Scaling content creation is hard. If you work with content and you’ve had a hand in managing a large-scale content project, you know what I’m talking about.

Most people don’t realize how difficult it is until it’s too late. It sneaks up on them mid-project and sends the campaign into a downward spiral that eats time and money, and even threatens its viability.

What’s worse, some project managers don’t find these issues until the project is completed and the content is published. That’s when the real problems start.

As the founder of Crowd Content, one of the Web’s most mature content writing services, I’ve seen a lot high-volume content projects. Some through our platform. Some elsewhere. Some were executed well, while some not so well.

These mammoth projects usually consist of product descriptions, location-based articles or blog posts.

The good news is, scaling content creation can go smoothly with the right preparation, process and team in place. When this happens, organizations create large amounts of high-value content that achieves their goals, such as increased SEO traffic or higher conversion rates.

In this post, I’ll share the lessons I’ve learned along the way and some tips for avoiding the most common, and deadly, pitfalls when managing large-scale content projects.

Too Much, Too Fast, Too Bad

I’m putting this one first because it highlights a fundamental issue that is commonly overlooked. Most project leaders underestimate the resources needed to properly review content production as the project begins.

In general, they also underestimate the importance of this first phase.

The result is large amounts of poor content that either need to be revised, rewritten or unpublished (if you’ve made it that far). It also causes headaches for your editors and adds unneeded frustration for the entire project team.

Sometimes, the content isn’t even that bad. It was created by good writers who put in a valid effort to get it right. However, lack of feedback translated into a green light from their perspective so they just kept going as is.

For example, maybe a key concept in your style guide wasn’t communicated well or was misinterpreted. If something like this isn’t caught and clarified early, you could be staring at a hundred or a thousand units (yes it happens) that need to be revised.

The point is this:

If project teams take time and effort before the project starts and in its early stages to plan, prepare, monitor production and provide feedback, they’ll save hours of work and potentially thousands of dollars down the road. Not to mention, they’ll produce better content.

To avoid having your high-volume content project crash before it takes off, consider taking these steps:

Start Slow

Even if you do have a solid team ready to review production as the project gets going, take it slow at first. Your goal in this first phase is to develop each writer and editor into a reliable contributor who understands your style guide and requirements.

To achieve this goal, these workers need detailed feedback early. Even small errors that could easily be fixed by your QA team should be sent back and explained in this phase. Direct the worker to the specific part of the style guide that describes the issue.

Don’t worry. You won’t be doing this the entire project. You’re doing it now as a training exercise so that as the project ramps up, these writers and editors can create content on autopilot that meets project requirements. That’s where you want to be, but it doesn’t come without this dedicated effort in the early stages.

More From Clayton: How To Create eCommerce Content at Scale

Remove Poor Performers Early

Ideally, writers and editors can be groomed in this early stage and blossom into reliable performers. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, especially with high-volume jobs where you’re working with anywhere from 30 to 100 different workers. Every project is not for every writer or editor.

If your team identifies a worker who isn’t a good fit, you may want to remove them from the project now before you ramp up. If you don’t, you (and the rest of your team) may pay for it down the road with extra work editing or sending back revision requests when the volume picks up. Writers like this can wear down editors, too, meaning that subpar work can start to squeak through and could end up being published.

Run a tight ship and keep your standards high. It will pay off in the end.

Implement Soft Blocks

At Crowd Content, we use a feature called the “soft block”. Although it’s built into our platform, you may be able to implement it on your own in another way if you aren’t running your project at Crowd Content.

The soft block is an automated tool that stops a writer from claiming and submitting too many units before that writer’s work has been properly reviewed. It essentially forces new writers to “prove” themselves before gaining full access to the project.

For example, a typical soft block is set at five units. If a new writer joins your project, s/he will be allowed to claim and submit five units. At this point, s/he will not be able to claim any more jobs. However, once those five units have been reviewed and accepted, the soft block is automatically released and the writer can continue to claim and submit work.

We find this tool works wonders, especially in high-volume situations. It’s the insurance we need to keep the gates open and scale while still vetting new talent on the way in.

The Calibration Phase

Here’s another key concept straight out of our playbook at Crowd Content. We call it the calibration phase.

Calibration is basically everything I explained above wrapped into one coordinated process. The goal is to test your workforce, style guide, price points and overall requirements, then tweak as needed before hitting full speed.

The mastermind behind the Crowd Content calibration round is Lisa Rohner, our Director of QA and Enterprise Production. To give you some more specific information, I asked her how many units she typically includes in a calibration round and if she had any other guidelines for other project leaders out there.

Here’s what Lisa had to say:

There’s no real average for the length of calibration, as it really depends on how complex the project requirements are. But what remains standard is that the FIRST round is very small – usually around 1% of the total project words.

• If the project consists of 500 articles, buying guides, blog posts, brand/category pages, etc. that are 500 words each, we’d probably do five pieces.
• If the project consists of 500 product descriptions at 50 words each, we might do 50.
• If those 500 PDs are 100 words each, we might do around 25.

However, I would never start calibration doing more than 100 to 150 items max. Let’s take our recent client [NAME OMITTED] for example. I believe we started with 150 pieces, which was roughly 0.25% of the overall batch. From there, we moved to 1.000 (around 1.67% of the total batch), then we did another 1,000 and then onto full launch.

That first round is supposed to be really fast — dipping your toe into the water, so to speak. It’s where we’re SUPPOSED to make mistakes. We’ve been fortunate in that most of our projects haven’t gone more than one calibration round, but for those that do go badly, you want to mitigate your risks right out of the gate because you know you’ll have to redo all the work if things go badly. That can really slow things down AND eat away budget.

Once the client has had a chance to review, we debrief on what went well and what went badly. From there, we tweak the project brief and:

• If we were way off the mark, we would revise the batch and do another batch of the same size.
• If we were close but not quite there, we would revise the batch and increase the next batch — perhaps double the size.
• If we were right on the money, calibration is over and we go into full launch.

The max number of calibration rounds I’ve ever had to do for any project was three. I do think if you don’t have it right after three rounds, it’s time to really step back and take more drastic action. You might need to try a different kind/caliber of writer, or take the project brief apart and rebuild it (give it more information, structure it differently or just add more examples), etc.

Production Is Crawling and What We’re Producing Is ‘Meh’

The second major issue about scaling content creation I want to discuss in this post is when your production slows to a halt and the few pieces you are seeing do not meet your requirements.

In other words, nobody wants to work on your project. And those who do don’t meet the required qualifications.

This happens often enough, and it usually means the price you’re offering does not align with the work required to meet your project requirements, or your project is too complicated.

In these cases, it’s important to think of the entire freelance writing world as a marketplace. Writers and editors have various work opportunities available to them around the Web — for example, at platforms like Crowd Content, with direct clients or at general freelance marketplaces such as Upwork.

Each of these work opportunities has its own unique levels of effort and skill required and a certain price point. Some are more complex than others and some require more research, while some are easy and straightforward. Some are priced well and some pay pennies.

The top freelancers, especially, have choices and will naturally work on the best-paying projects, while avoiding the more complicated or lower paying projects.

The point is this:

To avoid having your project trickle along at a snail’s pace, consider taking these steps:

Use Calibration to Test Price Point

As mentioned above, price point is important on large-scale projects — for the freelancers, but also for you. Your company has a budget in place and every penny counts when you’re adding up thousands or hundreds of thousands of units.

One way to make sure you’re in the green zone is to test pricing during your calibration phase (mentioned further up in this article). When doing this, make sure to talk to some of your writers and editors to get their feedback. Try to find out how much effort or time your workers need to deliver what you’re asking.

If you get this step right, you’ll put your team in a good position to succeed  by having access to a strong group of writers and editors who are happy to eat up as much work as you can offer.

Try Not to Overcomplicate Your Requirements

Every project is different. In some cases, by nature, it’s just flat out complex. I get that. But, in most cases, we can do ourselves and our freelancers a favor by simplifying requirements as much as possible.

Sometimes, this just comes down to making your instructions, style guide or project brief clear and concise.

I’ve seen project briefs that were so complicated, messy, unnecessarily long or poorly written that you couldn’t even get through them, let alone read and understand them. In these cases, freelancers run for the hills.

Put yourself in the mindset of putting your best foot forward to attract the best writers and editors out there. Use short sentences and short paragraphs, and rephrase key concepts several times until you find the most concise manner in which to explain them.

By nature, instructions and requirements create “friction” that can deter top notch workers. Do your best to reduce the friction, and you’ll have top talent commit to your project for the long-term.

Keep Reading: Lessons From Writing 100,000 Product Descriptions

Use Technology to Increase Hourly Rates

I’ll let you in on a little secret in the freelance writing world. Smart writers and editors don’t care about price per word or price per unit.

All that matters is how that translates into an hourly rate.

Especially with longer term high-volume projects, the freelancers working on your gig do this full time. They most likely have accounts at several marketplaces and platforms around the Web. As they work throughout the day, they track their hourly rate on each job.

Here’s a quick example:

• Your project pays $30 per for a 500-word blog post, which is the rough equivalent of 6 cents per word. Because of the research involved, writers can complete one unit every 2 hours, achieving an hourly rate of $15 on your project.

Compare that example to this:

• You need 50-word product descriptions written, and you’re paying 5 cents per word. Most writers can complete a minimum of 10 per hour. Their hourly rate nets out to be $25 per hour.

Knowing this, you can do other things to help your freelancers increase their hourly rate than just upping the price per unit or per word.

One way is to streamline their workflow. In other words, make it easier or faster for them to create and submit content to you.

Often, you can make improvements in this area using technology.

Lots of little tasks can mean huge time losses for freelancers or brands if they aren’t managed in the most efficient way possible.

Consider a short writing project where the client wants a sentence or two written, and the research and writing only takes about 2 minutes. You might think freelancers can complete 30 an hour, making $1 each a great rate. If the process you use to get work to and from freelancers adds substantial amounts of time, you eat into productive earnings capability. Even if the process to pick up and deliver each piece only takes 45 seconds, the freelancer can only complete 21 items per hour rather than 30.

That’s less work people can do for you and less money they make per hour on your work. (Hint: that makes your work less attractive, so you won’t pull the best talent).

Leveraging the right technology tools to reduce this “unproductive” time is one of the best ways to ensure everyone benefits. And it’s not just true when you’re working with freelancers. Enterprise and brand teams can also spend a lot of time on mundane tasks that generate no revenue.

One example is a team using Google docs to general long product descriptions. The team might opt for Google docs as an inexpensive, accessible resource that lets them add formatting, edit on the fly, and leave comments.  While it sounds great, it comes with a lot of extra labor.

First, they have to spend time managing links to all this work. They’ll also likely have someone take the work from Google docs and put it into a format for uploading onto an eCommerce solution. If the team has 400 products to manage and it takes 3 minutes to complete that final process, they’ve added 20 unnecessary hours to the work.

The right content management platform lets you create, comment and edit within a single, automated workflow. Once the work’s done, you can save those 20 hours by clicking a button for an export.

Another way to help workers increase hourly rates is to provide more information. For example, you may have a project where writers need to search the Web to find a product and then write a description of it.

If you provide writers with a URL that goes directly to each product, you eliminate the need for them to search for it.

Yes, this may result in additional time or costs for you when preparing inputs, but the benefits may be worth it. In cases like this, you’ll need to run your own calculations to see what makes sense for your specific project.

Support Rigid Formats with Technology

Does your large-scale content project require writers to submit content in a very specific format? If so, you’re in for a big challenge.

I’ve seen a few projects like this. Here’s an example:

Start with one paragraph that is between 100 and 150 words. You must use the primary keyword in this paragraph. Your second paragraph should be about three sentences long, but no more than 300 characters. Next, add exactly seven bullet points listing the main features.

As you can imagine, with multiple writers working on your high-volume project, it can be a real nightmare trying to keep everyone on track and submitting content that meets this specific format.

Usually, your editors and QA team end up spending hours requesting revisions from the writers or revising the format themselves. Overhead like this slows production down big time and still doesn’t catch all the errors.

At Crowd Content, we use a feature called “Layouts” that helps us eliminate human error and automates quality control with these detailed formats.

Layouts is a drop and drag tool that lets the project team create a custom input form where writers will enter their content. It lets you add individual fields that represent a specific section of your content template .

You can also add a snippet of instructions that appears directly beside that field, so that writers don’t miss it.

The best part? For each field, you can set rules or guidelines, such as character or word count limits or even a mandatory keyword.

If we were building a Layout for the example above, we’d add a field for the first paragraph and set the word count rule to minimum 100, maximum 150. We’d also set a rule that our primary keyword has to be mentioned in it.

Then we’d add another field for the second paragraph, with a maximum character count of 300. Finally, we’d add seven text fields for the seven bullet points, with a rule that each must be filled in.

As writers enter their content into these fields, they can see red and green indicators that let them know if they’ve met the requirements for each or not. If the requirements have not been met yet, the system won’t allow them to submit the content.

Using a tool like this takes a huge load off of editors and QA, while also making things more straightforward for writers.

If you aren’t using Crowd Content for your high-volume content project, consider how you might develop something similar to help control the inputs of your writers. You may not be able to build something this sophisticated, but even just a template to follow might streamline workflow and shave off a few minutes from each content piece. Across hundreds of thousands of units, this adds up to a lot of time and money saved.

Knowing What You’re Up Against Is the First Step

Properly assessing your project and acknowledging the challenge ahead is the first step toward successfully scaling content creation. When project leaders underestimate the task at hand, they risk derailing a massive “content train” that costs organizations thousands of dollars and days of wasted time.

By taking the time early in your project’s life to plan, prepare and test, you can successfully execute your large-scale content project. Doing this reduces overall time and cost, while also resulting in higher quality content.

Start slow, price it right and use some technology along the way to speed things up. Always be concise. And, please, keep your project brief as simple as humanly possible.

If you follow these tips and give your project the attention it deserves, you’ll be putting your organization in a good position to succeed and achieve its content goals.

The post Scaling Content Creation: What Can Go Wrong and How to Mitigate the Risks appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Your Dashboard makes it easy and quick to see what’s happening with your recent content orders.

Recent Activity

Easily view recent activity on your account. We’ve added intuitive icons that tell you when orders are placed, picked up by writers, dropped by writers, or ready for review. Simply hover over an activity item to see quick actions you can perform for that order.

Order Status Shortcuts

Just above your recent activity, we list all orders you currently have for each status. Just click on a status, like “Ready” for example, to see all orders that currently have that status.

Easy Access to Create Orders and Add Funds

You’ll notice that the green Create Order and Add Funds buttons are shown in the same place on every page. This makes it easy to find these commonly used actions, saving you time and frustration.

Featured Blog Posts

We’re starting to publish more and more great content at our blog, Crowd Content Resources. On your Dashboard, we list the 4 most recent blog posts to keep you updated on content marketing trends, how-tos, and Crowd Content updates.

Notification Menu

A new feature we’ve added is the Notification Menu. You can view this menu by clicking on the small “notepad” to the right of your account balance.

The Notification Menu keeps you up to date on all happenings with your account. For example, we’ll add new notifications when you receive messages from writers or when orders become ready for review.

Help Menu – Your Customer Success Manager

Click the “question mark” icon that is next to the Notification Menu to view your dedicated Customer Success Manager’s contact info.

All clients at Crowd Content get a dedicated Customer Success Manager regardless of how big or small you are. Use your account manager to help with system support or to give guidance on content strategy.

My Account Menu

In the top right of your screen, you’ll see your profile image or a default image if you haven’t added a profile image. Click this image to view your My Account Menu.

You can manage your account and navigate to important areas of the website from this menu. Here is a list of the menu items described:

• Edit Image (hover over image) – allows you to add a new profile image or crop your existing one
• Add Funds – allows you to add funds to your account
• Account Information – allows you to update your contact information
• Deposit History – shows you the funding history on your account
• Low Funds Notification – allows you to set a low funds threshold. If your account balance falls below this amount, we will send you an email notification
• Change Password – allows you to change the password on your account
• FAQ – brings you to the frequently asked questions from Crowd Content clients
• App Directory – allows you to install apps and connect your Crowd Content account to partner services
• Sign Out – safely signs you out of Crowd Content

Writer Management – Profile Images and Pen Names

One of the biggest upgrades to the new Crowd Content platform is the way you see and work with your writers.

For every writer you interact with, you see their profile image and their Pen Name. You can also hover over a writer’s image anytime you see it to bring up a mini writer profile.

When viewing the writer’s profile, you can see his or her rating (from 1 to 4 stars) and perform the following key tasks:

• Blacklist Writer – blacklisting a writer means that the writer will no longer have access to any new orders you post
• Send Direct Order to Writer – this automatically takes you to a new order form with the writer pre-selected. The new order will then be sent directly to this writer.

My Content – A Comprehensive Order Management Tool

This tool not only lists your orders, but allows you to perform advanced filtering actions and organize your content into folders.

Quick Actions Give You More Control

Hover over any order to see available actions for that order. Quickly Copy, Edit, Pause or Delete an Order. Or view the History of that order to date.

Progress Indicator

Easily see how much progress your writer has made on your order. The percentage shown is based on the number of words written by your writer as a percentage of the maximum word count you specified for the order.

Note: the progress indicator is replaced with the rating you gave the writer for that order once the order is Completed.

Colored Status Labels

We make it easy for you to know what’s happening with each order by listing colored status labels. As you use Crowd Content, you become familiar with the colors and know quickly what status each order is in.

Robust Filtering Options

The filtering options here are flat out amazing. Filter by:

• Status – see only orders in a certain status, like “Ready” for example
• Folder – see only orders in a certain folder
• Quality – see only orders placed at a certain Quality Level
• Writer – see only orders from one or multiple writers
• Rating – see only orders you gave a certain rating to. For example, view all Completed orders that you rated as Excellent. Then use those writers for future work.
• Date – see only orders from a certain date range

You can also combine any of the above filters together to mine deeper into your content. To clear all filters, simply click the refresh icon to the right of the date range filter.

Batch Controls Save You Time

Click the check boxes to the left of the orders to perform batch controls. Current batch controls available are Accept, Delete, and Pause.

Drag and Drop to Organize Content into Folders

Want to move a content order to another folder? Easy! Just hover to the left of the check box on any order and then click and drag the order to a folder on the left.

Condensed View for Power Users

Are you managing a lot of content? We make it easy for power users to get the job done. Click the button with 4 lines on it to the right of “Display” in the top right.

This brings up a condensed view that lets you see more orders at one time. Despite the view being condensed, you don’t lose any functionality. Simply click the “gear” symbol to the right of any order to access all available actions for that order.

Chat with Your Writer – Communication Is Key to Project Success

We’ve made it easy to communicate with your writers by offering an instant messaging feature. Chat with your writer while you review his first draft and let him know what you think. This feature also helps when one side needs to clarify the instructions, limiting needed revisions and saving you valuable time.

Folders

Folders help you organize your content orders.

If you have several websites, or have a large website with several sections, you can create a folder for each website or section.

If you’re an agency, create a folder for each of your clients.

Advanced Order Management – Even More Control!

As you may have noticed, a big theme built into Crowd Content is maximizing control over your ordering and management processes.

After placing an order, enjoy the following tools that give you full control with every content order you place:

• Edit Orders – edit an order provided that it is still in Placed status. Edit an order to change the word count, title, instructions, or anything else. The only thing you can’t edit as of now is the Content Type (from Custom to Tweets to Facebook Posts).
• Pause Orders – this simply puts the order on hold without deleting it. You can then unpause the order when you’re ready to put it live again. Note: if you pause an order that is “Being Written”, the order will not be paused unless/if the current writer drops the order.
• Copy Orders – click Copy if you want to create an order with similar details as a previous order. By clicking Copy, an order form will appear with the exact same details and instructions as the order you clicked Copy from. You can then make any changes you want and place the order as a new order.
• View History – clicking History will show you the status history of the order. For example, it will show you when the order was placed, picked up by a writer, dropped by a writer, ready for review, and completed. This can help when trouble shooting an order.
• Delete Orders – you can delete any order that is still in Placed status.

A Sophisticated Content Ordering Form

Content Type – Order Standard Content, Tweets or Facebook Posts

With most other platforms, there is no specific Content Type for Tweets or Facebook Posts. You have to request a large word count range and then ask the writer to create as many Tweets or Facebook Posts as they can within the word count. This is confusing and lacks quality control; character counts are not monitored.

At Crowd Content, we’ve introduced the Content Type. You now have the following content types to choose from (Note: several more Content Types now exist):

• Custom – if you want a blog post, product description, article, page for your website, or any type of content other than Tweets or Facebook posts, choose Custom.
• Tweets – choose this type if you want Tweets for your Twitter campaigns. When writers are working on Tweets, all character counts are monitored and are guaranteed to be between 15 and 140 characters.
• Facebook Posts – choose this type if you want Facebook Posts for your Facebook page. When writers are working on Facebook Posts, all character counts are monitored and are guaranteed to be between 100 and 300 characters.

Order Type – Open to Crowd, Team, or Direct with Writer

The order form makes it easy to send orders directly to your preferred writer(s).

Choose Open Order if you want to make your order available to all qualified writers (based on your order criteria).

Choose Team Order if you want to make your order available to a team of writers you have created.

Choose Direct Order if you want to place your order directly with a preferred writer.

More Control over Processing Time

If you have an order that requires a lot of research or extra work, you can give your writer extra time. Simply open the Advanced Options and then adjust the Processing Time.

App Directory – Your Workflow Just Got More Efficient

We’ve partnered with some pretty big names to connect your content with services you already use.

After installing an app on your Crowd Content account, you can use it by going to the Tools and Apps tab of any Completed order. From here, you can use your apps to send completed content to partner services.

Currently, the App Directory has the following apps:

Shopify

Shopify has everything you need to create your own ecommerce store. Our app connects your Crowd Content account directly to your Shopify store. To use this app, you need to have a Shopify account.

The app allows you to:

• Order content for Product, Brand or Category Descriptions, Blog Posts, or other
• Automatically publish completed content to your store (no copying or pasting!)
• Manage thousands of Product Descriptions with ease (no spreadsheets!)

WordPress

WordPress is free web software that allows you to create a beautiful website or blog. Connect your Crowd Content account to your WordPress website or blog to:

• Automatically send completed content to your blog or website (no more copying or pasting!)
• Set content to draft status or to publish instantly
• Manage multiple blogs or websites by connecting multiple WordPress accounts

Constant Contact

Constant Contact helps small organizations grow their businesses by providing email, event, and other online marketing tools. Use the Constant Contact App to:

• Send completed content directly to your Constant Contact account
• Create a new email campaign for your completed content

MailChimp

MailChimp makes it easy for marketers to send email newsletters, manage subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. Use the MailChimp App to:

• Send completed content directly to your MailChimp account
• Create a new email campaign for your completed content

HootSuite

HootSuite is a leading social media dashboard that helps you manage and measure your social networks.

Crowd Content is fully integrated with your HootSuite account. After connecting your Crowd Content account with your HootSuite account, you will be able to place, review, and accept Crowd Content orders from within your HootSuite Dashboard!

Use the HootSuite App to:

• Automatically send completed Tweets, Facebook Posts, or other content to your HootSuite Dashboard
• Send completed content to streams like Twitter, Facebook and WordPress from your HootSuite Dashboard

My Schedules – Automating the Content Creation Process

Looking to automate your content creation process? Is the scheduling tools built into Crowd Content.

To create a new schedule, simply create an order and enable the schedule for that order. Then, to view and manage existing schedules, click on My Schedules in the main header.

To learn more about scheduling orders and to learn best practices for using the scheduler, please read Automating Content Creation: 5 Best Practices for Using Schedules.

The post Crowd Content Platform – Base Features appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Today, we have good news. We just released a new feature that lets self-serve clients have any existing content edited and proofread by professional editors on the Crowd Content platform.

The feature is easy to use, and the way you place an order for editing and proofreading services is similar to the way you already place writing orders.

How to Order Editing and Proofreading Services for Existing Content

Create Order

Hover on the “down arrow” of the green Create Order button in your Crowd Content client account. You’ll notice there is a new order type listed in the dropdown menu called Editing & Proofreading.

Click Editing & Proofreading to continue.

Add Existing Content

At the top of this order form, select a Folder for the order. On the next step, use the tools to add the existing content that you would like edited.

You can add your existing content in three ways:

Text

Copy and paste your content into the text area provided. When done, click Upload Text.

Upload

If you have a doc or docx file, use the Upload tab to upload your file. After you have selected your file, click Upload File.

HTML

This option is for adding content with HTML. Copy and paste your HTML into the text area provided. When done, click Upload HTML.

Note: If you would like to add formatted content, please use the Upload or HTML options. Using the Text option will omit any formatting.

After uploading the content, you will see a preview of the content you have added. Review to ensure the content has been added properly. You can also review the word count at this point.

Enter Instructions for Editor

Just like when you place a writing order, you can provide instructions and extra information to the editor to guide him or her so that the finished product meets your needs.

Different clients have different goals when having their existing content edited and proofread. Because of this, focus on providing clear and concise instruction to your editor so that he or she understands exactly what you’re looking for.

Fill out as many of the supporting fields as possible. These fields, like Publish URL, Example URL(s) and the Advanced Options, ensure that you and your editor are on the same page.

Select a Word Count Range

The order form will automatically suggest a word count range based on the content you have already added. However, if you’d like to adjust that word count, you can do so here.

In this section, you can also select which editor(s) will have access to your order.

You have three options: Open, Team, or Direct.

Open

The order is available to all qualified editors. The first editor who decides to claim the job will be the one to review your content.

Team

The order is only available to editors you have placed on a Team that you created in the “Writers” section of your account before you placed the order.

Direct

The order is only available to a single editor that you select.

If you haven’t worked with an editor before or have not arranged anything with your Customer Success Manager, we recommend selecting Open. All editors in the pool have passed a thorough application and test specific to editing and proofreading, so your content will be in good hands.

Place Your Order

Review your information, click Place Order, and you’re done!

What Happens Next?

Your order will be available to the editor(s) you selected.

If you selected Open or Team, the first qualified editor interested in the job will claim it. If you selected Direct, it will go directly to that editor.

The editor will then review the content for correct spelling, grammar and formatting and anything else you listed in your instructions.

The editor will correct any issues found and submit the content back to you for final review and acceptance.

At this time, you will have the option to accept the content or send it back for revision. If you send it back for revision, the editor will revise based on your feedback and then submit it back to you for review. This workflow will continue until you are satisfied with the content.

Feedback?

We hope this new editing and proofreading feature will help you improve any existing content that you may need a second set of eyes on. If you have questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to contact your Customer Success Manager or the support team.

The post Editing and Proofreading Services for Existing Content Now Available appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Editors can help in many ways, from fixing grammar and syntax errors that slip through to keeping brand voice and tone consistent across content pieces submitted by multiple writers. Using a professional copy editing service can add a level of polish that will make your content stand out.

At Crowd Content, we now make it easy for self-serve clients to add editing and proofreading services to their content orders. Doing this assigns a professional editor to the job who reviews for spelling, grammar, flow, logic, structure and formatting, while also ensuring that the initial writing instructions have been followed.

How to Add Editing and Proofreading Services to Your Content Order

There are two ways to add editing and proofreading to your content order on the Crowd Content self-serve platform. You can choose to:

1. Add editing and proofreading when creating your order
2. Add editing and proofreading when reviewing the writer’s first draft

We’ll walk you through both methods below.

Adding Editing and Proofreading when Creating Your Order

Create Order

As you normally would, click the green “Create Order” button in the top right corner of your screen. You can also “Copy” an existing order.

Select “Yes” for Editing and Proofreading

Begin filling out the order form as you normally would. Below the “Pricing and Word Count” section, you’ll see a new section called “Editing and Proofreading”.

Click “Yes” to add this service to the order.

Choose an Order Type

The Order Type determines which editor will review your content after the writer has submitted his/her first draft. You have three options: Open, Team, or Direct.

Open

The order is available to all qualified editors. The first editor who decides to claim the job will be the one to review your content.

Team

The order is only available to editors you have placed on a Team that you created in the “Writers” section of your account before you placed the order.

Direct

The order is only available to a single editor that you select.

If you haven’t worked with an editor before or have not arranged anything with your Customer Success Manager, we recommend selecting Open. All editors in the pool have passed a thorough application and test specific to editing and proofreading, so your content will be in good hands.

Note: Remember that you will also select an Order Type for the writing portion of this order in the “Pricing and Word Count” section. Don’t get these two areas confused. You can mix and match Order types in both areas to meet your needs. For example, it’s okay to place a Direct writing order, but then select Open in the Editing and Proofreading services section.

Place Your Order

Complete any additional sections of the order form as needed. Then, click Place Order Now and you’re done!

What Happens Next?

Your order will first go to the writer you have selected (or to the first writer who claims it, if you selected Open or Team for the writing portion).

Once the writer has completed the first draft, it will move to the Editing and Proofreading process. If you selected Open or Team, the first qualified editor interested in the job will claim it. If you selected Direct, it will go directly to that editor.

The editor will then review the content for correct spelling, grammar and formatting and will also review the content to ensure it matches the original writing instructions you gave the writer.

Your editor will correct any issues found, and if the content needs significant changes, send the content back to the writer for revision. The writer will then make changes and submit the content back to the editor for review.

When the editor is happy with the content and feels it meets your expectations, the order will be submitted to you for for final review and acceptance.

At this time, you will have the option to accept the content or send it back for revision. If you send it back for revision, it will go to the editor first. The editor can then make the required changes or send it back to the writer if that is more appropriate.

Adding Editing and Proofreading When Reviewing the Writer’s First Draft

In this case, you have already placed a writing order without Editing and Proofreading services. The writer has completed the first draft and submitted the content to you for review.

Click “Send to Editor”

Beside the Accept button, you’ll see a blue button that says “Send to Editor” Click this to bring up the Editing and Proofreading services screen.

Choose an Order Type

Just like in our first example, you’ll need to select which editor will work on this order. You can select Open, Team, or Direct.

View this same step in the first part of this article to see full instructions.

Enter Instructions and Click “Send to Editor”

If you have specific instructions for the editor, you can enter them here. When you’re ready, click the green “Send to Editor” button.

The content is now off to the editor for review.

View the “What Happens Next?” section of this article above to learn more about the next part of the process.

Who Are these Editors, Anyway?

Great question. Although Editing and Proofreading is new to the self-serve marketplace, we’ve been running large-scale editing projects for Enterprise customers at Crowd Content for the past year and a half. These projects range from product descriptions to blog posts and everything in between.

During that time, we’ve slowly built a trusted group of professional editors who can get the job done. We know they’re top notch because they’ve been successful with our most demanding Enterprise customers, and our in-house production team closely monitors this group to ensure only the best editors (who produce results) stick around.

Now, we’re simply giving our self-serve clients access to this group of editors through the platform.

Feedback?

We hope this new set of features helps you and your team create better content more efficiently. If you have questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to contact your Customer Success Manager or the support team.

The post Editing and Proofreading Services Now Available for Self-Serve Clients appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

————–

In an ongoing effort to encourage authentic, relevant discussion, we’re rolling out the following updates.

Updates are based off of feedback from contributors and partner blogs. All updates are intended to align with our primary objectives to:

1. Help our partner blogs build vibrant communities, and
2. Provide a positive and fun environment for contributors to earn rewards

Updates for July 22, 2016 include:

• Added New Awards: Introducing Fresh and Prime comments

• See a “leaf” or “lightning bolt” icon at the top of a thread? That thread is in Fresh or Prime state
• Leave a comment during either state and get 10 coins instantly
• Each contributor can only earn one Fresh or Prime award per thread (not both)

• Made Milestones and Rank Simpler: Milestones now only earn Rank, not Coins

• Because earning 3 or 5 Coins didn’t feel meaningful, Milestones now just contribute to your Rank
• Ranking up earns Coins

• Rebalanced Rank Up Rate: Updated rate points are earned to next Rank

• Each Rank up now generates 25 Coins
• Rank is important! Some Milestones, Awards, and other actions unlock at certain Rank levels

• Rebalanced Coin Value: Because Coins are easier to earn now, the value has been reduced

• 100 Coins is now worth $10
• Coin conversion will take place on Thursdays. Email support@crowdcontent.com when you’ve reached at least 100 Coins to have them converted on the following Thursday!
• To help with the transition, we’re increasing current Coin balances on all accounts by 2.5X immediately!

• General Notes:

• We will continue to adjust the model based on feedback from contributors and partner blogs
• Some Milestones that were being abused have been capped or limited in other ways
• We will continue to add new Milestones and Awards — (Milestones and Awards for authors are coming soon!)

If you are a contributor, please remember to read and understand the Commenting Guidelines before participating.

Thank you for your continued participation in Crowd Comments! As always, please email any feedback to support, or leave a comment below.

The post Crowd Comments Updates – July 22, 2016 appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

We’re calling it Crowd Content Community, an easy-to-use commenting platform with built-in gaming elements that encourage and reward positive community-building behavior.

The first gaming elements were released this week in the form of Awards and Coins.

What Are Awards?

Awards are achievements you earn as you participate in the Community. We’ve introduced a collection of Awards representing various activities and outcomes that surface in a typical blog community. As you participate and make progress in these Award categories, you reach Milestones.

It’s a simple system, but there are some formulas working “under the hood” that help us reward high-quality contributions more heavily.

In other words, not all Awards are based on your activity alone. Some Awards represent positive outcomes that your activity has created.

For example, leave a comment, and you’ll move closer to your next “Comment Count” Milestone. Leave a comment that others Reply to or Vote on, and you’ll also progress in outcome-focused Milestones like “Reactions Received” or “Replies Received”.

These outcome-focused Awards represent the behaviors, or strings of behaviors, that are likely to grow a community and help it thrive. Because of this, outcome-focused Milestones and Awards tend to be weighted more heavily when it comes to the number of Coins you earn for progressing through them.

The more you can get others involved, the more you’ll be rewarded.

What Are Coins?

Virtual currency, “Coins” can be redeemed for real-world rewards, like cash in your Writer Account.

You earn Coins as you achieve Awards and Milestones. You also earn Coins as you increase your Rank (A.K.A. your overall status or “level”). You can view progress towards your next Rank by hovering over the gold crown.

In future updates, we plan to add a Rewards Store where you can redeem Coins for rewards other than cash. At this stage of beta, however, you can redeem Coins for cash in your Writer Account (view “How It Works” in the Community tab of your Writer Account to learn more about redeeming coins).

The way Coins are redeemed and valued is likely to change in the future. This is just a starting point. The platform is in beta, so you should expect it to grow and change as we learn what works and what doesn’t. Our goal is to create a balanced system that is rewarding and sustainable.

How Can I Maximize the Number of Coins I Earn?

As we’ve hinted at already, users who are able to create positive outcomes will be more heavily rewarded. These positive outcomes are results that indicate the community is growing and thriving.

Over the last year, we’ve researched community growth by interviewing community managers, surveying community members, and analyzing the results of our own prototype for this platform (early users will remember the Community version that used Social Points as a rewarding mechanism).

Through our research, we’ve identified several outcomes that add value to a community, helping it grow and become vibrant. Some of these outcomes include:

• Inspiring discussion (receiving replies to your comments)
• Breaking the ice (being the first commenter, leading to more discussion)
• Making meaningful conversation (receiving upvotes, or sometimes downvotes, on your comments)
• Developing relationships (working together to spark, or maintain, discussion around a topic)

By rewarding users who help produce these outcomes, we hope to create a positive environment where users can engage in fun, candid discussion about the content on our blog. The intended result is an added layer of user-generated content below each article that adds value for the reader and enhances their content experience.

Get Involved and Send Your Feedback

If you’re a writer at Crowd Content, you can get started right away by browsing content on our blog and leaving some comments (login with your Writer Account email and password). The best way for us to optimize the new platform is to get people using it and hear their feedback, so the more participation early on, the better.

We’re always open to hearing about what works, what doesn’t, what you like, and what you don’t like, so please don’t hesitate to voice your opinion. You can leave any comments or questions you have below this article, or email us at writers at crowdcontent dot com.

Now comment onward, have fun, and be rewarded!

The post Now Earn Coins with Crowd Content Community (BETA) appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

A few weeks ago, I decided to explore the issue in an article titled, Engaging Content: How to Define and Create It, published on the Content Marketing World blog.

In the end, I argued that engagement occurs when the content is personally relevant to the audience, and when it’s crafted in an interactive way that causes the audience to think deeply.

However, this was just one man’s opinion (mine). To get the bigger picture, my team and I headed to what may be the most authoritative content event on the planet, Content Marketing World 2015.

We asked the 3,500 content marketing professionals in attendance what they believe the secret to producing engaging content is.

Watch the video above to see what they said! Hopefully, you can take a few tips and some inspiration to help your organization produce engaging content through the end of 2015 and into 2016.

What Do You Think? Tell Us Below!

Now it’s your turn. Do you agree with me, or with what was said in the video? Leave a comment below with your take on what makes content engaging. We want to hear your opinion!

The post Secrets to Engaging Content Exposed at CMWorld 2015 appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Skip directly to the Complete Guide for Using Campaigns (Beta)

Today, Crowd Content released the beta version of Campaigns. Campaigns is a tool that helps marketers organize and automate their entire content strategy.

Campaigns allows marketers to plan their content calendar weeks, months, or even years in advance. The tool then automatically places content orders with your team of writers according to the schedule you have created.

Campaigns makes it easy to add different content streams to your calendar such as blog posts, tweets, Facebook posts, ebooks, or white papers.

You can pre-assign each piece of content to a specific writer or set each piece on a first come first serve basis for your writing team.

Have a list of titles or keywords that you need content written for? Bulk upload tools make it easy to add hundreds of titles in minutes. The calendar then schedules each title as a separate content order on the days you want them.

Need to make changes to your content calendar after scheduling it? Bulk edit tools allow you to edit several content orders at once. A bulletin board also lets you communicate with your entire writing team from one place.

Combined with our publishing apps, Campaigns will significantly reduce the time it takes for marketers to plan, schedule, approve, and publish content. Completed content can be sent directly to your website. You can also export content with full HTML coding or export in bulk to a CSV file.

Campaigns truly does make managing and executing a robust content marketing strategy easy for brands and agencies. To learn more, view the tutorial below or contact us today for a live demo.

Complete Guide for Using Campaigns (Beta)

Below is a complete guide with screenshots on how to use the beta version of Campaigns at Crowd Content. Because Campaigns is currently in beta, you will need to request access to this section of the platform by clicking “Campaigns” in the top navigation bar and then contacting your Client Account Manager.

If you’re new to Crowd Content, then you should check out the Quick-Start Guide for Crowd Content Clients.

Guide Contents

1. Campaigns Video Tutorial
2. Creating a New Campaign
3. Create a Campaign Brief and Default Settings
4. Select Writers for Your Campaign
5. Schedule Content for Your Campaign
6. Launch Your Campaign
7. Monitoring Your Active Campaign
8. Editing Scheduled Content Orders

1. Campaigns Video Tutorial

2. Creating a New Campaign

Click on Campaigns in the top navigation bar of the site. Click Create New Campaign to get started. The site will walk you through an easy Campaign set up wizard which we outline in the following steps.

3. Create a Campaign Brief and Default Settings

Every Campaign has a Brief and a group of Default Settings.

Brief

The Brief should cover your high level objectives and guidelines for all content that will be created in the Campaign.

Give your Campaign a name, upload a logo for your Campaign, and outline your general guidelines in the Campaign Overview section.

You can also upload an attachment for your Campaign. You may want to do this if you have a more detailed set of guidelines in an existing document.

Default Settings

Specifying your Default Settings will save you time when adding content orders to the Campaign.

These settings will be automatically applied to all new content orders added to the Campaign going forward. However, you will have the option to change any of these settings at the time of adding each new content order – these are only default settings.

Most of these settings are optional, but you will at least want to select a default Content Type. Select Custom for any type of content other than tweets or Facebook posts. For example, for articles, blog posts, press releases, ebooks, and white papers, you should select Custom.

The other settings in this section are the same settings you would find on the normal order form at Crowd Content. These settings tell the writer what you are looking for. Specify any settings that you feel will apply to most content orders added to this Campaign. If you’re unsure about any of the settings, leave them blank.

Remember, these are only default settings – you will have the option to change them when adding any new content orders to the Campaign.

When you’re happy with your Campaign Brief and Default Settings, click Save and Continue.

4. Select Writers for Your Campaign

On this step, you select which writer or writers will have access to the content orders in the Campaign.

This will be a default writer setting for the Campaign, but you will be able to adjust your writer settings for individual content orders if you wish.

To select writers, choose between Open, Direct, or Team Order.

Open Order

If you don’t have any preferred writers yet at Crowd Content, you may want to start your Campaign with Open Orders. This means that your content orders will be available to all qualified writers at the Quality Level you select.

For example, if you choose Open Order > 3 Star, only 3 and 4 Star writers will have access to your content orders.

Direct Order

If you have a specific writer you want to work with on this Campaign, choose the Direct Order option.

The writer search tool will appear and you can select your preferred writer.

While in the writer search tool, you can view a writer’s profile by clicking on the blue square icon in the bottom right of their listing. The profile will show you useful statistics, samples, and previous ratings for that writer.

Team Order

If you have a group of writers you want to work with on this Campaign, choose the Team Order option.

A list of your existing writer teams will appear. Hover over a team name to see a snapshot of the writers on that team.

Simply click on a team name to select that team as the default writer setting for content orders in this Campaign.

Don’t have any teams yet, or want to create a new team? Click the blue Create New Team button in the bottom right.

Give your new team a name and click Save. A label for your new team will then appear in the left column under Teams in the writer search tool.

To add writers to your new team, you have two options. You can select multiple writers using the checkboxes on the left of their listing and then click Add to Team at the bottom left. Select your new team and click Save.

You can also drag and drop writers into any team by clicking and holding to the left of the checkbox on any writer listing.

When you’re done adding writers to your team, click the green Save and Continue button. This will take you back to the team select page. Simply click on the new team name to select that team.

Once you have your team selected for this Campaign, click Save and Continue.

5. Schedule Content for Your Campaign

The final step of creating your Campaign is to schedule your content calendar. This is the fun part!

On this screen, you’ll see your content calendar on the left and a list view of scheduled content on the right. To start, your list view will be empty because you have no scheduled content yet.

To add content orders to your calendar, you have a few options. Click on any date on the calendar, Quick Add, Upload File, or Paste In.

Quick Add

The easiest way to add a new content order to your calendar is by clicking Quick Add. This will bring up the form to request a new piece of content.

Alternatively, you can just click on any date on the calendar. This will bring up the same form, but will have the date you clicked pre-selected as the Place Date for the content order.

You will notice that your Default Settings are already applied to the content order. Your Order Type (Open, Team, or Direct) will be pre-selected along with your Quality Level (pricing level).

You can change either of these settings at this time if you wish.

You should then add a Title for this content order, select a Word Count, and add the instructions for this specific order. Your instructions tell the writer how to approach this content piece.

The rest of your Default Settings can be view and edited by clicking Advanced Edit in the bottom left area of this order form.

You can easily set this to be a recurring content order by clicking the dropdown menu beside Repeat Order?

You can choose to have it repeat Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly.

You can even specify an end date for the recurring order. Choose to have this recurring content order end after a certain number of titles (occurrences) or on a specific date.

After you’re happy with the settings and instructions for this content order, click Save Order.

The content order will then be scheduled as per your settings. If you’ve set it on a recurring schedule, you will see all future occurrences of the order listed on the calendar.

Hover over the icons on the calendar to see details about that order.

Upload File

If you’ve already created several titles and saved them into an Excel file, you can use the Upload File option to add them to your content calendar.

You are then brought to the same content order form that we saw with the Quick Add option. The difference here is that the settings and instructions on this form will apply to all the titles in the batch you are adding.

Just like the Quick Add, all of your Default Settings will already be set on the form when it opens. You can change any of those default settings now if you wish (remember, you can see all settings by clicking Advanced Edit).

When you’re happy with your instructions and settings, you need to decide if you want to place all of these titles on the Place Date or schedule them over several days.

If you want to place all of the titles on the Place Date, click the Yes button beside Place all on Place Date?

If you want to schedule them into the future, leave the Place all on Place Date selection to No and use the Repeat Order tool.

Use the dropdown menu to select Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly.

IMPORTANT: The system will automatically set your schedule to end after the number of titles you are adding in this batch. For example, if I am adding 3 titles in this batch, the system suggests to end the schedule after 3 titles. You can change this suggested setting if you wish. However, if you schedule past the number of titles in your batch, your titles will be repeated after each title has already occurred once. In other words, the system will just keep running through your list of titles over and over again until the schedule ends.

Paste In

Another easy way to add multiple titles is with the Paste In option.

A large text area will appear when using the Paste In option. Paste your list of titles into the area.

Each title should be on a separate line.

Click Add Titles.

Just like the Upload File option, you will have a chance to review the list of titles, edit them, or add more titles if needed.

When you are happy with the list of titles, click Save and Continue.

At this point, you will go through the same steps as explained in the Upload File section.

6. Launch Your Campaign

After your content calendar is scheduled, you’re ready to launch your Campaign.

Click Save and Continue.

A confirmation box will appear asking if you want to launch the Campaign now or pause it and activate it later.

To launch immediately, click Activate Campaign Now.

To pause the Campaign and activate later, click Activate Campaign Later.

You can also see your dedicated account manager’s contact information on this pop up. This is just a reminder that you can reach out to your account manager at any time for help with Campaigns or any other part of the Crowd Content platform.

TIP: If you aren’t ready to schedule any content at this time, you can skip the scheduling step and still finish creating the Campaign by clicking Save and Continue. You will be able to add content orders to your calendar later on when you are ready.

7. Monitoring Your Active Campaign

Now that your Campaign is active, you can monitor it from the Campaign home area.

To go to the Campaign home, click on Campaigns in the top navigation bar of the website. If you only have one Campaign, its Campaign home will automatically show when you get to this page.

If you have multiple Campaigns, you can select the Campaign you want to monitor by clicking on the dropdown menu in the top left corner of this page.

On the Campaign home, you will see the following areas:

Bulletin Board: Here, you can add messages that all writers in your campaign can see. This is a great tool for announcing updates to guidelines or for motivating your writer team. If they’re doing a great job, let them know! Writers in your Campaign can also post to the Bulletin Board if they have general Campaign questions.

Campaign Logo, Brief, and Default Settings: You can view all these elements on this page and can edit them at any time.

Default Order Type (Writers): Here, you can edit your default writer settings.

Upcoming Content: This list shows you content orders that are scheduled to be placed soon. You can edit any of these upcoming orders by clicking on them.

Active Content: This list shows you all content orders that are Placed, Being Written, Ready for Review, or Completed. You can see the writer’s progress on Being Written orders and see the ratings of ones that are Completed. Click on any piece of Active Content to view it.

Mini Calendar: In the bottom left, you’ll see a mini calendar that shows all of your scheduled content in a month view. You can flip through different months using the left and right arrows. Hover over any content icon to view details about that piece of content.

Pause or Activate Your Campaign: Controls exist in the top right corner of this page to either Pause or Activate your Campaign. You can also Delete a Campaign, but only if it does not have any Active Content in it.

8. Editing Scheduled Content Orders

After scheduling your content calendar, you may need to make edits to the details of certain content orders.

It’s easy to change the Place Date, instructions, or other settings to a single content order. Simply locate that order on your calendar or Upcoming Content list. Click on the content order to bring up the same form you saw when you created the order.

Here, you can make changes to any of the details. You can also click Advanced Edit in the bottom left to see more options and settings.

Editing Multiple Content Orders (Edit Series)

If you want to edit several content orders at one time, you can click Edit Series in the top right corner of the edit form.

This will take you to another view that shows you all the titles in that series.

This view will also display the schedule settings you have in place for the series.

You can make updates to the schedule to change the dates that orders in that series will place on.

When you’re happy with your changes, click Update Order.

IMPORTANT: The system will ask you if you want to update all content orders in the series or just this and all future content orders in the series. It’s important to understand that if the initial content order you clicked on to edit occurs in the future after other upcoming orders, selecting Following Orders will NOT update any content orders before the one you initially selected to edit. If you want to update every content order in the series from today going forward, select All Orders.

Request Beta Access to Campaigns

As noted, Campaigns is currently in beta. If you are interested in using the Campaigns tool, please contact your Client Account Manager to get full access. If you’re new to Crowd Content, please create a client account here or contact us for more info.

The post Crowd Content Launches Campaigns (Beta) to Automate Your Content Strategy appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Curtis from Crowd Content explains what you can do with orders that are placed, but not being written yet. Learn how to Edit, Pause, Copy, or Delete a placed order. You can also view the History of a placed order to know exactly when it was placed and if it has previously been claimed by a writer who may have dropped it.

The post Feature Friday: Options Available for Placed Orders appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Two weeks ago, I asked the question, what is quality content?

In the article, we heard from four bona fide content marketing thought leaders. We also checked out some pre-existing research on the question and heard from you, the audience, in the comments section.

Overall, it was a great exercise. We heard some amazing answers giving insight on what the term quality content really means.

But we didn’t stop there. Last week, we asked the same question to 2,500 marketers at Content Marketing World – one of the largest and most respected content marketing conferences in the world.

The response from everyone in attendance was amazing! High profile marketers were digging deep to really explain what they believe quality content is.

I mean, sure, it probably helped that we were giving away some hip content marketing tee shirts in exchange for a comment, but the sincerity was admirable and what came out of it was inspiring, to say the least.

But, don’t take my word for it – watch the video yourself to see how the attendees of CMWorld 2014 define quality content.

Thank You to CMWorld Attendees!

We want to thank all participants for getting in front of the camera and providing such passionate responses! In particular, we’d like to thank the following participants who were featured in the final video:

Dan Rosenbaum, Center Ring Media
Meredith Millman, TELUS Communications
Jay Baer, Convince & Convert Digital Marketing Advisors
Michael Raybman, Reactor Media
Heidi Cohen, Actionable Marketing Guide
George Rafeedie, Tell Your Story Brand Communications Inc.
Cindy Valladares, Tripwire
Trey Pelz, Clear Entertainment and Marketing Group
Lauren Moskowitz, Marketo
Celia Brown, SAP
Primoz Inkret, Business Media
Kimberly Collins, Wonderlic
Kevin Michalowski, US Concealed Carry Association
Lauren Martinez, American Greetings
Janet Tyler, Airfoil
Helena Dobbins, Airfoil
Dayna Rothman, Captora
Jen Konecny, NotYourMamasMarketing.com
Andrew Bredenkamp, Acrolinx
LaToya Smith, Brass City Media, Inc.
Brandi Rice, Allegion
Karl Bear, Cassel Bear
Chris Peterson, SnapApp
Patti Boerger, Freddie Mac
Vicki Kreher, Southern Illinois University
Sarah Skerik, PR Newswire

Do You Agree?

Do you agree or disagree with the attendees of Content Marketing World? Let us know your opinion in the comments below.

The post What Is Quality Content? #CMWorld Edition appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Skip directly to opinions from Rand Fishkin, Robert Rose, Marcus Sheridan, and Heidi Cohen.

“Just frequently publish high quality content.”

Have you heard that one before? If you work anywhere near digital marketing, I know you have.

It’s hard to find a content marketing presentation or blog post that doesn’t promote the value of high quality content.

And there’s good reason for it. Most professional marketers would agree that frequently publishing high quality content really can improve your brand’s reputation, help you build an engaged audience, and generate revenue for your company.

So, what am I getting at?

Well, the problem isn’t in the advice itself, but in how it’s being communicated. It’s the way such a key term — quality content — is being mentioned as if it’s a given.

giv·en
noun: given; plural noun: givens
1. a known or established fact or situation.

Let’s be honest. The particular elements that make up quality content are far from obvious or established. If they were, creating awesome content would be easy and more than 42% of marketers would report their content efforts as effective.

What this tells me is that we’re ahead of ourselves. We need to slow down and develop some guidelines around what quality content really is before we keep telling everyone to publish it.

Through this study, I’d like to challenge the content marketing industry to dig deeper and establish some clearly defined, measurable elements of quality content. I want to know if, together, we can develop a scorecard, blueprint, or checklist that helps marketers create better content.

In other words, can we create a repeatable process?

Quality Content Isn’t a Batch of Blueberry Muffins

Look — I know that a formula for creating quality content isn’t going to be straightforward. I know it’s quite subjective, leaving tons of room for opinions, contingencies, and “grey area”.

It’s not like a recipe for baking your favorite muffins. There are no set ingredients or easy to measure quantities.

Therefore, we probably have to accept that crafting a perfect formula for quality content may not be possible.

That’s okay, though, because perfection isn’t really the objective here. Progression, however, is.

Simply going through the exercise of analyzing the key elements of quality content and attempting to define them and measure them should propel our understanding of what quality content actually is and, more importantly, how we can create it on a consistent basis.

Where to Start? Let’s Gather Information

As with any good study, it’s usually a good idea to gather some information and see what’s already out there. What kind of theories already exist? How far has existing research come to answer the questions we’re asking?

Well, I did some Googling for terms like “what is quality content?” and “quality content scorecard”, and I did find a few other people in exploration mode.

Matt Fellows of Geary LSF wrote this article in March of 2014 expressing a similar frustration for the lack of definition around the term quality content and sharing five techniques he believes when used can help create worthwhile, sharable content.

Matt makes a great point saying that “‘quality content’ is usually identified retro-actively” and then asks the real question of “how do you anticipate what content will be effective and what won’t?”

He then goes on to promote valid best practices such as defining your audience, serving a purpose, and “knowing what you’re talking about”. All in all — very solid information, Matt, but I’m still left yearning for a definition that’s more specific.

Kathy Wagner of Content Strategy Inc. posted here about a content scorecard they use to find strengths and weaknesses in their clients’ content. She, as we have above, also recognizes the issue of subjectivity when assessing content quality.

She mentions, “a content scorecard, like all heuristic reviews, is subjective. The quality of the findings is dependent on your expertise as a content reviewer.”

Kathy then at Content Strategy Inc.’s blog that explains their process in more detail and provides an example content scorecard. A few of the “scored” areas are “content is organized logically”, “content is chunked into distinctive content types”, and “content is easy to scan–it does not need to be read in entirety to know what it’s about”. (I couldn’t agree more with that last one).

The criteria do share some really strong insights as to what quality content might be. However, they seem more focused on content strategy and overarching issues as opposed to the content itself. I’m still left wondering what a scorecard dedicated to assessing the quality of an individual content piece would look like.

I did find a handful of other articles discussing, to some degree, what quality content is, but the research is still bare considering the importance of the term, in my opinion. Therefore, we continue forward!

What about the Experts? Can They Help?

My next step on our journey toward defining what quality content is was to ask the experts. I wanted to hear what a few highly followed content marketing thought leaders had to say about it.

But, before I go any further, you may be wondering how I defined “expert” and what makes the individuals below qualified to comment on what quality content really is.

To be honest, I don’t have a very specific answer to that question. I simply contacted four well known content marketing supporters who I felt would have varying opinions on the matter. You can do your own research on each thought leader in order to make your own judgements on how reputable their responses are, but each have given highly respected presentations at high profile content marketing events, like Content Marketing World and MozCon.

I asked each expert the following question:

In one breath, can you tell me what you think the most important component to quality content is?

They answered with:

Rand Fishkin
Founder – Moz

The most important element of quality content is empathy. Content creators need to put themselves in the shoes of those who will consume their works – feel their pain, experience their problems, ask their questions, live inside their heads, and then build content to help them.

Robert Rose
Chief Strategist – Content Marketing Institute

The most important element of content quality is to create “meaning” to [your] audience. Marketers have been taught (by practice) to describe the “valuable thing”; and do so in varying clever ways. But Content Marketing now requires marketers to create original content that goes beyond simply describing the valuable thing – and to instead create the value within the content itself.

Marcus Sheridan
President – The Sales Lion

The goal is NOT to “sound smart” when it comes to content marketing. Rather, your obsession is with communion. You get them. They get you. And trust now has a chance to begin.

Heidi Cohen
Chief Content Officer – Actionable Marketing Guide

The key to quality content is to provide information that your target audience needs, finds useful, and can consume easily. To this end, create of a set of marketing persona that represents your audience to help craft effective content based on your core market and their influencers, the type and format of information they seek, and the connected device(s) they used to consume the information.

What Do You Think?

After being introduced to some early theories on what quality content really is and hearing what the experts have to say, what’s your reaction? Do you agree with what’s being said or have a different opinion?

I want to hear what you think quality content is.

Give us your two cents by leaving a comment below or, better yet, stop by booth #26 at Content Marketing World next week and tell us in person. We’re giving away designer t-shirts and contest entries to anyone who stops by to tell us what they think quality content is.

Where Do We Go from Here?

I’m still interested in collecting more qualitative research — more answers to the same question I asked our experts. Much of this will be collected at #CMWorld.

The qualitative research interview seeks to describe and understand the meanings of central themes in the life world of the subjects.

– Wikipedia

After getting more opinions, we’ll look for trends in the results and share them with you in a follow up post. These trends should act as a foundation for further defining what quality content really is and for learning how we can create it on a consistent basis.

The end goal is to publish a thorough guide on creating high quality content — one with clearly defined elements and actionable advice any marketer can follow to improve his or her content marketing efforts.

The post Defining Quality Content: Do You Know the Answer? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Previously, we only offered PayPal as a payment solution. Although you were still able to use a credit card by checking out as a “guest” through PayPal, some clients asked us to offer a direct credit card method.

Pay with Credit Card or through PayPal

Now, when adding funds to your Crowd Content account, you will see the following screen:

If you would still like to use PayPal to fund your account, simply click the “Pay with PayPal” button and you will be taken through the same process as before.

If you want to pay with credit card, click the “Pay with Credit Card” button and you will see a form like below:

Using this form will allow you to pay with credit card without ever leaving the Crowd Content website.

100% Secure Solution from Payment Leader, Stripe

This credit card form is 100% secure and is provided by credit card payment leader, Stripe.

Stripe is used by thousands of businesses online, including several Fortune 500 companies. You can view businesses who already use Stripe in their customer gallery.

You will also notice there is a “Save Card” option on this form. This simply means that your card details will be saved on Stripe’s secure servers. When you make a future payment at Crowd Content, we will ask you if you want to use the saved card, meaning you don’t have to re-enter your card information every time you make a payment. You can easily clear the saved card at any time.

Contact Your Account Manager with Any Questions

We hope that this new payment option provides more convenience for some of our clients. If you have any questions about these updates, please don’t hesitate to contact your Client Account Manager. Thank you!

The post We’ve Added More Payment Options appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Today, Crowd Content announced a partnership with Outbrain, the Web’s leading content discovery platform. The partnership allows Crowd Content clients to create high quality content and then promote that content all from one easy to use platform.

“Creating awesome content that speaks to your audience is only one part of the process”, says Crowd Content’s Founder and CEO, Clayton Lainsbury. “We wanted to offer our clients an easy way to get their content in front of their target audience, and Outbrain provides that solution.”

A Single Platform to Create and Promote Quality Content

The advantage for content marketers is that they can now execute more of their content strategy from a single platform.

Crowd Content already provides a simple and intuitive interface that lets clients reach and manage a stable of freelance writers. The platform is also integrated with WordPress, HootSuite, and Shopify, allowing clients to automatically send and publish completed content to such destinations.

The Outbrain partnership adds another key angle to the ecosystem, letting users create, transfer, publish, and then promote the content they’ve created with Crowd Content.

Seamless Integration Makes Promoting Content Quick and Easy

The Outbrain promotion option will be included in a set of quick action buttons that are presented to users after a piece of content is completed.

After clicking the option to “Promote via Outbrain”, clients enter campaign details into a simple form. The form captures key information like the content’s published URL, the client’s budget for the campaign, and how long the campaign should run for.

Client’s can also target by country. Selecting United States and Canada, for example, enables the content to only receive traffic from those countries.

Targeted Traffic from the Web’s Most Reputable Publishers

Wondering where the traffic comes from? Outbrain is working with some of the largest and most reputable publishers on the Internet.

Websites like CNN, Fox News, Hearst, and Fast Company have placed the Outbrain recommendation widget near their existing content. As visitors read the content at these sites, the widget shows them ads for the content being promoted through Outbrain.

The ads (usually an image and title) link back to the published content at the Crowd Content client’s website.

Essentially, these reputable publishers are “recommending” the client’s content to their readers.

Contact Us to Learn More

Existing clients can learn more by contacting their Client Account Manager. If you aren’t a Crowd Content client, send us an email or give us a call for more details.

Contact: Kristin Izumi
Crowd Content Media Inc.
1-888-983-3103
Visit the Crowd Content website
Follow Crowd Content on Twitter or Facebook

The post Crowd Content Partners with Outbrain to Send Targeted Traffic to Your Content appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

We’re happy to introduce the My Writers section and Direct Order Offers.

My Writers: A Comprehensive Set of Writer Management Tools

Look at the main navigation of your client interface and you’ll see a button for the new My Writers section of your account.

In My Writers, you can see all writers you’ve ever worked with at Crowd Content. You can also add and remove writers to your Favorites list or your Blacklist, create writer Teams, and leave notes about specific writers.

Favorites list and Blacklist

Up until now, you’ve only had the Blacklist to work with. We’ve now added a Favorites list, too.

If you Blacklist a writer, that writer will not have access to any of your future orders.

If you add a writer to your Favorites list, you can easily find that writer again by going to My Writers and clicking on the Favorites label on the left.

Also, when placing an order, you can make it available to only your Favorite writers by clicking Team Order and selecting Favorites. Our system automatically creates and maintains this Team for you as you add and remove writers from your Favorites list.

Creating and Managing Writer Teams

In the My Writers section, you can now create Teams. This can be very handy for ongoing blog projects or for large batches of product descriptions.

To create a Team, simply click Create Team on the left area of the My Writers section. Enter a name for your Team and click Save.

You then have a few different ways you can add writers to your Team:

1. Drag and Drop. When in My Writers, hover your mouse over a writer’s profile. You will see four vertical dots to the left of the check box inside the writer’s profile. Click and hold your mouse on the dots (you will see “cross hairs” when in the right spot) and then drag the writer to the Team you want him or her on.

2. Add from Writer’s Profile. You can add writers to a Team, Favorite them, or Blacklist them from anywhere on the website. This is done using the writer’s profile which pops up whenever you hover on a writer’s image. To add a writer to a Team, bring up a writer’s profile and click on the “three person” icon. You can then add the writer to one or more teams using the check boxes.

3. Use Batch Select to Manage Multiple Writers. When in My Writers, you can use batch select options to Select All or to select multiple writers. Then use the batch controls at the bottom of the page to Favorite, Blacklist, or Add to Teams.

Leave Notes about a Writer

We’ve added the ability to leave a note about a specific writer that can help you identify him or her in the future. This note is for the client only and is not viewable by the writer.

To add a note to a writer, bring up their profile and click on the “paper” icon on the far right. Then click into the text area to write a note. Simply click off of the text area to save the note.

You will then able to see the note quickly later by just hovering on the blue paper icon.

Direct Order Offers: Pricing Flexibility when Working Directly

Before, if you were placing a Direct Order with a writer, you were forced to pay the price of the Quality Level that the writer was currently at.

For example, if I wanted to place a Direct Order with Conrad Richards, who is a 4 Star writer, I had to pay the 4 Star price of 12 cents per word.

Although our 4 Star writers are proven, skilled authors and worth this rate, we realize there are situation where both the client and writer would like to engage at a lower price. For example, for ongoing jobs that become routine or jobs with simply requirements, writers are willing to work at a discounted price.

We listened to feedback from both clients and writers to bring you Direct Order Offers.

Make an Offer to a Writer

Direct Order Offers start out on the client’s side. Now, when on the order form and selecting Direct Order, clients have the option to “Make an Offer”.

To do this, select Direct Order, choose a writer, and then scroll down to the pricing section of the order form. You’ll see a blue text link that says “Make an Offer”.

Click this link. Then, click a Star to choose a pricing level different than the writer’s normal rate. Then place the order.

This will send a Direct Order to the writer, offering it to them at the price you’ve selected.

Writers Counter Offer or Accept

If the writer is happy with your offer, he will simply accept it and then start writing your order.

However, if the writer feels differently about the job in question, he has the option to counter offer. For example, if you offered a 4 Star writer a job at 2 Star pricing, he may counter offer at 3 Star.

The writer also has the option to send a note with his counter offer to explain why the pricing doesn’t work for him in this situation.

After a counter offer from the writer, the client has the option to accept, counter again, or edit the order (delete it, change to an Open Order, send to a Team, or place a Direct Order with a different writer).

Thank You and Keep Sending Feedback!

As always, we want to thank our clients and writers for the continued feedback. It’s your passion for creating great content that helps us to continue improving the Crowd Content platform. Please keep the comments coming and enjoy these new features.

The post New Features: Writer Teams and Flexible Pricing on Direct Orders appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

We’re happy to announce the launch of our new product description creation and management tools.

Using these new tools, ecommerce stores can reduce the time, effort, and cost spent on writing, re-writing, and managing product descriptions.

Highlights include:

• Access to pre-screened, high quality writers
• CSV uploader lets you create thousands of product description orders in minutes
• Import all or some products from your Shopify or BigCommerce store in seconds — individual orders for each product are automatically created
• Publish completed descriptions to your Shopify or BigCommerce store with 1 click
• Quickly review completed descriptions and provide writer feedback

This article explains how the new product tools work and how to use them. First, we’ll show you some how-to videos. Then, we’ll walk you through the process step by step with screenshots.

The Shopify and BigCommerce integrations are highlighted in this article. If your store is hosted on a platform other than Shopify or BigCommerce, don’t be discouraged. We’ll be rolling out similar integrations to other major platforms in the coming months. In the meantime, if you are not with Shopify or BigCommerce, please use the CSV upload tool.

Skip directly to the Complete Guide for Using the New Product Description Creation and Management Tools.

How-To Videos: Product Description Creation and Management Tools

Watch how easy it is to place orders for unique product descriptions with our talented writers. Upload a CSV file or use the Shopify and BigCommerce import tools.

You can place a batch order for thousands of product descriptions in less than 5 minutes.

The video below displays our powerful product management tools. Quickly review completed product descriptions to ensure they meet your needs. Easily request revisions if needed.

If you’re a Shopify or BigCommerce user, simply click a button to publish the new product description to your store. No more copying and pasting!

Duplicate Content Penalties from Google Make Unique Product Descriptions Critical

Before we look at the new product tools, I’ll touch briefly on why having unique, high quality product descriptions has become so important for ecommerce stores today.

Over recent years, Google has developed what is called a duplicate content penalty. In other words, if Google detects content on your web page that was published on another site first, your web page won’t get close to page 1 of the search results.

If Google detects a large amount of duplicate content across your website, even pages with unique content on your site could start to suffer. Duplicate content essentially brings down the quality of your entire website in the eyes of Google.

The problem is that most ecommerce stores simply re-use the same product descriptions that were passed down from their manufacturer. This can get you into big trouble.

Tip #2 of this article at KISSmetrics takes it a step further saying that using product descriptions from manufacturers “can guarantee your site will be banned from the search engines.”

Like Mark Hayes of Shopify says in tip #4 of this blog post, copying and pasting product descriptions from your manufacturer’s website can be detrimental to SEO performance.

He emphasizes, “Always re-write every single product description to ensure that it is unique and search engine friendly.”

Why Writing and Re-Writing Product Descriptions Is a Major Pain Point for eCommerce Stores

Most ecommerce stores understand why quality, unique content is important for their website, but the reality is that many stores struggle with the product description writing and management process.

The problem is that most stores do not have skilled copywriters on staff. On top of that, if you have hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of products, it could take months for a single writer to finish the job.

Even if you are outsourcing the work to a team of freelance writers, the management involved with exporting thousands of products from your store, sending them to the writers, and then reviewing and finally re-importing them to your store can be daunting.

Crowd Content has attempted to solve this pain by providing stores with a highly skilled team of writers and management tools that make importing, exporting, and publishing easy.

Complete Guide for Using the New Product Description Creation and Management Tools at Crowd Content

Below is a detailed guide for using these new product features. If you’re new to Crowd Content, then you might also want to read our Quick-Start Guide for Crowd Content Clients.

Summary:

1. Create an Order for Product Descriptions
2. Select Description Type and Writer Quality
3. Add Your Products
4. Provide Instructions and a Word Count for All Products
5. Provide Instructions or Word Counts for Specific Products
6. View Product Description Orders in My Content
7. Review and Accept Orders
8. Automatically Publish to Your Shopify or BigCommerce Store with 1 Click
9. Export Completed Product Descriptions to a CSV File
10. Publish Blog Posts and Website Content to Your Shopify Store

1. Create an Order for Product Descriptions

When signed in to the Crowd Content platform, you’ll see a green Create Order button in the top right area of your screen.

Clicking Create Order will initiate an order for Custom content. Instead, you want to hover your mouse on the down arrow on the right side of that button.

This will load a dropdown menu with more content types. Simply click Product Descriptions to get started.

2. Select Description Type and Writer Quality

The first page you see asks you to select a Description Type and Quality Level.

For Description Type, you can choose between Re-Write and Fresh.

Choose Re-Write if you have existing product descriptions that you need re-written. This is commonly used when re-writing descriptions that were copied from a manufacturer’s website. Your writers will create unique content for each product while maintaining the original message of each existing description.

Choose Fresh if you have new products with no content yet. Your writers will create engaging descriptions that entice your visitors to buy your products.

For Quality Level, you can choose between Standard and Professional.

Selecting Standard will offer your product jobs to all or most qualified writers on our platform. Higher level writers will still have access to these jobs, but there is no guarantee that they will claim them.

Selecting Professional will offer your product jobs to only the best writers on our platform. These are writers who have proven themselves by consistently performing well over time and receiving high ratings from other Crowd Content clients.

After making your selections, click Continue.

3. Add Your Products

This is the fun part. We give you a few different options for adding your products.

Type In

If you don’t have a lot of products, you might want to use the Type In method. This is a simple form that lets you type in the critical information for each product such as its name, URL, and any existing content if doing Re-Writes.

If you have more than a few files, you’ll want to use either the File Upload or Shopify and BigCommerce Import options, shown below.

Upload File

The File Upload option allows you to import products using a CSV or Excel file. This is ideal for high volume jobs if you are not a Shopify or BigCommerce user.

The key columns that you want in your file are Product Title (name), Product URL, and Previous Content (if doing Re-Writes).

If your file has column headers, select the box that says “Skip First Row“.

After adding your file, we will show you the data in that file on the screen. You must then label the columns so that we know what information is in each column.

If you don’t want a column to be imported, just select “Do Not Import” for that column.

Shopify or BigCommerce Import

One of the most exciting features in this new release is the Shopify and BigCommerce Import tools.

If your ecommerce store is hosted at Shopify or BigCommerce you can connect your store to your Crowd Content account. This allows you to seamlessly pass product info and content back and forth between your store and your Crowd Content writers.

To connect your store from Shopify, go to the Shopify App Store and install the Crowd Content app. Doing this automatically creates a Crowd Content account for you that is connected to your Shopify store.

Similarily, for BigCommerce users, go to the BigCommerce App Store and install the Crowd Content app.

If you already have a Crowd Content account, you can connect your store by going to the Crowd Content App Directory.

Click Install App. A new window will appear with a field for you to add your store URL. Add your store URL and then click Save.

You are then taken to Shopify to confirm the connection. Sign in to your Shopify admin if needed and then click Install App.

Your Shopify store will now be connected to your Crowd Content account.

Now, when adding products to an order at Crowd Content, you can use the Shopify Import tool.

The import tool asks you to select your store (in case you have more than one store connected to your Crowd Content account). Choose your store and click Continue.

All of your products from your store will automatically appear in a list in front of you. If you have many products in your store, you can filter the list by Product Type.

From here, select the products you want to have written and click Continue. If you want all of the products on the list written, use the batch select in the top left to select all.

4. Provide Instructions and a Word Count for All Products

Now that your products are added, you just need to provide some instructions to your writers.

On this page, you can edit the Batch name, select word Counts, and add instructions.

Products are managed in Batches at Crowd Content. A Batch name is automatically generated using the date you are creating the batch on, but you do have the option to re-name it if you wish.

Select how many words each of your products should be. You can choose any 50 word increment from 50 to 500.

When selecting a word count at the top of this form, the word count applies to every product in this Batch. Don’t worry, I’ll explain how to change individual products in a Batch in a minute.

Add some general instructions that apply to all products in this Batch. This could be information related to your brand, style, tone, or anything else that the writers should know and that apply to all products in the Batch.

Remember, these instructions like the word count will be applied to all products in this batch.

5. Provide Instructions or Word Counts for Specific Products

At the bottom of this page, you’ll see a list of the products you are about to order descriptions for.

Here, you can add specific instructions for an individual product or change the word count for an individual product.

To add instructions, click the square note icon to the right of a product’s name. You can then type in some additional instructions that will apply only to that product.

Keep in mind that these instructions are added to your general instructions that you provided at the top of this page — they do not replace them.

To change the word count on a specific product, just click the dropdown menu to the right of the instructions (note) icon.

This word count will only apply to this product.

When you’re happy with your instructions and word counts, click Place Order. Crowd Content then automatically creates an individual product description order for each product you’ve listed.

The orders are then made available to qualified writers on the Crowd Content platform. When writers look at your orders, they see the following info:

• Product Title
• Product URL (hyperlinked so they can view it easily)
• Your general instructions
• Your specific instructions if you added some to that product
• The word count you selected
• Previous Content (if a re-write)

Before you know it, writers will start claiming your orders and working on them.

Read the following sections to see how the review process goes and to learn how to automatically publish completed descriptions to your Shopify or BigCommerce store with 1 click.

6. View Product Description Orders in My Content

After placing your Batch of product description orders, you can view them by clicking My Content in the top bar of your screen.

Here, you can see each individual product description order.

All of your Batches are listed in the bottom left area of this section. Just click on a Batch to view the orders in it.

At any one time, you will probably have orders with multiple statuses. For example, some Being Written, some Ready for Review, or some Completed.

To filter by these statuses and only see orders that are Ready for Review (for example), just click the labels in the top left area of this page.

You may notice that when viewing a Product Batch, the Display View automatically changes to an expanded view.

You can toggle between views by clicking the three buttons that show in the top right corner of this screen.

This expanded view, shown if selecting the button on the right, is great for viewing Product Batches because it will actually display the content for orders that are Ready for Review or Completed.

This means that you don’t need to click into each order to view the content when reviewing. You can simply scroll down the list and see the work done by multiple writers on multiple product description jobs, saving you lots of time.

7. Review and Accept Orders

When a writer has completed one of your orders, we’ll send you an email notification. You can then review the product description and accept it or request a revision.

If you need a revision, you simply click the Request Revision tab and then type in a message to the writer about what you need changed.

Revisions are free and unlimited.

If you are happy with the content, rate the job by hovering over the rating bar and then click Accept.

8. Automatically Publish to Your Shopify or BigCommerce Store with 1 Click

If you used the Shopify or BigCommerce Import tool to add your product description orders, you’ll see a button beside Accept that says Accept & Publish.

By clicking Accept & Publish, you not only accept the order, but you also publish the product description to your store instantly.

That’s right, no more copying and pasting!

It just takes one click and your new product description is live in your store.

Alternatively, you could accept the content first and then publish it after. A Publish to Shopify or Publish to BigCommerce button will appear beside your order after clicking Accept.

9. Export Completed Product Descriptions to a CSV File

If you used the CSV Upload tool to add your products in step 3, you will probably want to use the CSV Export option after all of your product descriptions are Completed.

The CSV Export tool is flexible, allowing you to export a selection of Completed orders from any Folder or Product Batch.

To use it for exporting a completed Batch of product descriptions, click on the Product Batch in the bottom left area of My Content.

If all products in this Batch are Completed, you can use the batch select option by clicking the check box in the header (to the left of the Writer label).

If all products are not Completed yet, but you still want to export those that are Completed, you’ll need to select each Completed order individually.

Then click the button at the bottom of this page labeled Export.

This brings up a confirmation box with a few final options. Using the check boxes in the confirmation box, you can:

Export All Completed Orders from All Pages – by checking this box, all Completed orders on all pages (based on the current filters you have applied) will be exported. For example, if you currently have Product Batch 1 selected, but the total number of orders in Product Batch 1 overflows to 2 pages, you can select this box to have Completed orders on page 1 and page 2 exported to a single CSV file.

Remove HTML Tags from Content – by checking this box, the HTML tags that are normally included around the content will be removed. Only the text will appear in the CSV file.

After making these final selections, simply click Export as CSV. The system will give you a CSV file with the following columns, assuming they are all applicable to your export conditions:

• Order ID
• Title
• Suggested Title (if the writer has entered one)
• Content (this would be your product description, blog post, etc)
• SKU (only applicable if exporting product descriptions)

10. Publish Blog Posts and Website Content to Your Shopify Store

Crowd Content isn’t only for product descriptions, and neither is the Shopify integration.

You can work with writers to have blog posts written on a consistent basis, or work with them to create engaging website content.

This is done using the Custom order option, seen when hovering your mouse over the down arrow on the green Create Order button.

When blog posts or website content pages are ready, you can publish them directly to your Shopify store.

For example, if you had just reviewed and accepted a blog post, you would see a page with your content on it, similar to below:

To publish to your Shopify store, click Tools and Apps. Then click on the Shopify app which will be near the bottom.

It will open up, giving you some export options to your store. Since we have a blog post, click the Blog tab to publish your content to your blog.

Edit the title if you want and select the blog you want to publish to if you have more than one.

Click Publish. You should see a success message similar to the one below.

The blog post will now be waiting as a draft in your Shopify admin area where you manage your blog. You simply need to go to your blog admin and set the post to “Visible“.

Contact Us

If you are interested in using Crowd Content’s new product description creation and management tools, please contact us at 1-888-983-3101 or support at crowdcontent dot com.

You can also create a free client account to check out the platform and get started.

We’d like to thank all of our clients and writers for providing the feedback that allows us to develop and release great features like the ones listed in this announcement.

The post eCommerce How-To Guide for Crowd Content appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Are you an eCommerce store? Check out the eCommerce How-To Guide.

We have put together a couple videos to help get you started.

Step 1: Create a Free Account
Step 2: Add Funds to Your Account
Step 3: Create a Content Order
Step 4: Sit Back and Relax while We Create Your Content
Step 5: Chat with Your Writer if Necessary
Step 6: Review and Accept Your Completed Content
Step 7: Easily Distribute Your Content
Step 8: Use Your Favorite Writers Going Forward
Step 9: Contact Your Account Manager to Say Hi!

Step 1: Create a Free Account

If you haven’t already, create your free client account here. Just enter your first name, email address, and create a password.

Don’t worry. You’re not obligated to purchase anything by creating an account. This is just our way of letting you explore the platform with no risk.

Step 2: Add Funds to Your Account

When you’re ready to start ordering content, click the green Add Funds button in the top right of your screen.

We’ll ask you to enter your full account information (if you haven’t already) and then allow you make a secure payment with PayPal or major credit cards.

After adding funds to your account, you will instantly be able to use those funds to place content orders.

NOTE: Alternatively, you can Add Funds immediately after creating your account. The system will automatically take you through the process.

Step 3: Create a Content Order

Click on the green Create Order button in the top right of your screen. You will be taken to our easy to use order form.

The order form guides you through the process of creating the perfect brief. It asks you questions you may not have thought of to ensure that your writer gets the information he or she needs to create your content.

Remember to select your Content Type (Custom, Tweets, or Facebook Posts) and to check out the Advanced Options, where you can add keywords and more specific instructions for your writer.

Step 4: Sit Back and Relax while We Create Your Content

After placing an order, Crowd Content will match your order with a group of qualified writers. An interested writer from the group will claim your order and start working on your content.

You can watch it all happen on the Dashboard or the My Content section of your account. We’ll show you which writer has claimed your job and when he or she claimed it.

Most orders are claimed by a qualified writer within a few minutes. If you see that your order has not been claimed within 12 – 24 hours, you may want to edit your order instructions or contact your Client Account Manager for help.

NOTE: Your order can be claimed by writers at or above the Quality Level you specified in the order form. This means that you could potentially get a 4 Star writer even if you choose 3 Star Quality Level. This doesn’t happen all the time, but can happen if a higher level writer is interested in your topic and willing to work at a lower pay rate.

Step 5: Chat with Your Writer if Necessary

While a job is in progress, you can chat with your writer by using the instant messaging system.

To access the instant messaging system, click on your order from the Dashboard or the My Content section and then look for the ‘Message Your Writer’ tab in the bottom right corner.

If your writer doesn’t respond right away, don’t worry. He or she may be working offline. We’ll send him or her an email notification about your message and you should get a response soon.

Step 6: Review and Accept Your Completed Content

When your writer has finished writing your content, we’ll send you an email notification. You can then view the completed content in your account.

If the content matches your requirements, you can Accept it and leave a rating for the writer.

If the content doesn’t meet your expectations, you can easily request a revision at no extra charge. The job will be sent back to the writer with your instructions.

If needed, you can keep requesting revisions until the content meets your needs for up to three days after the initial order is completed. There is no cost or limit to revision requests (except for requests to rewrite the content out of scope from the original order brief).

Step 7: Easily Distribute Your Content

Once your content is complete and you have accepted it, you can easily distribute your content to your preferred platform.

Upload your content directly to WordPress, HootSuite, Outbrain, Constant Contact, BigCommerce, Shopify, MailChimp, or Copy HTML.

Step 8: Use Your Favorite Writers Going Forward

After you have worked with a writer at Crowd Content, you have the ability to place a Direct Order with that writer.

This means that the order will go directly to the requested writer, not allowing any other writers to have access to it.

To place a Direct Order, click Create Order just like you would to create any other order. Under Order Type, click Direct Order. Then click the writer dropdown and choose the writer you want.

NOTE: When placing a Direct Order, you must pay the rate on the writer’s profile. This rate will match the Quality Level of the writer, which you can see by hovering over the writer’s image.

You have a couple options to manage your writers.

You can Add to Team or Favorite writers that you would like to work with in the future. Both options become available once you click the box to the left of the writer profile.

To Create a Team, you will find a blue ‘Create a Team’ in the left hand column.

Alternatively, if you aren’t happy with the work of a writer, you can easily blacklist the writer by hovering on his or her profile image and clicking the blacklist button (it looks like a no parking sign). By doing this, the writer will not have access to any of your future orders.

Step 9: Contact Your Account Manager to Say Hi!

Remember, every client at Crowd Content is assigned a dedicated Client Account Manager. This person is here to help you in any way he or she can.

We love hearing from clients, so please, don’t hesitate to get in touch! Whether you have questions about the platform or about your content strategy, your Client Account Manager can guide you in the right direction.

The post Quick-Start Guide for Crowd Content Clients appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The Crowd Content platform now lets you order Tweets or Facebook Posts from our stable of talented writers. We make it easy to get high quality social media messages that engage your audience and drive traffic to your website.

Highlights from this update include:

• Easily order the number of Tweets or FB Posts you need
• Tweets and FB Posts are priced per unit, so you only pay for what you need
• A sophisticated brief ensures writers get the right info about your brand to align messages with your brand
• Writers create Tweets and FB Posts through a special interface that controls character counts to ensure compliance with Twitter and Facebook
• Full integration with HootSuite – automatically send Tweets and FB Posts to HootSuite and then to social channels

Easy to Use, Transparent Pricing

The recent update makes it easy to order Tweets and Facebook Posts. Before, we noticed that many clients were ordering these social media messages through the normal order form.

Although this did work, it was clunky and required a good set of instructions to ensure the writers delivered what was needed. With the recent update, you now see the following options under Content Type when placing a new order:

• Custom – use this option for any content type other than Tweets or Facebook Posts
• Tweets
• Facebook Posts

If selecting Custom, you will see the normal order form and will still see cost per word pricing.

If you select Tweets or FB Posts, you will see unit pricing on a per Tweet or per FB Post basis.

Updated Order Brief and Quality Control Measures

When creating a Tweet or Facebook Post order, we display special options that allow you to provide writers with brand information. This ensures that your writers will create social media messages that engage your audience and align with your existing online presence.

For example, when ordering Tweets, special fields let you list your Twitter handle, competitor or example Twitter handles, and even hashtags that you want mentioned throughout your Tweets.

Maybe the best part of the recent update is that writers now create Tweets and Facebook Posts inside a special interface. The interface provides a separate input field for each social media message to be created.

The Crowd Content system counts and displays the characters for each message (seen above), allowing the writer to optimize the message for the appropriate platform. The system doesn’t even allow the writer to submit their content to the client if one or more messages have exceeded the appropriate character count.

Note: Requesting links in your Tweets? Don’t worry. We properly allocate 23 characters for each link, aligning with Twitter’s procedures when processing Tweets with links.

Fully Integrated with HootSuite – Just Click to Post!

As icing on the cake, our integration with HootSuite means that completed Tweets and FB Posts automatically appear on your HootSuite dashboard.

From the HootSuite dash, you can view all content from your Crowd Content account (not just Tweets or FB Posts). We take it even further by allowing you to actually place orders and request revisions from your HootSuite dash.

In other words, this integration is fully functional, allowing users to manage their Crowd Content account from the HootSuite dash or from the main Crowd Content site – it’s your choice.

To learn more about the HootSuite integration, read this announcement on our blog.

Jumpstart Your Social Media Strategy Today

These new features let you source engaging social media content from Crowd Content’s qualified writers and make it easy for you to publish that content to your social media networks.

Engage with a talented writer today who understands your niche. Remember, after sampling writers, it’s easy to work with your favorite writer(s) on an ongoing basis by using the Direct Order feature. When doing this, you effectively create a team of quality content writers that is an extension of your company.

As always, if you have questions or comments about the new features, please don’t hesitate to contact your dedicated Client Account Manager. Thanks!

The post Automate Social Media Marketing with Tweets and FB Posts from Crowd Content appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

We’ve taken this feedback and infused it into the brand new Crowd Content – a robust and intuitive content creation platform.

The new platform replaces the old one and offers more control managing content orders, greater ability managing your freelance writers, and, overall, is a lot easier to use.

A full tutorial of the new Crowd Content is below. If you don’t have a Crowd Content client account yet, we suggest you create one and check it out. It’s free to sign up and look around.

Dashboard

Your new Dashboard makes it easy and quick to see what’s happening with your recent content orders.

Recent Activity

Easily view recent activity on your account. We’ve added intuitive icons that tell you when orders are placed, picked up by writers, dropped by writers, or ready for review. Simply hover over an activity item to see quick actions you can perform for that order.

Order Status Shortcuts

Just above your recent activity, we list all orders you currently have for each status. Just click on a status, like “Ready” for example, to see all orders that currently have that status.

Easy Access to Create Orders and Add Funds

You’ll notice that the green Create Order and Add Funds buttons are shown in the same place on every page. This makes it easy to find these commonly used actions, saving you time and frustration.

Featured Blog Posts

We’re starting to publish more and more great content at our blog, Crowd Content Resources. On your Dashboard, we list the 4 most recent blog posts to keep you updated on content marketing trends, how-tos, and Crowd Content updates.

Notification Menu

A new feature we’ve added is the Notification Menu. You can view this menu by clicking on the small “notepad” to the right of your account balance.

The Notification Menu keeps you up to date on all happenings with your account. For example, we’ll add new notifications when you receive messages from writers or when orders become ready for review.

Help Menu – Your Client Account Manager

Click the “question mark” icon that is next to the Notification Menu to view your dedicated Client Account Manager’s contact info.

All clients at Crowd Content get a dedicated Client Account Manager regardless of how big or small you are. Use your account manager to help with system support or to give guidance on content strategy.

My Account Menu

In the top right of your screen, you’ll see your profile image or a default image if you haven’t added a profile image. Click this image to view your My Account Menu.

You can manage your account and navigate to important areas of the website from this menu. Here is a list of the menu items described:

• Edit Image (hover over image) – allows you to add a new profile image or crop your existing one
• Add Funds – allows you to add funds to your account
• Account Information – allows you to update your contact information
• Deposit History – shows you the funding history on your account
• Low Funds Notification – allows you to set a low funds threshold. If your account balance falls below this amount, we will send you an email notification
• Change Password – allows you to change the password on your account
• FAQ – brings you to the frequently asked questions from Crowd Content clients
• App Directory – allows you to install apps and connect your Crowd Content account to partner services
• Sign Out – safely signs you out of Crowd Content

Writer Management – Profile Images and Pen Names

One of the biggest upgrades to the new Crowd Content platform is the way you see and work with your writers.

For every writer you interact with, you now see their profile image and their Pen Name. You can also hover over a writer’s image anytime you see it to bring up a mini writer profile.

When viewing the writer’s profile, you can see his or her rating (from 1 to 4 stars) and perform the following key tasks:

• Blacklist Writer – blacklisting a writer means that the writer will no longer have access to any new orders you post
• Send Direct Order to Writer – this automatically takes you to a new order form with the writer pre-selected. The new order will then be sent directly to this writer.

My Content – A Comprehensive Order Management Tool

In the old Crowd Content, you had My Orders – an area that simply listed your orders. In the new Crowd Content, you have My Content – a tool that not only lists your orders, but allows you to perform advanced filtering actions and organize your content into folders.

Quick Actions Give You More Control

Hover over any order to see available actions for that order. Quickly Copy, Edit, Pause or Delete an Order. Or view the History of that order to date.

Progress Indicator

Easily see how much progress your writer has made on your order. The percentage shown is based on the number of words written by your writer as a percentage of the maximum word count you specified for the order.

Note: the progress indicator is replaced with the rating you gave the writer for that order once the order is Completed.

Colored Status Labels

We make it easy for you to know what’s happening with each order by listing colored status labels. As you use Crowd Content, you become familiar with the colors and know quickly what status each order is in.

Robust Filtering Options

The filtering options here are flat out amazing. Filter by:

• Status – see only orders in a certain status, like “Ready” for example
• Folder – see only orders in a certain folder
• Quality – see only orders placed at a certain Quality Level
• Writer – see only orders from one or multiple writers
• Rating – see only orders you gave a certain rating to. For example, view all Completed orders that you rated as Excellent. Then use those writers for future work.
• Date – see only orders from a certain date range

You can also combine any of the above filters together to mine deeper into your content. To clear all filters, simply click the refresh icon to the right of the date range filter.

Batch Controls Save You Time

Click the check boxes to the left of the orders to perform batch controls. Current batch controls available are Accept, Delete, and Pause.

Drag and Drop to Organize Content into Folders

Want to move a content order to another folder? Easy! Just hover to the left of the check box on any order and then click and drag the order to a folder on the left.

Condensed View for Power Users

Are you managing a lot of content? We make it easy for power users to get the job done. Click the button with 4 lines on it to the right of “Display” in the top right.

This brings up a condensed view that lets you see more orders at one time. Despite the view being condensed, you don’t lose any functionality. Simply click the “gear” symbol to the right of any order to access all available actions for that order.

Chat with Your Writer – Communication Is Key to Project Success

We’ve made it easy to communicate with your writers by offering an instant messaging feature. Chat with your writer while you review his first draft and let him know what you think. This feature also helps when one side needs to clarify the instructions, limiting needed revisions and saving you valuable time.

Projects Are Now Called Folders

A small change made on the new platform is that Projects are now called Folders. Folders behave in the same way that Projects did on the old platform – they are simply a way for you to organize your content orders.

If you have several websites, or have a large website with several sections, you can create a folder for each website or section.

If you’re an agency, create a folder for each of your clients.

Advanced Order Management – Even More Control!

As you may have noticed, a big theme built into the new Crowd Content is maximizing control over your ordering and management processes.

After placing an order, enjoy the following tools that give you full control with every content order you place:

• Edit Orders – this is a huge upgrade over the old platform. You can now edit an order provided that it is still in Placed status. Edit an order to change the word count, title, instructions, or anything else. The only thing you can’t edit as of now is the Content Type (from Custom to Tweets to Facebook Posts).
• Pause Orders – this is another new feature. You can now pause an order. This simply puts the order on hold without deleting it. You can then unpause the order when you’re ready to put it live again. Note: if you pause an order that is “Being Written”, the order will not be paused unless/if the current writer drops the order.
• Copy Orders – click Copy if you want to create an order with similar details as a previous order. By clicking Copy, an order form will appear with the exact same details and instructions as the order you clicked Copy from. You can then make any changes you want and place the order as a new order.
• View History – clicking History will show you the status history of the order. For example, it will show you when the order was placed, picked up by a writer, dropped by a writer, ready for review, and completed. This can help when trouble shooting an order.
• Delete Orders – you can delete any order that is still in Placed status.

A More Sophisticated Content Ordering Form

The new order form is still very similar to the previous order form, but offers a few key advantages.

Content Type – Now Order Tweets or Facebook Posts!

Before, there was no specific Content Type for Tweets or Facebook Posts. You had to request a large word count range and then ask the writer to create as many Tweets or Facebook Posts as they could within the word count. This was confusing and lacked quality control; character counts were not monitored.

In the new Crowd Content, we’ve introduced the Content Type. You now have the following content types to choose from:

• Custom – this is exactly what we offered before. If you want a blog post, product description, article, page for your website, or any type of content other than Tweets or Facebook posts, choose Custom.
• Tweets – choose this type if you want Tweets for your Twitter campaigns. When writers are working on Tweets, all character counts are monitored and are guaranteed to be between 15 and 140 characters.
• Facebook Posts – choose this type if you want Facebook Posts for your Facebook page. When writers are working on Facebook Posts, all character counts are monitored and are guaranteed to be between 100 and 300 characters.

Order Type – Open to Crowd or Direct with Writer

The new order form makes it easy to send orders directly to your preferred writer.

Choose Open Order if you want to make your order available to all qualified writers (based on your order criteria).

Choose Direct Order if you want to place your order directly with a preferred writer. A dropdown menu will appear to your right with the images and names of writers you have previously worked with.

More Control over Processing Time

If you have an order that requires a lot of research or extra work, you can now give your writer extra time. Simply open the Advanced Options and then adjust the Processing Time.

App Directory – Your Workflow Just Got More Efficient

We’re happy to announce the launch of the Crowd Content App Directory! We’ve partnered with some pretty big names to connect your content with services you already use.

After installing an app on your Crowd Content account, you can use it by going to the Tools and Apps tab of any Completed order. From here, you can use your apps to send completed content to partner services.

Currently, the App Directory has the following apps:

ShopWriters (Shopify)

Shopify has everything you need to create your own ecommerce store. ShopWriters is an app that is built directly into your Shopify admin panel. To use this app, you need to have a Shopify account.

The ShopWriters App allows you to:

• Order content for Product Descriptions or Blog Posts from your Shopify admin panel
• Automatically publish completed content to your store (no copying or pasting!)
• Manage thousands of Product Descriptions with ease (no spreadsheets!)

WordPress

WordPress is free web software that allows you to create a beautiful website or blog. Connect your Crowd Content account to your WordPress website or blog to:

• Automatically send completed content to your blog or website (no more copying or pasting!)
• Set content to draft status or to publish instantly
• Manage multiple blogs or websites by connecting multiple WordPress accounts

Constant Contact

Constant Contact helps small organizations grow their businesses by providing email, event, and other online marketing tools. Use the Constant Contact App to:

• Send completed content directly to your Constant Contact account
• Create a new email campaign for your completed content

MailChimp

MailChimp makes it easy for marketers to send email newsletters, manage subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. Use the MailChimp App to:

• Send completed content directly to your MailChimp account
• Create a new email campaign for your completed content

HootSuite

HootSuite is a leading social media dashboard that helps you manage and measure your social networks.

Crowd Content is fully integrated with your HootSuite account. After connecting your Crowd Content account with your HootSuite account, you will be able to place, review, and accept Crowd Content orders from within your HootSuite Dashboard!

Use the HootSuite App to:

• Automatically send completed Tweets, Facebook Posts, or other content to your HootSuite Dashboard
• Send completed content to streams like Twitter, Facebook and WordPress from your HootSuite Dashboard

My Schedules – Automating the Content Creation Process

Looking to automate your content creation process? Is the scheduling tools built into Crowd Content.

To create a new schedule, simply create an order and enable the schedule for that order. Then, to view and manage existing schedules, click on My Schedules in the main header.

To learn more about scheduling orders and to learn best practices for using the scheduler, please read Automating Content Creation: 5 Best Practices for Using Schedules.

Thank You, Clients and Writers!

We want to send a huge thank you to all of our clients and writers. We couldn’t have put this amazing content creation platform together without your feedback and support. We truly feel that a positive content community is coming together around Crowd Content and we’re just happy to be a part of it.

As always, if you see any bugs or have feedback about the new platform, please contact support or your friendly Client Account Manager. Thanks!

The post Crowd Content Releases Powerful Content Marketing Platform for Businesses appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

What’s even better, your completed content now automatically appears on your HootSuite dashboard. This allows you to distribute it across Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks in seconds.

Install the Crowd Content App at HootSuite

To get started, you need to connect your Crowd Content account with your HootSuite account.

If you don’t have a Crowd Content account, create one here.

If you don’t have a HootSuite account, create one here.

From the HootSuite dash, go to App Directory > Free Apps > Crowd Content and click Install.

After connecting your Crowd Content account with your HootSuite account, you will be able to manage your Crowd Content account from either HootSuite or from Crowd Content.

Enjoy Full Functionality from Your HootSuite Dashboard

The Crowd Content app at HootSuite is fully functional. You can do almost everything from the app that you can do from the main Crowd Content website, such as:

• Add funds to your account
• Place orders for Tweets, Facebook Posts or other content from Crowd Content’s writers
• Review drafts from writers and request revisions if necessary
• Accept and rate content orders
• Place Direct Orders with preferred writers
• View a Dashboard showing your recent activity

Distribute Content to Twitter, Facebook and Other Social Networks in Seconds

The best part about this integration is that all of your completed orders from your Crowd Content account will automatically appear on your HootSuite dashboard.

You can then simply click the “Share” button beside any completed content piece to share that content via Twitter, Facebook or any other social network supported by HootSuite.

More about HootSuite

A social media management system, HootSuite helps businesses and organizations collaboratively implement campaigns across social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ Pages and LinkedIn from a single secure, online dashboard. Some of their advanced functionality includes tools for audience engagement, team collaboration, account security and comprehensive analytics for end-to-end measurement and reporting.

The post How to Use the HootSuite Crowd Content Integration appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

1. Mobile-Friendly Websites

Take a look at your current website. Does it have a lot of images, photos, and HTML features? Then it probably isn’t mobile-friendly. A mobile-friendly site should have a fast load time; 30 seconds or less, ideally. Keep your relevant headlines and main selling points clearly visible towards the top and middle sections of your homepage. New visitors aren’t likely to scroll to find out what you sell or offer.

2. Meaningful Analytics

A big trend in 2012 was to assign a value to everything as far as measuring results. The problem is that these values tend to be arbitrary. It’s still important to measure the effectiveness of your online and social campaigns, it just isn’t necessary to read too much into every click. Instead, focus on the stats that really mean something to your business.

3. Game Design for Non-Game Applications

This is one of the more interesting online marketing trends. More websites are using strategies that video game designers use to create websites and other non-game applications that are just as engaging and fun for visitors. This includes easy-to-use platforms, appealing graphics, and a focus on keeping your visitors or users engaged.

This is also known as gamification and it’s something we use at Crowd Content to help motivate our writers. It also helps our writers stay focused on delivering quality content at fast turnaround times.

4. Rise of Inbound Marketing

With the rise of social media marketing, there has been a renewed focus on inbound marketing where the focus is on creating content and sparking conversations rather than just relying on paid advertising to grab the attention of new customers. When it comes to your budget, this means shifting some of your resources from advertising to sprucing up your online content.

5. Loyalty Marketing

Since your customers are more connected than ever, it just makes sense to reward loyalty. This is also a good way to build brand recognition. This includes everything from sending personalized coupon codes based on past purchases to offering special perks for returning customers.

6. Social Brand Awareness

Getting back to the issue of building brand awareness, social platforms such as Facebook and Pinterest are making it easier for brands to have legitimate influence over customers. Offer something of value with content that sparks engaging dialog and relevant conversations. Find where your target audience is participating in these conversations. If your target audience is using certain platforms, it makes sense to be there too.

7. Local Marketing Tools

Small businesses have more marketing tools available than ever before. Sites like GetListed and Yahoo Local make it easy to post your business information and generate feedback that makes it easier for new customers to find you. Even Facebook is reaching out to small businesses with its new sponsored ad program where ads are placed on the side of the desktop with the goal of naturally generating likes.

Having a firm grasp of what’s going on in the world of online marketing is the first step towards building an effective online marketing campaign. This doesn’t mean that every trend has to be embraced. It does, however, plant the seeds for some marketing approaches that just might make your online marketing more effective.

The post 7 Online Marketing Trends You Should Know About appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The new messaging system makes it easy to communicate with writers. It’s also super quick. We’ve designed it like an instant messaging tool for quick, insightful conversations.

Sign in now to try it out.

Take Your Content from Good to GREAT

Sometimes, just one extra clarification or note can take your content from pretty good to amazing! That’s the effect we’re shooting for with this new messaging system.

Before, you could only communicate through your revision requests or your Account Manager. Now, you don’t need to wait for the content to be submitted. Reach out to your writer with a quick message to give them that key piece of information that will make your content perfect.

Writers Get the Full Story

We started to notice that even when clients create awesome order instructions, a writer may have a question or two. These questions are often small, but can make a big impact when answered.

Before, writers were forced to make educated guesses if they were unsure about part of a client’s instructions. Now, they can simply fire off a quick message to the client and get the answer they need. This allows them to get back to work quickly and create higher quality content.

How Does the Messaging System Work?

The messaging system is really easy to use.

To use the messaging system, you need to have an order that is “Being Written”, “Being Revised”, or “Completed”.

If you have an order in one of the above statuses, click on the order in your Crowd Content client account.

You will see a tab that says “Conversation with Writer”.

Simply click on this tab, type a message, and click Enter. The message will be sent directly to the writer working on that order.

Email Notifications

If a writer sends you a message and we detect that you are not signed in to your Crowd Content client account, we’ll send you an email notification about it. You can then sign in to your account and respond to the writer.

Quick, Polite Answers Make the Job Go Smoothly

We strongly recommend that all clients be responsive with writers. Our writers take content quality and turnaround time very seriously, so if they are asking you a question, it’s because they want to deliver a high quality, engaging piece of content to you.

Please do your best to respond quickly to any questions you get from writers. Also, just like we suggest with order instructions and revision requests, please always be polite and respectful to your writers.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support. We hope you enjoy using the new messaging system and encourage you to sign in today to test it out.

The post New Feature: Now Chat Directly with Your Writers! appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

We just finished adding a new wave of the Web’s highest quality writers! We’re encouraging all clients to sign in and place a few orders to test out the new writers.

Crowd Content is dedicated to finding, recruiting, and retaining the best writers on the Internet. We’re extremely happy about this latest cohort of new writers and know that you, as clients, will benefit tremendously from the added skill and fire power.

We’ve Raised the Bar for New Writers

That’s right, we’re now asking more from each writer who goes through our application process. All aspiring writers are required to fill out a challenging application form that helps us determine their skill level. Most importantly, the application form requires a new and unique sample to be written by the writer on the spot!

Writer’s who perform well on the application process are asked to join the Crowd Content writing team. Writer’s who struggle during the process are thanked, but unfortunately are not allowed to write for Crowd Content at this time.

Look for Higher Quality and Faster Turnaround Times

The new writers we’ve added really know their stuff. They also work quickly, so expect your turnaround times to be faster and more reliable going forward.

On top of that, we’ve added an incentive system that motivates writers to satisfy you! Writers who perform well are rewarded, while writers who perform poorly are penalized.

Some of these rewards and penalties are focused directly on content quality and turnaround speed, reinforcing the tendency to deliver great service on every order you submit.

Expect New Features and More Control in the Coming Weeks

We have to admit that we’ve been spending a lot of effort and resources on fine tuning the writers’ side of Crowd Content. We believe that awesome writers create awesome content, which you as clients benefit from.

However, we’re now turning our focus to the client interface. We’ve been listening to your feedback and we’re adding the features you are requesting.

Look for a slick new design to surface soon along with a new set of features that will give you more control over your content ordering process. We believe that more control gives you the power to execute a better content strategy, so that will be our main focus over the next couple of months.

What are you waiting for? Sign in now and order some content from these great writers!

The post We’ve added New, High Quality Writers! appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Better yet, mobile users will watch videos up to three times longer than those on a PC. With YouTube averaging over 4 billion hits every day, it’s clear that mobile video platforms are now an online marketing standard that’s here for the long haul.

Benefits of Mobile Video Marketing

There are many reasons to utilize mobile video marketing beyond its sheer volume of traffic. It’s worth noting that mobile video comprised 51% of all web traffic by the end of 2012.

Probably the best thing about mobile video marketing is that it can be highly optimized for local audiences that often yield tremendously high conversion rates. As it stands, YouTube home page ads are 437% more likely to boost brand engagement above and beyond non-video promotional techniques. Furthermore, simple YouTube videos are far easier to crank out nowadays thanks to cheap, easy to use video production software.

How to Proceed

Arguably the easiest way to get started with mobile video marketing is by embedding YouTube clips into apps or a mobile version of your website. You can keep it simple at first as you test the waters and then use ad platforms for monetizing traffic while you attract new customers.

URL shortening services like Bit.ly make it easy to redirect mobile users to videos. Include video URLs in your Yelp, Facebook and Google+ profiles to additionally boost traffic.

Best Mobile Video Practices

If you hit the big time, an app might make sense down the road. Just keep in mind that up to 80% of apps receive fewer than 1000 downloads. Probably the best tactic to adopt is location-based video marketing through typical ad platforms like Google.

With YouTube notching over 4 billion hits each day, it’s the best overall platform for mobile video ads. App or no app, just do your best to attract as many video views as possible regardless of traffic sources.

Staying Current

In 2012 alone, worldwide mobile data usage surged by 70%. A hefty chunk of that was video. This makes sense when you consider the fact that mobile devices are intended for content consumption rather than creation. If you’re aiming videos specifically at mobile users, keep them short and sweet with an eye on quality.

Just remember that it’s a crowded space, with 61% of business marketers already using YouTube to find new customers. To stand out, you’ll need to think outside of the box.

The post Why Mobile Marketing & Web Video Make a Killer Team appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

As social media and mobile marketing started getting more attention, blogging appeared less sexy and cutting-edge. However, intelligent marketers still know that blogging is extremely relevant if you apply it properly in a social and mobile driven world.

By the Numbers

While generic social media gets all the attention, blogging still attracts massive amounts of traffic. For instance, Tumblr gets 355 million unique visitors every month and a good 400 million page views per day. At present, 81% of online users trust blogs when making buying decisions. Clearly, then, quality content is still a big draw if you know how to leverage it.

It’s also important to note that 24% of the top 10,000 blogs online have Facebook integration, which means that the line between blogging and social media is blurring at an increasing rate.

Changing Realities and Newer Media

While it’s true that mobile web traffic has grown exponentially as of late and that social media has greater rates of engagement than mere stock blogs, over 61% of web consumers in the U.S. still make purchases based on recommendations from a blog.

Additionally, 17% of mobile users rely on their smartphones for the bulk of their online shopping. Globally, a solid 1 billion users around the world are pure mobile web surfers.

Keep mobile users in mind when creating your blog content. Make it scannable and easy to read.

How to Maintain Blogging Profitability

Getting the most from your blogging efforts today requires a cross-disciplinary approach. Start integrating mobile and social into your mix and power those channels with your blog. Whatever you do, don’t neglect the continuous creation of quality content as you move forward.

One good strategy is to incorporate video clips into a traditional blog gradually. Also, a custom mobile app for your blog can boost traffic substantially if executed properly. Alongside forum posting and guest blogging, a healthy helping of social and mobile marketing is advisable.

Future Trends

As part of an overall marketing strategy, blogging is still very much relevant today. It’s still the best way to demonstrate authority, build a brand and develop a die-hard core of followers. Those who digest blog content will often be more reliable customers in the end.

Blogging is all about building long-term relationships with your audience. Go ahead and adopt new social and mobile techniques as you please. Just don’t forget about blogging in the long run.

If you need a hand with that, be sure to check out some of our blog content writers available for hire. With over 6,000 pre-qualified writers, you’re sure to find one who can take your blogging to the next level.

The post The Ongoing Evolution of Content Marketing: Is Blogging Still Relevant? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Basically, you want to follow these 5 best practices when placing scheduled content orders:

1. Schedule Orders Ahead of Publish Dates
2. Generalize Your Order Instructions
3. Manage Titles Effectively
4. Lockdown Your Favorite Writer
5. Use Multiple Schedules

How Does the Schedule Feature Work?

Before we get into best practices, let’s quickly recap how the schedule feature works and where to find it.

The schedule feature allows you to set up recurring content orders. You can find it by signing in to your Crowd Content client account and clicking “Create Order”.

Near the bottom of the order form is a section called “Recurring Order Schedule”.  If you click Yes, the schedule feature will open up and you’ll see each day of the week listed.

From there, it’s pretty simply. You just select the days of the week that you want your order placed on. After you submit the order, the schedule will be live, and that order will be placed each week on the days you’ve specified.

1. Schedule Orders ahead of Publish Dates

It’s important to know that the schedule feature specifies the date your order will be placed. It does not mean that your content will be ready on that day.

Because of this, you want to set your scheduled dates well ahead of your desired publish dates (if you have publish dates).

If your content orders require a lot of research and time to create, give yourself lots of time by setting your schedule dates up to 3 or 4 days ahead of your publish dates.

2. Generalize Your Order Instructions

With a scheduled order, the same set of instructions will be sent to the writer(s) every time it is placed. Because of this, you need to think of your scheduled order as more of an overall project brief and not a specific order for one piece of content.

For example, if you have a blog about social media marketing, you may want to use language like below in your instructions:

We need 3 blog posts per week about social media marketing. We are a marketing agency so please create content that would be interesting to our clients and our potential clients.

Please view the example websites listed below for blogs that have content similar to what we are looking for…

The key here is that we are not requesting one specific title or piece of content. We’re explaining the overall project and listing guidelines that will apply for every post going forward.

“But I want to specify my own titles,” you say. Check out the next tip on title management to see how you can do it!

3. Manage Titles Effectively

Managing titles with an automated schedule can be tricky, but here are a few tips to simplify the process.

You basically have two options:

1. Let the writer(s) create their own titles and topics
2. Specify your own titles and topics ahead of time

If you want the writer(s) to create the titles as they go, then you simply need to state that in your order instructions. Something like the following would do:

Please create your own titles and topics as you go. Please make the titles exciting and interesting to the social media marketing community.

If you want to specify your own titles, try this approach. Generate a long list of titles ahead of time. You might have a bunch that you’ve already thought of or you might want to do a brainstorming session with your team.

Either way, you want to end up with a list of 10, 20, or more titles.

Add this list of titles to your instructions for your scheduled order. State that you want the writer(s) to go through them one at a time and cross them off as they go.

IMPORTANT: When taking this approach, remember that you will need to “re-load” your titles every so often. For example, after 15 of 20 titles have been written, you will want to repeat the title generation process again and then add the new list of titles to the order instructions.

To add the new list of titles, go to the Project that your scheduled order belongs to. You will see the schedule at the top of the page. Click Edit. Add the new list of titles (delete the used ones if you want) and then click Save Schedule.

TITLE GENERATION TIP: Can’t think of any titles? Place an order to the crowd for 150 words asking the writer to generate titles around your topic. For example: “Please create 20 – 30 blog post titles around the topic of social media marketing. Each title should be around 7 words long and be in ‘how to’ or ‘top X’ format.”

4. Lockdown Your Favorite Writer

You should look at your first couple orders as a bit of a testing period. You don’t know the writers yet, and you’ll probably have a few different writers complete your first couple of orders.

However, once you see a completed order that you really like, you can easily request to use that same writer for all your scheduled orders going forward.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Project that your scheduled order belongs to
2. Click Edit on the scheduled order (to the right)
3. Go to the bottom of the order form and click Yes to view Advanced Options
4. Click Yes to use a writer from a previous order
5. Select the order that you liked and click Save Schedule

After doing this, all future orders for that schedule will go to your preferred writer.

5. Use Multiple Schedules

Some clients want to use 2 or 3 different writers for their blog. This gives their blog a few different perspectives and can help increase the frequency of new blog posts being published every week.

To use multiple writers, you’ll want to use multiple schedules, too. Simply create a schedule for each writer.

Make sure that the “previous writer” selected for each scheduled order is correct. Name each scheduled order differently so you can identify which writer is doing the content.

Summary

It’s easy to automate your content creation efforts if you use the schedule feature and follow these best practices. If you run into any problems or have questions, get in touch with your Client Account Manager. They can help you get started and provide assistance along the way.

You might want to check out the articles below, too, for related advice:

5 Steps to Powering Your Blog with Crowd Content
How to Place an Order: Tips and Tricks for Your First Order

The post Automating Content Creation: 5 Best Practices for Using Schedules appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Easier, Faster, Better

The new changes make Crowdcontent even easier and faster to use than before. Not only that, but many of the changes are designed to increase content quality and writer performance, meaning you can expect better results.

Most of the new features and upgrades were based on feedback from clients, so we want to thank all of you for your ideas. We hope that the new system helps you achieve your content creation goals more efficiently and effectively.

A list of the most notable changes is below. Keep reading to learn more about each item and why it’s important.

• Automatic Content Scheduler for Recurring Orders
• Easily Select a Writer from a Previous Order that You Liked
• Create a Similar Order Using the “Copy” Feature
• Order Form Tweaks to Increase Quality and Writer Performance

Automatic Content Scheduler for Recurring Orders

Welcome to a blogger’s heaven. You can now set up a recurring order schedule that will automatically feed you daily or weekly articles.

The scheduler feature is so easy to use. To create a recurring order, simply click Create Order like you would for any new order.

Near the bottom of the order form, you will see a question asking you if you want to place this order on a weekly recurring schedule. Click Yes.

A menu will drop down with a box for each day of the week. Simply select the days of the week that you want the order to be placed on. For daily orders, select every day.

After placing the order, your schedule will be saved. Your first order will be placed on the next day to occur that is selected in your schedule. If today is selected, an order will be placed immediately.

For example, if today is Monday and I create the scheduled order below, an order will be placed immediately. The next order would be placed on Wednesday.

On the other hand, if today is Tuesday, your first order will not be placed until Wednesday.

IMPORTANT: The schedule only specifies the days that your order will be placed. It does not mean that your order will be ready on that day. If your publish date is important, be safe and give yourself a 2 or 3 day cushion. Look to the estimated turnaround time in the Order Summary for an idea of how much cushion you need.

Want to edit an existing schedule? To do this, hover over My Projects and click to view the project that your scheduled order belongs to.

You can see all schedules that belong to that project at the top of the screen. To pause, edit, or delete, use the buttons on the far right.

Below your schedules, you will still see all the orders that belong to that project. This includes orders that were created by your schedules and non-scheduled orders. See the screenshot below for an example of the new My Projects view.

Easily Select a Writer from a Previous Order that You Liked

Previously, if you wanted to use the same writer from a previous order, you had to place a Managed Order and then tell your account manager which writer you wanted. Managed Orders have now been eliminated and replaced by a new feature that makes it easier to request writers from previous orders.

To select a writer from a previous order, simply click Create Order like you would for any new order.

At the bottom of the order form, you will see a question asking you if you would like to show advanced order options. Click Yes.

At the top of the Advanced Order options, we ask you if you want to use a writer from a previous order. Select Yes.

A drop down menu appears with a list of all your previously completed orders. Simply select an order that you were happy with and we will ensure that the current order you are creating will be sent directly to the same writer.

Create a Similar Order Using the “Copy” Feature

You can now easily create a new order that is similar to a previous order by using the Copy feature.

Note: the Copy feature will replace the Templates feature. If you have existing Templates, we will keep them active for another 3 weeks. However, after that time, all Templates will be removed and you will need to use the Copy feature going forward.

The Copy feature is a lot easier and faster to use than the Template feature was. To create a similar order, simply locate the order that you want to copy. The best way to do this is to view the project that the order belongs to. You could also find the order on the Dashboard in your trail of recent activity.

When you find the order you want to copy, put your mouse over it and you will see a History and Copy button on the far right. Click Copy.

After clicking Copy, an order form will appear with all the same instructions and variables selected as the order you are copying. You can change anything you want, like the Title, before placing the order.

Order Form Tweaks to Increase Quality and Writer Performance

You might notice a few other changes to the order form and wonder why they’re there. Aside from the features discussed above, we’ve added a few tweaks that will increase the quality of content delivered through Crowdcontent. We’ve also added tweaks that will help you get your content turned around faster.

Here’s a list of a few performance based changes we’ve made and a short explanation on why we added each of them.

Suggested Character Limits: You’ll notice that if you write too much in your Instructions to Writer section, you will see a friendly warning asking you to stay within the suggested character limit. When re-vamping the order form, we analyzed thousands of orders to see which ones were getting completed the fastest and were getting the highest quality ratings.

We found that order forms with important, but concise instructions not only were turned around faster, but were also more likely to meet the client’s expectations. This is probably because shorter, concise information is easier for the writer to grasp.

Because of this, we are now asking clients to challenge themselves and attempt to condense their instructions into smaller, more concise snippets of text.

Remember, the character limits are only suggested and you can go over them if you wish.

Exception: If you are pasting some example content for the writer to view, you will probably be over the recommended character count and should ignore the warning.

Example URL: We now have a dedicated field that asks you for an example URL. We’ve found that showing your writer an example of the style, tone, and format you want is the best way for the writer to get “on your level”.

Your Example URL can be an existing page on your website or a page on another website like a competitor or industry expert. Writer’s will never copy or duplicate the content on an Example URL – they will only use it for inspiration.

Publish URL: If the content you are ordering will be published on a website, or will represent a website, please list the URL to that website here. Seeing the final destination for the content will help the writer understand the feel and brand the content should represent.

Keyword Limits: You will notice that the number of keywords you can specify is now limited depending on what your maximum word count is. We noticed that some clients were asking for a high number of keywords relative to the word count of the order.

It’s important to understand that as you add keywords, the difficulty level for the writer increases. In extreme cases, it becomes virtually impossible to include all the keywords while still creating a readable document. We feel the limits in place now still allow you to create keyword rich content, but, at the same time, ensure that the content will read well and not be viewed as SPAM by search engines.

Keep Sending Your Feedback

As we already mentioned, many of these upgrades are the direct result of clients voicing their opinion and telling us what they need. To us, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can count on us to keep listening and keep improving the Crowdcontent content creation platform as we move forward.

If you have ideas for new stuff, have questions about the recent changes, or find any bugs with the new features, please contact your Client Account Manager.

The post You Asked, We Delivered: New Features Are Now Live! appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

One of the best ways to achieve this is to publish high quality content to your blog frequently and regularly.

Crowd Content makes it easy to feed your blog with fresh, relevant content that engages your audience and bulks up your online presence. The best part is, when approached correctly, most of the process can be automated.

The following guide will explain a complete method for setting up an automated blog schedule at Crowd Content. The guide focuses on reducing management time and maximizing content quality.

Here’s the 5 step program in a nutshell:

1. Develop Your Content Strategy
2. Create an Initial Content Schedule
3. Select Titles
4. Place Your First Order
5. Use the Previous Writer Tool

Step 1: Develop Your Content Strategy

Before you start creating any content, you want to ensure your content strategy is focused and that it makes sense for your target audience.

Focus on a Niche

You will have more success if you publish content that relates to a specific, well-defined audience. If you are a business, this audience may match your target customer.

As Shane Snow describes in his article on Mashable, readers are more likely to subscribe to “hyper-specific publications” opposed to generalized or mainstream publications.

For example, instead of focusing your blog on marketing, you could be more specific and blog about content marketing. Your content will speak directly to a set of readers interested in content marketing and your chances of attracting repeat visitors increase.

Expand in a Controlled Way

After you gain a strong following in one niche, you could slowly add a few more categories to your blog to incrementally attract new audiences. Your new categories should be related to your initial niche.

Continuing with the original example, your next categories after content marketing might be email marketing and social media marketing.

Step 2: Create an Initial Content Schedule

Choose a Frequency

Decide on how often you will publish new content to your blog. This frequency will vary based on your budget and your audience’s appetite for content consumption.

It’s great to publish one post per day if you can, but even twice or three times per week can draw a good following.

As you gain momentum and see that readers are sticking around, you can start to increase your frequency.

Select Days of the Week to Publish

Regardless of your frequency, your publishing schedule should be consistent from week to week. If you’ve decided on publishing content to your blog 3 times per week, think of publishing on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Whatever you decide, stick to that schedule every week. Consistency helps build expectations with your audience, encouraging readers to come back for the next post. As Darren Rowe from ProBlogger says:

“[Regularity and rhythm] is important as it helps their readers to know what to expect and to align themselves with your rhythm.”

Step 3: Select Titles

You have a couple options for selecting titles. You can either include a list of titles in your order instructions or you can allow the writer to create the titles for each blog post.

Ideas for Choosing Titles

There are a few strategies kicking around the web for how to best select titles for your blog posts. Read this article from Brian Clark at Coppyblogger for some great ideas on writing magnetic headlines. Make sure you check out the links he includes at the bottom of the article.

Earlier this year I wrote a blog post called How to Build a Keyword-Rich Content Calendar. Check it out if you are looking to base your titles off a list of keywords to enhance the SEO benefits of your content.

How to Include Your List of Titles

Paste your list of titles in the Instructions for Writer area and include instructions on how to use the list.

The easy way is to just have your writer go through the list one by one, crossing off the titles as he goes.

If you want to get more creative, you could have segmented lists for each day of the week. This is useful if your days of the week are themed.

How to Let the Writer Create Titles

If you don’t have a predefined list of titles, let the writer create her own title for each blot post. In this case, you may want to give some guidance to the writer by clearly defining what the overall niche of your blog is.

For example, if the niche you selected in step 1 was content marketing, you could simply ask that all titles be related to content marketing.

The important part with selecting titles is that you make it clear in the instructions how you want to writer to proceed.

Step 4: Place Your First Order

Now that you’ve built your foundation by developing a strategy, creating a schedule, and choosing a method for generating titles, you can place your first order.

Sign in to Crowd Content and Click “Create Order”

If you don’t have a client account at Crowd Content, sign up here for free. You only need to deposit money when you’re ready to start placing orders.

If you already do have an account, sign in and bring up a new order form.

Complete the Order Form

Fill out all the content details in the order form as you normally would. Remember to include a clear description of your title strategy from step 3.

You also want to keep in mind that any information you specify here will be included in every scheduled order going forward.

Because of this, ensure that your instructions are general enough to make sense for future orders. For example, you don’t want to include a bunch of information that only applies to the first title on your list.

Exception: You actually could include order specific information at this time. However, only do this if you plan to go back and remove that information by editing the scheduled order. You would want to edit before the next order in your schedule is placed.

Set Your Schedule

Under the pricing options you will see the Recurring Order Schedule section. Click Yes to view the content scheduling tool.

IMPORTANT: The schedule only specifies the days that your order will be placed. It does not mean that your order will be ready on that day.

Your turnaround time from placed to ready status will depend on your maximum word count for the order. An estimated turnaround time will show in your Order Summary on the right.

Because the turnaround time is estimated, let’s be safe and always add an extra day to it when creating our schedule.

For example, if, in step 2 of this guide, you decided to post to your blog 3 times per week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and your estimated turnaround time shows 1 day, you would set your schedule to Saturday, Monday and Wednesday.

This means your orders will be placed every week on Saturday, Monday and Wednesday, giving you a 2 day cushion before every publish day.

Keep Your Account Funded to Keep Your Schedule Going

Upon placing a scheduled content order, your Low Funds Notification is automatically set. This means that you will be notified by email whenever your level of funds falls below a certain threshold.

This notification can be managed by hovering over the “House” and clicking on Low Funds Notification. From here, you can also set a custom threshold to whatever amount you like.

We recommend keeping this notification on to avoid schedule interruptions. If the system detects that you don’t have enough funds in your account to place the current order, the order will not be placed.

Step 5: Use the Previous Writer Option

To really lock down the style and tone that you want, use the previous writer option.

Review Your First Few Completed Blog Posts

You may want to see a few completed orders before you decide on what writer you want to stick with. Or, you might know right away that the first writer to work for you is perfect.

Either way, you eventually want to lock down a writer that will keep writing your scheduled orders going forward. By doing this, the writer will get to know your brand and your blog’s needs. After a few weeks, he’ll be fully immersed in the same mind frame that you are, delivering great, engaging content to your blog every time.

How to Use the Previous Writer Option

Once you find your writer, you need to sign in to your Crowd Content account and edit your scheduled order.

To do this, view the Project that your scheduled order belongs to. Your scheduled orders will be at the top of the page.

Click “Edit” on the far right of the schedule you want to select a previous writer for.

At the bottom of the order form, click Yes to view the Advanced Options. It will ask you if you want to use a writer from a previous order. Select Yes.

A list of all your previously completed orders will appear. Select the order that you felt was best written to suit your needs.

Save these changes by clicking SAVE CHANGES and then CONFIRM CHANGES on the right.

After doing this, all future orders will be placed with the same writer who completed the order you selected in the previous writer option.

Closing Thoughts

This basic 5 step guide should get you on the right track to powering your blog with Crowd Content. Once you are up and running, most of the process is automated other than implementing a few tweaks here and there.

Although the system is designed to be as easy as possible, we recommend putting in some work up front to develop your content strategy (step 1), create an initial schedule (step 2), and select titles (step 3).

The quality of the content you get from your writers will depend highly on how well you plan and execute those three steps. Know what you want and be clear about communicating it within your order instructions.

After you see success with one schedule and lock down a writer for the long term, consider adding another schedule and eventually locking down another writer. This will add more content to your blog and it will also add a new voice and perspective to it. When done right, this adds value to your blog and beefs up your presence.

If anyone has questions about this guide, please contact your account manager or post in the comments section below.

The post 5 Steps to Powering Your Blog with Crowd Content appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The new dashboard is just the first of many updates to come over the next few weeks at Crowd Content. We’re really focusing on making Crowd Content even easier and faster to use, and that’s what these updates are designed to do.

How to Use the New Dashboard

The main advantage of the new dashboard is the easy access to all recent order activity. In the past, we’ve had feedback from clients saying they wanted an easier way to view the status of all their orders. Clients also wanted the ability to view the status history of a single order.

The dashboard is now the first page you see when you log in. On the left, you will see a “status trail” of all recent actions relating to your orders. For example, you can see when an order was placed, when it changed to being written, and then when it became ready for review.

The dashboard also shows images and titles from recent articles on the Crowd Content blog (on the right side) and has a banner messaging area up top for communicating updates and promotions.

Dig Deeper to View the Full History of Any Order

If you have an order that is taking longer than expected to be completed, you can now click on that order and view its full status history.

For example, you can now see if multiple writers have claimed and unclaimed your order. This is a great way to tell if your order instructions are too demanding or unclear. If you see that multiple writers have claimed your order, but it’s still not being written or not completed, you may want to delete the order and revise your instructions to make them easier to understand.

More Feature Upgrades to Come!

We have a bunch of new features in the pipeline that will be rolled out over the next few weeks. Keep your eye on the blog and login to your client account regularly for up to date information.

The post New Dashboard Shows Order Status and History appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Hate long line ups at the club? We all do — especially when we finally get to the front only to be denied by some gargantuan bouncer in a black tee and head set.

He probably tells you your name isn’t on the list, or you’re too drunk to get in, or the guy to girl ratio of your party is not satisfactory.

Of course, you can bypass most of these obstacles by greasing the bouncer with a cool fifty or hundred dollar bill.

Why doesn’t he just let you in? He doesn’t, because he is a gatekeeper with a specific set of criteria determining who he lets into the club.

Search Engines, Email Service Providers, and Social Networks are the “Bouncers” of the Internet

On the Internet, marketers have a different kind of bouncer to deal with, but the principles are the same. On the Internet, bouncers are called gatekeepers (think Google, Bing, Facebook, and Yahoo! Mail) and they do their best to keep certain websites and messages out of their respective night clubs (search engine results pages (SERPs), email inboxes, and advertising placements).

If you get passed the gatekeepers, you get access to their users. You can ask those users to visit your site, sign up for your newsletter, or even buy something from your store!

If the gatekeepers don’t like you, you’re out of luck. They’ll bury you in the search results, block your email, or punish your quality score.

So how do we get passed the gatekeepers? How do we get access to all those potential customers? It starts by understanding the gatekeepers’ criteria for entry.

Understanding the Entry Criteria of Internet Gatekeepers

The bouncer’s criteria were mostly based on how “cool” you are. He’s ensuring that your presence provides other cool people in the club with a great experience that night.

The objective for Google or Yahoo! Mail, for example, is similar. They check your website or your email message to ensure it will provide their users with a great experience. If they don’t like what they see, they penalize your search rankings or junk your email message.

They do this because if their users have a great experience, those users will be happy and they will keep using their services.

I can’t stress how important it is for Internet marketers to understand that last point, listed below again for emphasis:

They do this because if their users have a great experience, those users will be happy and they will keep using their services.

Once you get this, you will understand the objectives of Internet gatekeepers, allowing you to align your marketing campaign with such objectives.

If the objective of your marketing campaign matches the objectives of Internet gatekeepers, you will meet less resistance from them, giving you a greater chance of success.

Content Marketing Aligns Your Objectives with the Objectives of Internet Gatekeepers

To harness the same mentality as Google, Facebook, and Yahoo! Mail, you need to transform the way you think about your marketing objectives.

Your overall objective is to get traffic, leads, and sales. However, if you think only of these lag indicators, your marketing campaign becomes selfish, and selfish campaigns get squashed by Internet gatekeepers.

Selfish campaigns provide value only to the marketer. Unselfish campaigns provide value to users which, in turn, provide value to Internet gatekeepers.

By consistently providing outstanding, relevant content to your audience, you give users value and, simultaneously, align your objectives with the objectives of the gatekeepers.

You could say that relevant content (value) is the currency that Internet gatekeepers deal with. If you give some of it to their users, they’ll open up the gates.

More on Aligning Objectives: What exactly do Gatekeepers Want?

Let’s look at some actual language from a few of the major Internet gatekeepers to see what they really want:

To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

–          Google’s mission statement.

Websites whose main purpose is to provide useful, unique, and relevant content that’s focused on users, with ads as a secondary purpose

–          Google’s definition of an acceptable website.

At Facebook, we believe that ads should contribute to and be consistent with the overall user experience. The best ads are those that are tailored to individuals based on how they and their friends interact and affiliate with the brands, artists, and businesses they care about.

–          Facebook’s advertising philosophy.

The mission of Yahoo! Mail is to deliver messages that users want to receive, and filter out messages they don’t want.

–          Yahoo! Mail’s filtering objectives.

All of these high level objectives for each gatekeeper point to protecting or enhancing the user’s experience. What they are really saying is that users don’t like being bombarded with ads – they like seeing fresh, relevant content.

Deliver Fresh, Relevant Content and Make Your Marketing Life Easier

The moral of the story is that you need to play by the gatekeeper’s rules if you want access (wherever that may be). Gatekeepers, like bouncers, have good reasons for not letting certain people in. They are protecting the experience of their users.

Subscribe to the content marketing philosophy and start publishing content that your audience will love! Not only will it please your potential customers, it will delight Google, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo! and the rest of the gatekeepers, making your marketing life easier.

Because you are helping gatekeepers with their objective to enhance user experience, they will gladly reward you by listing your website on page 1, delivering your mail to the inbox, or discounting your cost per click.

Take some time to analyze your marketing campaigns. Ask yourself, are they providing value to your audience? If they are, can you provide more value? Remember, to the gatekeepers, value equals fresh, relevant content. So, get on the VIP list by publishing high quality content consistently.

The post Internet “Bouncers” Let Content Marketing Into Club appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Twitter Amplifies Your Message

The beauty of Twitter lies in the ease of social sharing. In 140 characters, you can create a headline your followers may share with their networks with just a click or two. These networks can also retweet, allowing messages to become viral when they strike the right chord. Retweeted messages also attract new followers to the Twitter profile that sent the original tweet.

While you will occasionally see people retweet messages with which they disagree in order to draw attention to a situation, those retweeters rarely become followers of the original account.

Give Target Followers the Info They Seek

People seek to follow those whom they feel enrich their Twitter experience. They look for news, information and entertainment in accordance with their values and interests.

A twitter profile should provide information that resonates with its target audience to attract the right followers in the first place. Then, it should monitor the response of the audience to the content offered, experimenting from time to time to evaluate different strategies. Comparing the types of tweets offered to the rates of retweets and replies received, while also considering the date and time of said tweets, will reveal insights on the messages that touch a particular following.

Provoke Without Attacking

Sometimes a provocative headline grabs attention and stirs up enough controversy to generate a viral response. The challenge is to create these provocative situations without alienating your core market.

If experience reveals that provocative topics motivate your audience, just take care not to put your audience on the defensive too often. Remember, most people seek a positive experience on their social networks. Reinforce their values so they will go on sharing your message.

Stay on Topic

Mixing in a little personal information into a business Twitter stream can help remind followers of the humanity behind the brand. However, if followers are more familiar with the names of your children than the names of your branded products, you are suffering a Twitter marketing disconnect.

Broadcasting the right mix of business and personal content, and including a balance of original, reply and retweet messages in your business Twitter stream can be a challenge at first. However, once the right balance is found for the desired market, tweeting to the choir can help spread your message to all corners of the web.

The post Why You Should Tweet to the Choir appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

We’re going to simplify things here and show you the easiest content marketing strategy in the league. What league, you ask? Any league. Just throw it in a league, and it’s the easiest content marketing strategy.

This simple routine gets people talking about and visiting your site. Not only that, but it “snowballs” the longer you execute it, giving you exponential exposure and traffic.

The Strategy

1. Publish Content to Your Blog
2. Share It Through Twitter, Facebook, and Email
3. Repeat

More about Publishing Content to Your Blog

The only part of this routine that requires any significant effort is step 1, publishing content to your blog. This step implies that you have some content worth publishing to your blog.

Thanks to the content marketing explosion this year, there are tons of resources on the web explaining how you can create some awesome content for your blog. Check out a few of the links below to get you started:

25 Content Marketing Ideas to Get Unstuck from Writers Block
40+ Content Creation, Story Ideas for Your Blog
5 Creative Writing Ideas for Your Business Blog
25 Content Marketing Ideas for People Who Don’t Like to Write!
Web-Based Marketers: How to Feed the Content Beast

Okay, so you checked out all those links, and you have a bunch of great ideas for content, but you insist you don’t have the time or you’re not a good enough writer to actually write it. In this case, look at outsourcing your content writing – we can help you here.

What? You don’t have the time or skill to write your own content AND you don’t have the money for outsourcing? You’re in luck! You’re a perfect candidate for a content curation strategy.

Content curation involves filtering and gathering the best content across the web for any given topic and then sharing it with your audience. The idea is that your audience will thank you for sending them the best content because there’s just so much darn information on the Internet these days.

More about Sharing Your Content through Twitter, Facebook, and Email

Don’t get me wrong, you can share your content through other channels, too, like LinkedIn, Google+ and probably 100 other social media platforms out there. BUT, we’re telling you the easiest content marketing strategy in the league, so we’re simplifying it.

To be honest, Twitter and Facebook are pretty obvious. If you continuously share your content on these two platforms, you’ll reach a good chunk of your audience/potential audience and develop a great following.

The secret sauce here is email. Yeah, I’m talking about electronic mail – it still exists. Please don’t make one of the biggest mistakes occurring in the digital marketing world today and forget about email!

Email allows you to connect with your audience on a more personal level. You can say, “Hi <First Name>” to everyone on your list. It’s also more intrusive that Twitter or Facebook. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s always a good thing if the content you are sending them is top notch (this brings us back to the hard/important part of this strategy: publishing good content to your blog).

Use Constant Contact or MailChimp to make things even easier on yourself.

More about Repeating

Once you get this process down, you want to repeat it as often as possible. Depending on resources, this will differ across the board. The absolute minimum frequency you want is once per week, but once per day is ideal. Check out some of the other big names in your space and see what their frequency is like – you can assume it’s working if they have a following and take some tips from them.

The post The Easiest Content Marketing Strategy in the League appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

But, how can you come up with quality creative writing ideas?

We all know that blogging can be difficult to maintain over the long haul. Keeping up with the demands of your blog posting schedule or content calendar can take valuable time away from other business tasks. The creative writing tips below can help you meet your blog posting goals.

1. Capture Fleeting Thoughts

Savvy writers know the importance of capturing creative thoughts before they disappear. Many carry small notebooks where they can make notes when they have great ideas. Others record short messages on their cellphones. Either way, they capture the ideas before they lose them forever.

Get in the habit of capturing fleeting inspiration so you will have ideas available later when you have time to blog about them.

2. Answer Questions in Writing

You probably answer dozens of questions about your business in the course of a week. You can make your answers do double duty by turning them into blog posts. Remember, every question is a clue to what inquiring minds want to know about you.

3. Use Pop Culture References

People like to have concepts explained with references they understand. Titles like The Star Trek Guide to Re-energizing Your Web Design or What the Miami Heat Can Teach You about Persistence promise a bit of fun mixed in with the information.

In addition, timely pop culture tie-ins make your blog appear in tune with current events. However, you have to be careful about the references you choose. Select those that are relevant to your audience and keep with the tone of your blog.

4. Write First, Edit Later

This is the secret of every prolific writer. Those who can turn off their internal editors and get the words on the page have a distinct advantage over those who agonize over every word.

Push yourself to write your first drafts as quickly as possible. Later, you can come back and make them shine.

5. Hire a Ghost Writer

As your business grows, you will find yourself pulled in many different directions. Outsourcing your creative writing to a competent ghost writer frees you up to focus on your other strengths, especially those that cannot be outsourced.

With a skilled writer creating your blog posts, you will not have to worry about where to find creative writing ideas. You can simply place an order to fulfill your content marketing goals and get back to doing those things that you do best for your business.

The post 5 Creative Writing Ideas for Your Business Blog appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

When business starts to take off, these companies find they need to focus more energy on actually running the business. They then have less time for creating the content that pulls in new prospects.

In this situation, ghost writers for hire can fill the gap. These writers can help pump out the content that draws new leads while you and your company focus on your core capabilities and existing customers.

So How Do You Choose The Right Ghost Writers for Hire?

On the Internet, you can choose from thousands of ghost writers all over the world. You may be tempted to simply compare prices and go with the least expensive bidder, but beware that several other factors matter more than fees.

Voice

A ghost writer must be able to write in a voice that will appeal to your target audience or your content marketing strategy will fail. Hiring overseas writers at rock bottom prices is today’s equivalent of being “penny wise but pound foolish.” The money you save will fade away when your marketing pieces fail to connect with the readers you hoped to attract.

Choose a ghost writer who can mimic your audience’s grammar and word choices. If this writer can mimic your voice, that is even better.

Consistency

Lowest-bidder hiring practices create an inconsistent voice for your marketing pieces. Some organizations end up spending as much time hiring new writers and editing their content as they once spent creating content in house, all in the name of finding the lowest price.

Strive to connect with a writer or group of writers who know your standards and can deliver the words you need. Then work out a long-term arrangement to provide a consistent voice for your target customer.

Reliability

Writing does not scale very well. A writer who produces 3000 words a day probably cannot double his output on demand. When choosing a ghost writer to hire, make sure he can deliver the volume you anticipate.

Some writers band together so that they can offer the scale and stability businesses expect. Your company may find that an agency with several writers can provide the quality you seek with the reliability your organization needs.

Budget

Of course, price matters. Although you might like to spend whatever it takes to find the perfect ghost writer for your business, you have a budget. Be honest about your budget from the beginning, and you can save your organization a lot of time and trouble fielding proposals that are out of your range.

The current economy is volatile. Your organization must be ready to seize opportunities as they arise. Finding the perfect ghost writer for hire can give you that extra boost you need to stay on track with your content marketing strategy and still run your day-to-day business effectively.

The post How to Choose Ghost Writers for Hire appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

You’ve seen these videos out there, and you really want one. You know the videos I’m talking about – they hit you in the face, grab your attention, and get you excited. They’re quick, probably animated, and use a fun voice that makes complicated things sound simple.

I’m talking about the “explainer video”.

Explainer videos are trending big right now because they allow you to deliver a large amount of information in a bite sized format. Your audience appreciates this – they save time plus they get a more complete understanding of what you’re offering them.

BUT – explainer videos only work if they’re done right. A poorly designed explainer video can have adverse effects, leaving the viewer confused and turned off.

Last week, we launched the new Crowd Content explainer video. We think it turned out pretty good. We’re sharing our process below so hopefully you can take a few pointers to help with your next explainer video project.

First, Let’s Talk Price

There are tons of video creation companies out there today. They all want to make your video. Some of them are really good, too, but, some are also really expensive.

You can see a list of the top video agencies here.

We shopped around and found the going rate to be anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 for a 1:20 (that reads 1 minute and 20 seconds) video. Yah, pretty steep.

But, it doesn’t have to cost that much if you’re savvy person and somewhat resourceful. Keep reading to see how we produced our entire video for $650.

Be Your Own Project Manager

Agencies are expensive because they handle the entire production process for you. Just take a look at Demo Duck to see what this entails:

1. Project Research
2. Script and Creative
3. Voiceover Recording
4. Style Frames and Storyboarding
5. Video Production
6. Sound Design
7. Publishing and Marketing

Anytime a company packages multiple processes into one offering, they have an opportunity to create margin (mark up prices). They also have to pay the salaries of the people at their own company who manage everything. That’s where your big price comes from.

By managing your project yourself, you don’t have to pay anyone’s salary (except your own) and you pay cost for the needed parts.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”o15D0″ via=”yes” ]Explainer videos don’t have to cost that much if you’re savvy and somewhat resourceful. #digitalmarketing[/ctt]

The tasks and responsibilities should be broken out like this:

1. Project Research – You do this
2. Script and Creative – You do this
3. Voiceover Recording – Outsource
4. Style Frames and Storyboarding – Outsource
5. Video Production – Outsource
6. Sound Design – Outsource
7. Publishing and Marketing – You do this

Find a Freelance Video Producer

This is your first step. Once you find this guy, he will take care of steps 4, 5, and 6 in the list above (they all go together).

You should be able to find a decent video producer on any freelance platform or by doing a few Google searches. Just make sure they have a few examples that you can check out to ensure the quality and style works for you.

This is where you save the bulk of your costs. Our freelancer charged less than $400 to do our 1 minute and 20 second video, but he would have done up to 2 minutes (not recommended) for the same price.

Create Your Script

Demo Duck says the script is the most important part of your video and I agree with them. The script determines many aspects of the final video like what information you will communicate, what style of voiceover will be used, and the visual feel.

Here’s how to create your script:

1. Forget about your video for a minute and just think about your company (or product/service). Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. This could be customers or investors. Then ask yourself, what problem am I solving for my audience? If you understand this problem and the pain it causes your audience, you can create a compelling script and video.

2. Start your script by telling a story about someone (yes, you can make this person up) who has the problem. Refrain from doing anything else at this point other than talking about the problem. Show how big the problem is, how frustrating it is to have this problem, how much money it costs to have the problem, how much time it wastes. You get the idea.

When viewers see you talking about a real problem that they face, they listen. They get excited, anticipating that you will reveal a solution to that problem! And, of course, you will.

You should spend the first quarter to third of your script talking about the problem.

3. Introduce your company, product, or service as the solution. Continue telling your story about the person who had the problem. Talk about how easy his life is now because he is using your solution. How much money or time is he saving? How happy is he? Try to quantify things with real numbers if possible.

IMPORTANT: focus more on benefits at this stage than features. You will be eager to talk about all the cool features you have – resist. Understand that people with problems do not care about features – they care about benefits. If you don’t understand the difference, look here.

4. Explain your secret sauce without really explaining it. After you show them all the benefits of your solution, your audience will have some questions and maybe some doubts. You don’t want to answer all of those questions at this point. However, you should touch briefly on the big picture of how you can do all of this for them. This usually relates to some kind of special technology you have developed or how amazing your people (you) are.

5. Finish your script by reviewing the 3 most important things you already communicated. This could be (1) the problem, (2) the benefit of your solution, and (3) your secret sauce (why you?).

6. Include a call to action at the very end of your script. This video will probably be on your homepage or on your landing pages. It might also get shared around the internet so don’t pass up this opportunity to tell your audience how to get your amazing solution! Sign up now! Create a free account! Buy, buy, buy!

[ctt template=”4″ link=”G3JCn” via=”yes” ]Keep the cost of explainer videos down by outsourcing key elements to professional freelancers. #videomarketing[/ctt]

Script and Video Length

I’ve seen explainer videos as short as 30 seconds and as long as 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Basically, you want your video to be as short as possible. If you can communicate everything in 30 seconds, then leave it at 30 seconds.

In my opinion, 2:30 is too long. I wouldn’t go over 1:40. We opted for 1:20, but now I’m thinking we could have stuffed it into 1 minute.

To help you condense your script, review the points above about creating your script. Benefits are usually easier to explain quickly and easier for people to understand. Features and processes are long-winded and viewers will become bored easily.

To help you match your word count with your desired video time, look at this table from Voices.com.

Hire a Voiceover Talent

This is the fun part. You get to hear your script come to life through a professional voiceover talent.

We strongly recommend using Voices.com for this part of the process. They allow you to post your job in front of hundreds of great voices. You can specify the style of voice you are looking for (we used the “guy next door” – great for tech companies), which narrows your results.

Voiceover talents will respond to your job posting and actually read a snippet of your script back to you. We had 64 responses, but it didn’t take long to preview the sound of each candidate and narrow it down to a few finalists before selecting the winner.

You can specify a budget, but you will get a range of quotes from the different applicants. We saw anywhere from $100 to $300. In the end we opted for a candidate quoting $250, which was higher than we wanted, but his voice was just too good to pass up!

Put It all Together and Review

When you get the voice file from Voices.com, send it to your video producer, but don’t make your payment on Voices.com yet. Leave the job open until the video is complete in case you need a few small revisions.

Your video producer will create the scenes, match it with the voiceover, and then add a few sound effects to spice it up. At this point, you’ll want to watch it several times. More importantly, get someone who wasn’t involved in the production process (or who doesn’t yet know about your company) to watch it. They will offer a fresh perspective and let you know if certain parts are too confusing.

When you’re happy with the product, get the final video file, close up all your payments, and start spreading the word!

Save

Save

The post How to Create a Sweet Explainer Video on a Budget appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

We listened to your feedback and learned about you. Then we put our developers to work, building all the new features you asked for. (Okay, not all, but most). Finally, we’re ready to release “the upgrades”!

Login and take a gander at these new gems (features):

File Uploads!

That’s right, we now have file uploads! If you have multiple orders that you are managing

with a Microsoft Excel file, you can upload the file during the order description process. You can also upload Microsoft Word or PDF documents for orders that will benefit from supplemental materials, like re-writes.

At this time, file uploads are only available when doing a Managed Order (described next).

Managed Orders

We now offer two types of orders: Crowd Orders and Managed Orders. A Crowd Order is the exact same process you are used to at Crowd Content. Your order is submitted to our crowd of writers and automatically matched to the most relevant writer in our system, who then completes your order.

Managed Orders, on the other hand, involve assistance from your Client Account Manager. When you place a Managed Order, your order is not submitted directly to the crowd. Instead, it is submitted to your Client Account Manager.

Your manager will then manually locate a writer (or writers) to complete your order. All other functionality remains the same. You can still review, request revisions, or reject all within your Crowd Content account.

Use a Managed Order when:

• You want to request a writer you have used in the past
• You have a file to upload with your order
• You have arranged some special circumstances with your Client Account Manager

Use a Crowd Order when:

• You want the fastest turnaround time
• You want to expose your order to a high number of potential writers

New “Slick” Style and Navigation

Check out the new look of the user interface. Clearly labelled sections and convenient drop down menus help you stay organized and get things done faster.

We also know how much you love your account managers. That’s why we added their picture and contact information to the top of your page. Remember, these guys are here to help you in any way possible — including system support and advice on content strategies — so use them!

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