BACKGROUND
Can you please provide a brief description of your company and the role that you play there?
My previous company was a digital marketing agency, and I was a content marketer there. A lot of my work had to do with coming up with content marketing strategies for clients. It involved a lot of building editorial calendars, planning what kinds and what formats of content we wanted to do, as well as how to promote them, and executing the content itself.
OPPORTUNITY/CHALLENGE
What was the business challenge your company was facing that incited the need for a content or inbound marketing platform?
We had a high volume of content to produce with not a very large team. Zerys just made it easy. It's basically a content sourcing platform and helps to get freelance writers, so outsourcing your content was easy. What we liked about it over other services was that we could set our price ranges, what we wanted to pay, what kind of content we wanted, how many words the piece should have, all of that, and then we put it into either a favorite writer's board or on an open board. We could choose what you wanted to do, based on our needs. What we usually did was have a list of favorite writers. Zerys was very useful because it's has ratings for all the writers, so you can pick out the best writers, you can directly assign work if you wanted to, or you can just put it in a list of your favorite writers queue and somebody would pick it up.
The good thing about Zerys particularly is that the turnover times are usually very quick. Users can set when they need the content by, for example "I need this in two days." So, the writer picks it up, and from the time they pick it up they have two days to submit it to you. The other thing is that you don't pay until it goes through a revision process, so you get to see the content. You don't have to pay for something that's not quality. If you're not satisfied with the content, you have the option to request revisions from the writer before you accept. Once you accept it, that's when you're charged.
SOLUTION
Was your company considering other platforms? Why this platform?
Before choosing Zerys, we were using freelance writers that we would contact directly. It was getting a little bit hard to manage as we scaled. As we became bigger, we couldn't really scale that process. Then, we tried another service which was good, but it didn't have all the possibilities that Zerys offered. We tried it out, we put in a little bit of budget, and we found that, for the price and the quality of what you got out of it, it was the best value.
What pricing plan does your company currently utilize?
At my previous company, it depended on how much work we had and how much we needed to outsource. I would say we probably spent around $1,000 per month for all of our content needs.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
Can you share any success, metrics, or overall results of your implementation of this platform?
Zerys is more qualitative, but from a budget perspective it allowed us to reduce our labor costs significantly while still providing a very similar level of quality of service. We could do more work with the resources we had, for less money.
Have you ever had to consult their resources or interact with their support team?
With Zerys, we never really needed any support. The platform was pretty straightforward.
FEATURES
Were there any software features or tools that really impressed you?
My favorite thing about Zerys is the ability to choose which list of writers you want to submit your project to, or to assign work directly to, and the fact that our team was able to review before we paid. It made all the difference to be able to approve the content before we were charged.
OVERVIEW
We have a few quick questions and, for each question, we ask you to rate the software on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. What would you give the software for desired functionality of the features available?
Four.
What would you give the software for ease of use and implementation?
Five.
For support and responsiveness of the team or resources available?
Four and a half.
For overall satisfaction with the platform?
Four and a half.
How likely are you to recommend the software to a colleague or similar business?
Four and a half.
