigns requires regular, timely publishing. 

From the very beginning, our client identifies and agrees on a time frame to review and approve content, and if they “go dark,” we have permission to publish the content without feedback. That process and relationship don’t happen overnight, but once our client trusts us and we’ve collaborated on a few pieces together, it’s worked well for us.

 By engaging with high-quality, dependable writing teams and graphic designers, our clients know they can rely on us to not only get the job done but to do it well and without the need for endless back-and-forth that often delays the publishing schedule.”

“There are some big frustrations when it comes to the production of content for our clients. The biggest one is probably when clients are insistent about producing the content themselves, but they are only able to turn around 1 article a month. If we are looking to grow sites significantly, we are dependent upon publishing high quality content, building internal link silos, and developing authority in that niche. So we have an impetus to get content published in order to deliver on promises of organic growth.

Tom Crowe — Founder of Definitely Digital

Tip #6: You Can Only Scale If Your Process Lets You

“Searchbloom is an industry leading SEO & PPC company that focuses on building tight-knit relationships with our partners (not clients!) and always backs our work with a promise of ROI. 

The biggest challenge Searchbloom has faced with our content creation process is finding an effective way to scale content production. The issues seem to multiply with every step you take down the rabbit hole: 

• How do we create content across dozens of partners and industries? 
• How do we ensure quality deliverables with minimal drafts and revisions? 
• How do we ensure SEO best practices are followed with all pieces?
• If revisions are needed, how do we take care of them quickly without backing up writer workloads? 
• How do we manage partner expectations? 
• How do we create transparent communication between our content team and SEO analysts? 

The list goes on and on. 

Our solution has been an ever-evolving effort. We lean heavily on highly vetted, high-quality writers. It took time to find them and develop them, but the results speak for themselves. We’ve also evaluated our process at multiple points over the last few years for ways that we can make workflow more efficient. We take advantage of automation and proprietary software where we can, and have implemented a system that allows content projects to flow much more effectively, even with built-in checks for quality, SEO elements, and topicality. 

The best advice I can give is to always look at your current process with a critical eye. If something isn’t working, find out why and fix it — or throw it out altogether. Content changes constantly, and so will a scalable content solution.”

“Content scaling is hard because it is subjective and it’s all about being in the same mindset as the writer you work with. If you can find a great writer who works with your system seamlessly, they are worth their weight in gold. If you don’t have a reliable, quality writer – then it’s going to be a long week.

The way to do it is through a super-detailed standard operating procedure and an editor acting as a middleman between the writer(s) and you. If you can work out a plan to follow, you will be able to analyze the effectiveness of the people you have and the results.

As you work through a procedure and get things figured out, you will go through a ton of writer testing (on average you will go through about 5 tests for 1 long-term hire) and it will test your patience. But if you keep at it, you will find good writers and you will eventually get the results you need!”

Julien Raby — Darcy Allan PR

“When we started, we would really try to create unique, client-specific content, but as we grew, that became almost impossible. So our next idea was to turn some of the content creation over to the client. However, this proved to be problematic for different reasons (deadlines, etc). 

So the next step was to have content created for our clients based on industry, where we could edit their information into the content easily. This gives the content a “unique enough” feel, while making the creation process easier to scale.”

Joe Karasin — Director at Posh Detroit

Tip #7: Always Look For Unique Opportunities (Even When You Don’t Think You Need To)

“One of our biggest challenges when creating content at scale is making sure we create unique ideas for all clients, while minimizing crossover content ideas that could cannibalize the results from one client to another. To avoid this, it takes a high degree of planning and organization at all stages of the content development process.

Another challenge when creating content at scale is making sure the content is unique, relevant to the client and most importantly easily shareable. Anyone can churn out average content at a high rate, but it can take serious resources to create truly inspiring content. These resources come in the shape of time, money and hard-working content marketers.

Here’s how we overcome these challenges:

• Hire the right people who are qualified to get the job done.
• Set a timeline for deliverables so that we ensure that we have the bandwidth to effectively tackle all the projects in a timely manner.
• Set client expectations ahead of time about the budget and time needed to create something worth creating that aligns with their audience.
• Deliver! And then Deliver again!”

“The biggest challenge when creating a lot of content in such a short time is trying your best to make it unique. If you are covering the same topic for several different clients you can naturally feel like you’re basically plagiarizing your old work, and that’s never the case. 

It’s difficult making content unique when you are SEO’ing content and need to not only stick in keyword phrases, but make it look natural as well. This is what makes SEO an art rather than a concept.”

“I think the biggest thing that’s overlooked when creating content at scale is that most agencies and companies are looking to produce so much content they forget about what was already produced in the past. 

It’s important to do regular SEO audits to determine stale content, or content that’s just out of favor with Google and not resulting in any traffic. Maybe you can alter your approach and find better keywords to target and refresh the content. 

That will keep your site fresh while also reducing your monthly content budget, as it will require less work to tweak older articles.”

Mario DeAlmeida — Head of SEO at Hot Head Tech

“My biggest challenge with content is the process of creating very technical pieces, like explaining oral surgery procedures. 

Something I used to struggle with, and something many people struggle with, but which I’ve gotten to like is creating content for “boring” industries. There really is nothing boring, every niche, every topic appeals to someone. 

There’s a video on Youtube put out by I believe it was Scotts or some lawn care company. They have a 5 or 6 minute video about how to stripe your lawn. On the surface that’s a pretty boring subject, but the video has something like 2.1 million views. There are Subreddits on Pressure Washing and Penmanship. Even the boring can be made interesting.

Another big challenge is clients not understanding how to communicate with their customers, average people. My dental client for example likes to pick apart language I use because it’s not technical enough, or not the medical term, but I try to explain to him that jargon and medical terminology mean nothing to the average consumer wanting to get a dental implant.

Another challenge is always writing in the voice of a client and having them agree with the voice you’re writing in. Your image or voice you have in mind oftentimes is not what they have in mind, but many are bad at communicating the voice they want.

John Frigo — Digital Marketing Lead at My Supplement Store

Find An Agency Content Solution Built To Work For You

Let’s get down to brass tacks here.

Running an agency is hard. And as you read above, there are countless challenges that come up in the day to day scuffle of creating content. 

That’s why Verblio’s taken the time to think about how we can better serve the hardworking agencies in this world. In many ways, the insights you read above have shaped the service we are today. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how Verblio can help you scale your content, we’d love to chat. Schedule a 30 minute demo with us and see for yourself!

The post Content at Scale: 7 Tips From Agencies On How They Overcome Content Challenges appeared first on Verblio.

But this kind of growth isn’t without challenges, especially when it comes to helping people educate themselves about these new technologies. Content plays a huge role in the future of the industry, but it’s not always simple to make that content shine. 

That’s why we decided to test the waters and see what industry experts are doing right now to adapt and head toward a brighter future. 

What they shared definitely helped shine some light on where the industry is headed, and how you can keep up with your content. 

Insight #1. Sourcing High Quality, Niche-Specific Content Is Key

“In our work with solar companies we have provided both on-site content in the form of blogs and whitepapers as well as off-site link building campaigns. One of the more difficult aspects, particularly for solar is finding quality niche-specific publishers willing to take our guest content for their publication with appropriate links back to our clients’ websites.

Finding quality writers at reasonable rates to create on and off-site content is perhaps one of the easier aspects of content marketing. Sourcing quality, niche-relevant sites at scale for solar clients has proven to be the biggest challenge. We can always write the content at large scale, but when performing outreach to relevant sites where have a solar-related article published our outreach teams can often run into issues with finding enough publishers to create enough backlink distribution. for the sites.

The solution to this is establishing better systems and processes for outreach and then playing rinse and repeat to acquire them. Then we have to continue to create quality content for them so as to keep them for future client use.”

“Writing this type of content has two main challenges. The first being that, the way different energy products and plans can be implemented vary broadly across different counties and cities. So, sometimes it’s near impossible to write an exhaustive article informing readers of any use of a particular method. 

On the one hand, this means that you can have an endless supply of articles to write. On the other, I always worry about how the tone of these articles come across — full of qualifiers and wishy-washy — and how they might direct readers away from your website to find out for themselves if the information applies to them.

The second challenge is writing content that is informative and in-depth but not dry. Hitting the tone of the articles is, therefore, very difficult, as it is a delicate balance between what may make for a dense read — full of stats, figures and calculations across a variety of fields — and comprehensible enough for a large swathe of the general public to read.

Another small challenge that’s related to this is that the content you’re writing about might not necessarily be one that the writer is themselves knowledgeable about. Thus, bringing a new writer to your team, or hiring an agency to write the article, might require some work on your part to train/inform the staffer fully of the topic and to fact-check the articles before publishing to ensure that they have not misunderstood any numbers or jargon.”

Rhea Henry—Digital Content & Communications Specialist for Energyrates.ca

Insight #2. Find Affordable Writers Who Understand Complex and Highly Niche Info

“I run an SEO agency that works exclusively with contractors. Some of our clients are solar panel installation specialists. 

Our number one issue with getting content written for the solar industry is that we need it in a very specific niche of it that not a lot of people know about, or are at least knowledgeable enough to confidently write about. 

Since our clients don’t particularly want non-work-related solar content on their websites and look for things specific to solar panel installation content, we’ve found it hard to find writers that can meet these needs. We don’t specialize in this specific niche either, so writing the content our selves can be difficult at times.

While we do work with our clients to write it, sometimes they’re so busy that it isn’t possible to do this on a scalable level. We haven’t found a correct solution to this issue either. While we could consult with someone that does this work to do it at a scalable level, the high cost they would charge would more than likely outweigh the benefits.”

Mark Soto—Founder of Contractor Sprout

“The biggest challenge with creating content is that solar is a pretty complex topic. It’s tough to find people who not only know the science, but can also write for our audience.

Also, for the products we talk about, there are not always easily accessible data points showing what types of solar cells they’re using, how long it takes to charge the device, etc., so we often have to estimate or run tests to find the missing information.

For this site, we’ve stuck with a couple of writers who have knowledge of the industry and who have done a lot of research for us already.

A couple of tips:

We got our writers to do some research-intensive posts at the start, so they would have a broad understanding of the basics of how solar and renewable energy works, that they could apply to the other articles.

We created a content calendar that had multiple months of content on it, and then drip-fed pieces to our writers, usually 5 topics at a time. That ensured that they would have constant check-ins with the editorial team as they progressed, but also gave them enough time to work on their own without needing to give them a new topic every day.

We also set up a very comprehensive brief and SOP process, so the writers were almost writing from a template by the time they had gone through our processes and briefs.

Again, fact checking has been the biggest issue, but we’re confident in our team now, and it’s paid off sticking with our experts, rather than using a variety of different writers for this project.

We’re currently on a brief content hiatus as we focus on promotion and outreach, but we posted about 30-35 articles over 5 or 6 months. Not a huge amount on this site, but we’re also managing a few other projects, so we’ve done probably 100+ pieces over the past 10-12 months across our portfolio.”

Insight #3. Keep Up With The Fast Pace of the Industry

“I’m in charge of the marketing at Spirit Energy, a UK based installer of solar PV and battery storage systems. Content is the core part of our marketing efforts – it’s how we communicate with new and existing clients, and demonstrate our expertise..

We publish at least one blog post per week, alongside keeping our knowledge bank and downloadable whitepapers up to date. For me the main challenge in our industry is that things are always changing so rapidly – particularly the technology and government policies. But this also sustains a steady stream of fresh content and keeps us on our toes!”

“I am the Chief Executive Officer of Energy Seek, and as a small business owner who has an in-house team that consistently develops energy-based content, there is one challenge which they face on a regular basis.

In my experience, producing great content in a limited time period is a constant challenge. It takes a considerable amount of time to research a new topic enough for my team to feel confident enough to start creating quality content. This is the same across newsletters, landing pages and social channels.

By building relationships and communicating with others in the field, we have cut our development time in half, amplified our reach and dramatically increased the numbers of people using our service. Give it a try – it works!”

Insight #4. Build Reliable Sources of Data For The Industry

“We create content for Solar Energy based blog for our client where we share everything about Solar & Sustainable Energy. Encouraging users to use more of Solar energy-based products.

We face issues in collecting data and information about solar energy-based products. As of now, we don’t find much content on the web about the same. We take user opinions and feedback regarding Solar Energy usage and why they don’t use it? Based on it, we create and curate content.

Sustainable energy is the future and we believe it everyone will shift towards solar energy and other forms of sustainable energy.”

Insight #5. Win Stakeholder Engagement And Keep Content Production Up

“Our agency, Benson SEO, has worked for years with a large Engineering, Procurement and Construction company and recently with a Geothermal Heating and Cooling company for residential homes.

In our experience, the challenges with creating content for sustainability topics is less about the content creation process, and more about the stakeholder engagement and hurdles of working with a larger company — so more traditional challenges with larger teams. 

With our EPC client, they have a long history, and quite frankly, a lot of red tape in the way of getting new content created efficiently. Lot’s of sign-offs from many stakeholders. 

For our smaller Geothermal heating company, we haven’t had challenges at all. They are a more digitally savvy and agile company, and since their industry is fairly new, they don’t have to find new ways to convey the same messaging, much as you would at an older and entrenched company. We are able to focus on what we do best — researching the content topics their target audience is turning to Google to search for, and optimizing content to match that behavior, while the client can focus on writing the full content pieces. 

We prefer to let the experts write the content based on our research, as that’s been a much better method than trying to write on their behalf, and certainly better than outsourcing. We’re able to write content outlines and optimization for their audience personas at high (What is Geothermal heating?), middle (Geothermal Tax Credits), and low (How much does [Brand Name] heating cost?) funnel levels, and engage with the client on why that matters for content marketing, SEO and conversion optimization.

So really, it comes down to the flexibility and understanding of your client on why content marketing is important for delivering real business metrics like sales and revenue versus just rankings and clicks.”

Start Creating Powerful Content For The Solar & Sustainability Industries

Successful content for Solar and Sustainability businesses is a key part of the industry’s bright future, and now’s the time to start thinking about how you plan to contribute. 

If you’re in the market for a content solution and your business is part of the sustainability industry, we have some good news:

Verblio has writers that can help you.

Seriously, just check out some of our writers’ samples for your industry, and start imagining all the content you can start creating with us:

• The Solar Technologies That Will Change Your Home
• Why You Should Winterize Your Sprayer
• Teaching Kids About Sustainability With Handmade Crafts

We would love to start a conversation with you, even if you’re an agency that needs content for this hyper niche industry. 

The post Industry Insights That Help Solve Solar & Sustainability Content Creation Challenges appeared first on Verblio.

Gardens — and the plants we grow in them — bring joy every day to people all around the world. But where do people go for information on how to grow these backyard havens?

Google. 

(at least these days!)

Which means if you want to stand out as a helpful brand in the garden and floral industries, you have to produce a lot of content. 

And since we still haven’t managed to make content grow from a tree (we’re working on it, okay?), you’ll have to figure out how to fill the pages of your website another way. 

That brings us to our mission: find the biggest content weeds in your niche and show you how to pull them out. To accomplish this, we’ve contacted some experts who have figured out how to cultivate their content, and we’re sharing their tips with you now. 

1. Outsourced Content Quality Can Create Rocky Experiences

“I’ve definitely run into some issues when it comes to content creation. I try to pump out at least one article per week that is extremely high quality and well- SEO’d.

For me, I’ve found outsourcing and creating fresh content can occasionally be difficult, even if you write about something that you’re very passionate about, like me. I have tried to accept content from outsourced writers, but I’ve found that the content is rarely the quality that I create myself.

It can be easy to get burned out when you’re working to create fresh content week after week..

There’s always a massive to do list when it comes to blogging. Weekly newsletters, weekly posts, product creation, etc. can quickly drain the creativeness out of the best of us.

I’ve found that planning ahead helps to ease the pressure and allows me to be more productive and creative.

Once a month, I sit down and have a ‘brain dump’. In a brain dump session, I write down all of the ideas that I can think about for 30 minutes. Some of these are ideas for newsletter topics, some are for blog posts, some are for useful products.

Then, I map out how I want to tackle these ideas over the next month or so. The key to this is to write down everything that comes to mind, even if it seems outrageous or impossible. It can always be tweaked later and made into a manageable or useful product or article.”

2. Nuanced Topics Are Hard To Write Without Personal Experience

“When it comes to plant-related projects like terrariums, it can be a nuanced field. There’s no single “correct” way to do it, and it’s really as much an art as a science. In the end, so much comes down to experience and trial and error – making it very difficult to find anyone qualified to create content on the topic.”

“My team produces 20,000 words monthly for a gardening client and our problem is finding gardening writers that actually have the experience to back up their content. We’ve discovered that many freelance writers apply thinking that anyone can write about gardening, yet delivered work shows no expertise at all. Since there’s no certifications for gardeners, finding true experts takes some time. This is the challenge we have when onboarding new writers.”

3. Prioritize Pictures,Quotations, and Deadlines To Elevate Content 

“Our agency offers an array of services to the Natural Pond, Pool and Custom Garden industries.

Every month, we produce 1-2 articles that are focused on ideal topics for that time of year. For example, because we are based in Chicago, during the winter months we primarily focus on “booking your custom natural pool or custom garden this spring/summer” type of articles from Fall – Spring. This strategy enables us to focus on SEO directed at finding new customers for our clients, providing the opportunities to book their “active” months out well in advance.

We’ve found that seeking experts for collaboration can be difficult within the industry — if you’re looking to speak with a series of “gardening influencers”, this area can be a bit more time consuming than other industries. However, once you are able to solidify quotes and collaborations, it was well worth it!

On top of that, stock imagery for content pieces or social media is usually over-used by the industry as there are only so many stock-images platforms. Because of this, we encourage our clients to take as many photos of their projects as possible. This enables us to share beautiful and one-of-a-kind graphics for promotional and content purposes.”

“We have 4 clients in this niche. We tend to focus on the seasons when it comes to putting together content for our clients in this space, meaning we stick to flowers, plants, and shrubs while providing simple tricks and tips. Winter consists of the normal protective tips, spring for planting, etc.

One challenge many agencies face is getting a client to take pictures that can accompany the article. Before and after (or even step by step pictures) while they’re out doing a job is a struggle.

One tip that has worked well is to mention meaningful associations who might be interested in publishing content that are familiar to the client. When it comes to requesting info, quotes, or pictures, give them a deadline and say ‘we have to have this in by X date or it won’t get published.‘

Another tip is when you have the end of month meeting with these clients, hold the content strategy piece first on the agenda. It will force the client to provide you with what you need to create content before you start talking SEO and it usually shortens the meeting because you should have a hard stop time.”

“As a Landscaper and Social Media Influencer, capturing the best content can be tricky!

It’s taken some time to acquire this formula, but I’ve learned with Before & After pics that the best way to frame/stage the Before photo is after design plans are confirmed. That way, I know what angle will match the best After photo for maximum “wow factor”! This also makes it difficult for any of my team to capture the right photo and puts the pressure on me to get the content myself. 

Then, there’s video content! Editing often takes more time than actually getting the footage.

My social media team has yet to find the proper formula for how the video should be edited. For example: they want something artistic and beautiful when my followers are solely looking for information, so choppy content can be a good thing! 

The most important key to content creation is just do it! Listen to my gut and post every day!”

4. Get Insight From The Experts

“Writing for the landscaping industry is tough because you have to create articles that are technically sound, but are also interesting to readers.

You can’t just shoot from the hip. You have to really involve professionals to create sound articles that are also interesting and also solve questions that readers have.

So we have created a Facebook group of industry pros to help solve this problem.

Most people are unaware of Facebook groups and how they work, and this is an untapped resource that bloggers can use to promote and develop content.

We are members of every group that relates to our industry and we monitor the chatter in those groups ; what people are saying, what questions people have, what topics people are interested in, what’s upsetting or annoying people. Then we create content around those questions and will use those groups to promote the content so it’s a win-win.

This has really helped us stop wasting time on creating articles, blog posts , and videos that nobody cares about.”

5. Balance Information, Entertainment, and Engagement

“My team and I write our own content for the site. We try to publish at least 4 guides a month for our readers.

I personally have years of professional gardening experience, so I’ve got a ton of ideas in my head on what guides to create. But just like with many others, I still do get a writer’s block at times.

I also find it a challenge crafting the perfect message. Because my main goal is for the readers to find gardening a breeze through my guides, I know how confusing it can get when you’re just starting out with gardening. I’ve been in their shoes.

So I want to make sure that everything looks great (from the text to the image) and that I am able to get my message and the information across to the readers properly.”

Peter Miller—Founder of GardeningStuffs

6. Keep Fresh Ideas Flowing

“The gardening and landscaping industry is highly competitive, which is why SEO is crucial for any business in this market to see success. With so much competition, there is an even greater emphasis on the content that we create for our landscaping clients and the topics we choose. 

It can be a challenge to continually think of new content to post on their blog and social media, as much of it seems to have been done before. To combat this, we try to keep the content specific to the uniqueness of the client and focus on brand differentiation. 

Also, this industry is highly dependent on seasonality and geographic location, limiting what content is relevant to particular areas and the given time. For example, you cannot release a piece about growing grass in the fall when everything is beginning to die down. 

However, our agency has had success planning content a few months out so we have enough time to write the pieces and post them when they are timely and relevant.”

If these challenges sound familiar (and you’ve been silently nodding your head as you read through the content above), we have some good news. Digging into gardening, floral, and landscaping content is easier than ever thanks to Verblio’s garden writing services and landscape writing services. 

Just like a garden, every business needs to curate and care for their content if they want to see growth. 

And just like every gardener, we have some prized pieces that we feel show you the best we have to offer:

• Native Plants In 3 Climates Prove Both Low-Water & Beautiful Landscape Designs
• Low-Water, Cost Effective Landscape For 3 Climates

Good things take time, but they also take work. Talk to us and see how our solution can help you make your content beautiful, functional, and worth sharing. 

The post What The Experts Say About Overcoming Garden & Floral Industry Content Creation Challenges appeared first on Verblio.

At the time of this writing, COVID-19 has struck the U.S., unfortunately for the world, the economy, and for many of our clients, fellow companies, and agencies. The silver lining of this less than ideal situation is that we’ve been forced to step back from the mundane, daily tasks and frameworks that may set us in a business rut. We’ve been afforded the unique (once-in-a-lifetime, really) opportunity to rethink and really rewire how we want things to work at work. Podcasts can be a strong motivator to kick you into high gear about other effective ways to run your agency.

That said, pop on one of our top 10 picks of podcasts for digital agency owners when you’re on your daily socially distanced walk, commuting after all this is over, droning out your children’s singalongs, cleaning the house, or cooking your meals.

We took great pains to ensure only the best podcasts for digital agencies were included and some quick information to get you to the podcasts quicker! Enjoy.

1. Smart Agency Masterclass

Jason Swenk is one of the most knowledgable in the business. If you haven’t started listening to his podcast yet, you’ll want to start. The Smart Agency Masterclass interviews amazing guests who have experience running successful businesses and optimizing every corner of the agency. Reviewers say it’s by far the most detailed & value-packed podcast for an agency owner, and if it went away, it’d be truly missed as it delivers real value, every time.

• Host: Jason Swenk, agency coach and former multimillion dollar agency owner
• Release schedule: 2x per week
• Style: Mixed format; Jason Swenk discussing topics, + interviews with occasional guest experts, 20-70 min each
• Episodes / ratings: 300 episodes, 5.0 rating on Apple from 98 reviews, 1 million downloads as reported on Jason’s website
• Recent topics: does your agency have a problem scaling, how much do internal errors really cost your agency
• Must-listens:
  • Should Your Agency Add Content Creation as a Service? (w/ Steve Pockross, CEO, and Paul Zalewski, VP of Marketing of Verblio)
  • How One Agency Grew to $15 Million in Under 10 Years (w/ Eric Vardon)

2. THRIVE Podcast, Your Agency Resource

Kelly Campbell brings decades in the agency business to help creative, media, and technology agency leaders learn how to level-up with this podcast. This could be for more established agencies that need to define ideal clients, implement greater efficiency, and unlock higher margins, or be the guiding light for newer agencies in preaching predictable revenue, growth hacking, and trends in technology to create systems and processes.

• Host: Kelly Campbell, agency transformation coach and former agency owner
• Release schedule: Roughly bi-weekly
• Style: Video, with frequent interviews with guest experts, 15-40 min each
• Episodes / ratings: 69 episodes, 5.0 rating on Apple from 6 reviews
• Recent topics: mind training for agency owners, why clients end agency relationships, peer support for agency leaders
• Must-listens:
  • Planning During a Pandemic (w/ Drew McLellan)
  • Increase Deal Flow at Your Agency (w/ Dan Englander)

3. The Digital Agency Show

Brent Weaver’s mission is to enable agency owners to transform their businesses so they can increase prices, work less, and grow profits. His approach to this podcast (and uGurus) is to encourage agencies to “niche for more riches.” Each interview deep-dives into emotional details, unique insights, and shines a spotlight on nuances of entrepreneurship, brought to life by the thoughtful interviewing and commentary by Weaver.

• Host: Brent Weaver, CEO of uGurus, an elite group of agency gurus and mentors, and educational materials on how to run an agency well
• Release schedule: Weekly, Tuesdays
• Style: Interview style w/ guests every week, 30-50 min each
• Episodes / ratings: 147 episodes, 5.0 rating on Apple from 62 reviews
• Recent topics: the power of illustration in agencies, level up content game, finding success niche-ing
• Must-listens:
  • Content as a competitive advantage (w/ Steve Pockross, CEO of Verblio)
  • Become an exceptional leader (w/ Bob Ruffolo)

4. Build a Better Agency

As the founder of AMI, the Agency Management Institute, Drew McLellan has been a leading voice in the agency thought leadership space for years. He’s been a guest on nearly all the other podcasts on this list and is certainly closest to the “textbook” resource on agency operations (besides, there are 237 episodes of this podcast to dig into!).

Because of this, his podcast would be of value to smaller or larger agencies alike, and all his guests are agency-centric or have an expertise in an area that he believes agency owners need to know more about. His podcast is on the longer side of others on this list.

• Host: Drew McLellan, agency thought leader, works with 250+ agencies directly every year, long-time podcast host and author
• Release schedule: Weekly, Mondays
• Style: Mix of format; Drew McLellan discussing topics, + interviews with guest experts, 30-70 min each
• Episodes / ratings: 237 episodes, 4.9 rating on Apple from 194 reviews
• Recent topics: what agencies don’t know about the PPP program, grow your agency using creative collaboration, how to sell with authority as an agency
• Must-listens:
  • Purpose-Filled Recruitment and Retention (w/ Steve Lowisz)

5. The Agency Trailblazer Podcast—Love Your Agency

Lee Jackson has the admirable goal of helping web agencies fall in love with their business again. His podcast, situated squarely in the WordPress universe, directs agency listeners at any phase in the agency lifecycle on how best to grow their businesses and get back time with their loved ones. Reviewers laud that this podcast keeps them up-to-date on trends, optimizing workflows, business, and tech for WordPress.

• Host: Lee Jackson, agency expert, long-time podcaster, and owner of membership agency community called Agency Trailblazer on Facebook
• Release schedule: Weekly, Wednesdays
• Style: Lee Jackson riffing on different topics, occasional guest, 20-40 min each
• Episodes / ratings: 300 episodes, 5.0 rating on Apple from 30 reviews
• Recent topics: managing your agency finances, productive online meetings, the one-page business plan
• Must-listens:
  • Ideas for Pivoting Your Agency
  • Surviving a Recession

6. Agency Life: Real Stories from MarTech Agency Owners

One of the newer podcasts to the game on the list, Agency Life proves to be catching up fast at 54 episodes strong. Clodagh aims to bring real stories from marketing technology agencies owners to your ears, including “the highs and lows and everything in between of the crazy roller coaster ride of agency life.”

• Host: Clodagh Higgins, ex-HubSpotter, digital agency mentor, coach, consultant, speaker, and author
• Release schedule: Roughly weekly
• Style: Clodagh Higgins riffing on different topics, occasional guest, 20-40 min each
• Episodes / ratings: 54 episodes
• Recent topics: how to create a work from home policy, homelessness to starting an agency, making it easy to manage client relationships
• Must-listens:
  • Learn How to Use Content Creation As A Competitive Advantage for Your Agency (w/ Steve Pockross, CEO of Verblio)
  • Opportunities & Trends For Agencies in 2020 (w/ SEMrush)

7. The Mind of a Marketer

Ryan Stewart brings air-tight SEO expertise to the table with advanced marketing tactics for entrepreneurs & digital agency professionals with this podcast. As he says, he covers “only what’s working in marketing RIGHT NOW.” Reviewers, especially those more frenzied agency owners among us say that among their limited slots for listening to podcasts every week, they always make time for Mind of a Marketer, some going so far as to say episodes are a “true breath of fresh air.”

• Host: Ryan Stewart—sold 2 companies, had 60+ employees, and has helped hundreds of clients grow their businesses through digital
• Release schedule: Sporadic weekly, 1 to sometimes 4 per week
• Style: Ryan Stewart riffing on different micro-topics, occasional guest with specific question, 5-25 min each
• Episodes / ratings: 49 episodes, 5.0 rating on Apple from 10 reviews
• Recent topics: how to offer low-cost SEO services, explode your visibility on LinkedIn
• Must-listens:
  • How to Market Your Agency When You’re Too Busy
  • How to Land Bigger Clients for Your Agency

8. Beers with Max

Max Traylor hosts this unique video / podcast love child with the tagline of “hot topics with a cold one”. Now, Beers with Max is on rapid-fire during the times of COVID-19, hosting nearly all of its content on Max’s LinkedIn Feed. Good for agencies needing to specifically productize better, or agencies looking for more of a “real talk” tone in approaching their business.

• Host: Max Traylor, agency consultant and expert on productizing consulting services
• Release schedule: Roughly weekly, now on LinkedIn for live shows on Fridays
• Style: Max Traylor riffing on different topics with guests, 5-10 min ‘quick bites’ each, longer interviews for podcast
• Episodes / ratings: 5 years’ worth of archive, dozens of comments/engagement on LinkedIn posts, 1,000+ views on a couple
• Recent topics: what makes a great strategic planner, selling expertise vs. hours as an agency, disqualifying prospects
• Must-listens:
  • Why Ideas Die & How to Meet the Minimum Viable Messaging of a Successful Idea (w/ Tamsen Webster)

9. The Digital Agency Growth Podcast

Dan Englander, with oodles of agency experience, hosts leaders in agency-land who tell in-the-trenches stories from agencies across the board, brands you’re familiar with, and technology. This podcast is a must-listen for anyone in an agency, folks wishing business interviews sounded more like real people, and businesses in the B2B space in particular.

• Host: Dan Englander, CEO and founder of Sales Schema, host of The Digital Agency Growth Podcast, former agency employee
• Release schedule: Roughly weekly
• Style: Dan Englander riffing on different topics, occasional guest, sometimes spans mediums like a recording of a webinar in a recent episode, 30-80 min each
• Episodes / ratings: 41 episodes, 5.0 rating on Apple from 6 reviews
• Recent topics: how to sell agency services in uncertain times, forming effective agency partnerships, fractional CMOs
• Must-listens:
  • How To Prepare Your Agency For The Rest of 2020
  • From Selling an Agency to Scaling Dozens of Them (w/ Kelly Campbell)

10. The Verblio Show

Last but certainly not least, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention our own new podcast: The Verblio Show. Our CEO Steve Pockross hosts leaders from across the industry for their insights on marketing, content creation, and the future of work. The Verblio Show is for digital agencies, marketers, SEO wizards, and anyone interested in down-to-earth conversations on the state of the industry—with a dash of levity thrown in for good measure.

• Host: Steve Pockross, Verblio CEO
• Release schedule: 2x per week on Mondays and Wednesdays
• Style: Interviews with expert guests, 15-50 minutes each
• Episodes / ratings: 14 episodes, 5.0 rating on Apple from 25 reviews
• Recent topics: managing and marketing through the COVID crisis, bringing diversity and inclusion to the workplace, how agency CEOs can better scale sales
• Must-listens:
  • How to Lead with Conviction and Embrace Controversy (w/ Liz Giorgi)
  • Our Good Intentions Aren’t Enough – Practicing Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (w/ Dr. Tolonda Tolbert)
  • Why Outsourcing Needs a Modern, Mission-Driven Makeover (w/ Suneet Bhatt)

There you have it! You don’t need me to tell you, but there are loads more digital marketing agency podcasts where these came from, and more starting every day (especially in quarantine!). 

If you’re interested in learning more about how content marketing is part of the winning formula for more (and more valuable) client retainers to build and scale your agency, schedule an upcoming demo with one of our agency specialists to learn more about Verblio’s platform. Verblio’s innovative approach has built successful solutions for 500+ digital marketing agencies atop a unique system to allow writers to succeed and confidently write content that is consistent and high-quality.

The post 10 Best Podcasts for Digital Agencies appeared first on Verblio.

And scary, and difficult, and heartbreaking.

And on top of all that, we have to figure out how to do everything we can to make our businesses survive and (hopefully) thrive.

Since most of Verblio’s business comes from digital marketing agencies, we spend a lot of time thinking about this particular group—understanding what makes them tick so we can create better content solutions for them.

We also get to talk with a lot of agencies through our work, and with many of the experts and advisors who work with them.

No single source has all the answers for what digital agencies and digital marketers should do right now, which is why we’re consulting an array of industry perspectives in our new video series.

Verblio CEO Steve Pockross has been talking with agency experts and thought leaders about how to navigate the current landscape and coming months.

Since every business is different, we’re gathering tips and best practices from a range of voices including agency CEOs, agency coaches, messaging experts, and MarTech and SaaS entrepreneurs.

Helping is the new selling. Do the things that are really genuinely helpful right now because marketing is always something that lays the groundwork for future selling.

-Jeffrey Pease, Messaging Mechanics

These conversations go deep on topics like:

• How to respond in times of crisis
• What it takes to weather recession
• What to do about shrinking budgets
• Planning for the near-term and the unknown
• Staying sane while cooped up indoors

Check out all the interviews here.

Follow Verblio CEO Steve Pockross on LinkedIn to get these videos in your feed here.

The post Our new video series with agency experts appeared first on Verblio.