Content Boost

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We are a third-party energy provider that gives consumers a choice of where they buy their supply in deregulated states. We’ve been around for five years. We are a network marketing company. We are good and helpful for your wallet. We will help you to receive a good value for the money that you spend for your energy while providing 50 percent above green standards to state mandate.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the president. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Content Boost?

We have three different websites. We have our regular .com site, a community portal for the associates, and then the personal websites. There’s a constant need to have articles, so we really want to make sure that it’s fresh and that the content is available. We have three major buckets that we like to talk about: the energy market, green sector, and network marketing. We have three segmented points of interest, and we need to make sure that we had a very good balance of incoming information to suit the needs of the people that are looking to learn and grow in each of those three segments. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

Our partnership with Content Boost is threefold. First, we were looking for a way to weave our three key segments through our social media channels. We need to keep those channels new and fresh, and keep people coming back to check our site daily for new updates.

Our second reason for partnering with Content Boost was to extend the capabilities of our own team. We wanted to have fresh articles that were also blog-esque, but we just didn’t have the time to write them. We really needed somebody to be there for us, to set up the interviews, and then help write our blogs. This was a very critical piece to their service.

The third piece of our choice to work with Content Boost was more from a creative point of view. We had a need to develop a PR [public relations] campaign for our top independent associates. So, the Content Boost team sat with me and did a lot of creative brainstorming, and we came up with a pretty incredible program to help our top leaders to have a more polished and professional presence in the media. They serve almost as a PR conduit for us in a sense, they help to monitor our PR campaigns, news releases, and press releases. We have a PR firm, a writer for public relations, and an internal copywriter, so Content Boost is a great additional resource in those areas, but not focused on those things exclusively. However, Content Boost exclusively manages our article feeds as well as our blogging program. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

What I would say is that this would be, definitely, in the world of business, probably considered a medium to smaller size partnership. This is not a huge, multimillion-dollar campaign. We pay by minute and word count.

Is this an ongoing engagement?

Absolutely. We’re huge fans of Content Boost. They’re just incredible people, very gifted, and great listeners.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

Content Boost is just one of the strongest agencies when it comes to listening to the needs of the customer or the client. They make sure that they adjust to the needs of the client. Rather than giving us an off the shelf offering, and making us fit into their world, they create an offering that fits into our world. In addition to tailor fitting to our needs, I also love that if something doesn’t seem like it’s working well, they come up with creative solutions. They make great suggestions on how we can maximize their time, and they give ideas on how to reallocate and adjust to be more efficient. They’re delightful to work with.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

No. I don’t think so. Maybe a little bit more on persistence, but I can tell you we are a challenging client. We’re moving very fast. We miss meeting times that we have set up to discuss submitted content, and they’re always very flexible to reschedule. If I were to say there’s one area that might be a little soft, it is their “follow-up” after they submit something for review. They wait for me to respond, and I’m so busy that I don’t always get to it. I wish they were a little more of a pest. As soon as we talked about that, it was immediately resolved.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We’re an IT [information technology] company providing managed hosting and application performance testing services [and are] U.S. based. We were acquired by a large IT integrator company out of Chicago two years ago, so our marketing needs have changed somewhat, now that we’re a division of a larger company. For the sake of what Content Boost provides us, it is specific to our company and our managed hosting and testing practices.

What is your role and responsibilities?

Marketing manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Content Boost?

The business challenge is probably twofold. We have an external need, which is getting valuable content in a very content-driven industry. There’s a lot of noise being made in IT and managed hosting, it’s a very crowded blogging space, and we try to make an impact in that. There was a need for us, from a branding perspective, to carve out and establish some credibility for ourselves.

The internal business need with Content Boost was a lack of resources. We’re a midsize business. We’re very lean, our marketing department consists of one. Where I can outsource or leverage any additional resource that makes sense for us, without losing too much control of the content, is a value-add. By involving Content Boost, I didn’t have to hire one or two other staff people and ramp them up to understanding our content, which is very specialized. It is so much of a niche, it’s not something that anyone can pick up, that was the driver to us quickly. Reaching out to Content Boost, with needing to maximize my time as much as possible and do more with the same resources that we have.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

I felt that the Content Boost team did a great job with listening to how much I was looking for, and that I’m not looking to flood the internet with a 1,000 blog articles a month. They put together a really great customized proposal that met our budget, but also gave us more than enough content that we could use on a monthly basis.

They really wanted to understand and rather than me having to force myself and my processes to fit how they interact with me as a client, they said how do you best want to receive the content? I really appreciated them changing their process to meet the way I needed the content to get to me, and in the right format. That’s been really appreciated because the hardest thing for me as a marketing manager, running a marketing department for a $5 million company by myself, is there’s not enough time in the day to chase down, or be in meetings and review discussions.

Content Boost has just been so great with getting us content that we can use, and really listening to what our challenges are, and coming up with stuff that’s very easy for me to edit.

What was your process for selecting Content Boost with which to work?

I think I met the Content Boost leadership team, or at some point came across them at a trade show. They stopped by and said, this is what we provide, and I said you’re catching me on a great day because I have a list of six blogs, and I need to get content out the door. I’m at a trade show right now, and I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

When we got back from the trade show they followed up, and I was really impressed with their pitch in terms of really wanting to understand our vertical, understand exactly what my budget was, what our needs were, so that they didn’t try to oversell me on services we didn’t need. More often, I find as a marketing manager, it’s really easy for companies or applications to get thrown my way that say, we can make your life better. In all reality, I then have to manage a new vendor or application, and it makes my life harder than before I got the tool or resource.

Can you provide a dollar figure for the value of the work that they’re doing for you?

If I had one full-time or two part-time marketing associates dedicated to the research and blogging that they’re giving us, it’s fair to say that in our market, and for our company size, we’d be looking at spending somewhere around $40,000 or $50,000 a year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Is this an ongoing relationship?

Yes. We were working with our corporate office when we first signed up, and corporate agreed to pay for the services for six months. I thought it was such a godsend, and such a relief to have this great resource. At the end of that six months, it was an absolute no-brainer. I didn’t even discuss it with corporate, I just renewed it under my own marketing budget for 12 months. We’re going to stick with these guys for the rest of 2014. I cannot imagine not re-upping at the end of 2014.

Rather than performance metrics, could you tell me about what they provide each week, or on a monthly basis?

I can actually give you performance metrics. I don’t know if you want to use them or not. We’ve tracked our blog pretty closely because there were some questions when we launched our blog two years ago. We said, we’re posting this blog and this is the kind of traffic we’re getting, sort of our benchmark. We were starting to see some uptick but we knew that in order for our blog to be successful we needed more valuable, relevant content. We decided to test it to see if we could justify outsourcing some of the content generation. We’ve seen a 40 percent uptick in our blog traffic, so it was a no-brainer to stay with Content Boost. Corporate was just floored. They said they don’t get that kind of uptick with 10 people blogging.

I don’t know if that’s because we started at such a low benchmark, but we’re really happy to see where we’re going and where we’re trending. Our content is getting shared more, we’ve gotten more followers. When we first started with Content Boost we were getting 10 blogs a month for the first six months, and it turned out to be too much content. We’ve scaled that back to five blogs a month, and that seems to be the right spot for us in terms of content and the frequency that we’re blogging.

Each blog is 250 words. [Approximately] 30 percent of the time, we convert that to 500-word blogs and we’ll do two blogs in one article if we have a particular topic we think is a little meatier, or we think it will take more content to use up. On average, we get five blogs at 250 a month. That being said, we do have some months where we have less blogs but higher word content.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

I don’t know if I can say enough good things about Content Boost. I’ve worked with other freelance or content marketers and Content Boost is above and beyond. If I were to say they’re an extension of my team, I really mean that. I feel like Content Boost’s incredible responsive. I never have to chase them down for drafts, topic ideas, they’re constantly thinking and churning. You can tell we’re not something that’s just a box they have to check off each week, it really does feel like they’re a part of my staff.

They’re outgoing, super friendly and have great energy. Their attention to detail is fantastic, they write with great style and great professionalism. I’m confident that the content that they gives us is going to be something we can use. Although I do edit for industry-specific things that they wouldn’t know, I would say for the most part they get it right.

I’ve worked with other writers where they are so out in left field that you don’t know how to bring them back in. I’ve never had to rewrite an article from Content Boost, and they have sent me hundreds of them in the past year and a half. That’s a pretty amazing track record. So, in my book, they bat a thousand for us. 

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

Part of our agreement in our first year was X number of blogs and X number of infographics, and we never got those infographics created in the first year. We still haven’t created them in the second year. So, I would say pushing more for deliverables against our contract to be met specifically the infographics in this case. When I raised the issue, they were quick to say we can roll it over to your next contract. That’s the only thing I would say, otherwise no, the team is great.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We’re a cloud billing as a service company. We have a full portfolio of software as a service products, from marketplace catalog management, invoicing revenue management, data synchronization, all the way through to customer portals for purchasing and provisioning of products.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the CEO and co-founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Content Boost?

Our software is positioned in an emerging market, which is the cloud marketplace. The legacy or traditional companies are evolving their businesses to a new model, and we have a platform that supports that model. There is a lot of education that needs to take place in order for our customers to understand what it is they need, or some of the functionality that is required for them to be a cloud service provider.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

Content Boost helps us provide a level of education and information to our customers as well as our prospective customers. The prospective customers typically find us through the internet, either through Web-based SEO [search engine optimization] or [Google] AdWords. We’re able to take the content that Content Boost creates for us, which has an educational focus, and post it on our blogs, distribute it through email blasts. We also are able to reuse the content in a newsletter format for our existing customers.

What was your process for selecting Content Boost with which to work?

We needed someone primarily who understood our space. TMC is one of the editors that’s in the technology space, so we needed someone with some technical background in order to understand what we’re trying to achieve. Many of TMC’s subscribers are our customers, so it made a lot of sense for us to use their company, Content Boost, to write content, not only for their reach, but also for the depth of the content that they would be able to provide.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

If we were going to do the work internally, we’re probably talking about two to three hours of somebody’s time per week. If we had to hire someone that had the background to write something like the content we get from Content Boost, that person would probably be at least a $60,000 a year investment.

Is the relationship ongoing?

It is on an ongoing basis. We have two pieces of content a week created for us. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

Not asked.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

For me it’s just Content Boost’s depth of understanding of the content that we’re trying to deliver.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

No. I think that we’ve settled into a very good place with them, and I can’t think of anything I would ask them to do differently at this point.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We are a third-party call center provider. We are the company that provides customer care and sales solutions for other businesses. We’ve been in business since 1982, and we’ve worked with a virtual ‘who’s who’ of household name brands.

What is your role and responsibilities, please?

My role is chief of staff. I’m responsible for HR [human resources] teams and legal teams, as well as corporate communications and PR [public relations].

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Content Boost?

We believe that our messaging needs to continue to be fresh and relevant. As part of that, having a discipline to produce content that’s going to keep those messages alive. That’s really what Content Boost has been able to do for us. We have weekly discussions about what we want to say, and then they just help us say it.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

They are providing weekly content for us, based on our involvement and direction. They’re helping us target specific decision makers in different industries based upon the messaging that we want to provide. They’re helping us develop the specific language that we’ll use in those postings.

What was your process for selecting Content Boost with which to work?

We had been talking about the need to add resources to our content creation. Whether we did that internally or use an outside service was something we needed to decide. We already had a long-standing, positive relationship with their parent company, TMC. When TMC shared with us that they had this new service, and this new company they had created that was going to be able to do that, it was a natural fit.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

We have an annual contract with TMC that involved advertising and other things, and Content Boost is part of that. They bundle the services for us so that we ended up receiving generous economies through that contract. 

If we were to hire staff internally to do it, we’d be talking about potentially six figures. We’re having significant savings by working with their team. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

We’ve been working together about a year. We’re expanding our relationship based on the success we’ve had.

Do you have any stats or metrics to track improvement from the project?

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give them an 11.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

We’re very happy. The quality is extraordinary for what I consider a minimal investment.

Whatever business you’re in, we can all benefit from having content to communicate our vision to our customers and potential customers, and that’s really what they’re doing. Whether you’re in the call center business, or communications business, or you’re selling burgers, I think you can do a better job of communicating with your customers, and someone like Content Boost can help with that. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We work with marketing and sales teams to be able to make their inbound and outbound marketing efforts more efficient through their contact database. We address the situation of cleanliness and completeness of their contact data.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am our buzz coordinator, so I run all things buzz. Whether that be our events program, communication programs, blog, social media as well as PR [public relations] program. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Content Boost?

Specific to what Content Boost was helping us with, we had a big initiative internally to our blogging program. We’re a very small marketing team, at the time we were four. So, it was something that we didn’t necessarily have the resources for.

One of the biggest things is that we wanted to make sure we had another outlet to be able to reach out to our current customer prospect base, which is the blog. The big business goal out of that would be to up our subscriptions, and really up our interaction and the clout that we have in the social media world through our blogging program.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

Our current Content Boost writer has actually become an extension of our team. They do such an outstanding job. They really mastered the voice of our company and have been able to deliver the right ideas, the right messages, and the right tone of all of it to us in a timely basis to ensure that I don’t have to worry about it. We talk every other week, and we go through the plan for what we want to have set up for the following few weeks on our content calendar. Then, it kind of just happens in the background.

I get stuff from her and edit it a bit on tone, add some facts to make sure it’s really portraying the message we want it to as well as add in a few supporting details that maybe wouldn’t be known to outside companies. Then, it has the ability to go up onto the website within five days.

What was your process for selecting Content Boost with which to work?

I had met Content Boost last year at Content Marketing World. I liked what they had to say, so we moved forward with diving into it a little bit further. To be honest, we did a trial program with them, and at first I wasn’t totally impressed. However, they worked with us in depth to resolve initial issues and make sure going forward we were completely satisfied with the program.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

It would be equivalent to hiring another person or at least another 24 hours of work a week.

Is the project completed, or is it an ongoing relationship?

Currently, it’s set up as an ongoing relationship. Our current Content Boost writer has started helping us with different things as well. If my blog calendar is full, and I still have a couple more credits left for the month, I’ll use her for other things as well. She really has become very knowledgeable in our space. I believe that she writes for a few other publications in our area as well, so I think that’s helped. She’s become so knowledgeable in what we’re doing that she really is able to help us in so many different ways, so it’s just turned into a great ongoing partnership.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

I’m in charge of our events program and our communications program, which includes social media, blog, and PR. Without having Content Boost on our team, one of those things would not be able to happen. One of our other programs would have to fail. I’ve already hit my goal for the year for my events program, and that’s because I’m able to spend more time focusing on those and not having to worry about our content production. A lot of times when writing, the most difficult part is starting. Content Boost provides a starting point for us, where we can build out the content from there.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

We are a company that markets to marketers. It is one of the most challenging things that you’ll ever have to do in your career, to have to market to yourself. In every single thing that you’re writing and reading you have to ask “am I impressed by this?” Is someone on the other end going to be impressed by this? What else can I do to make this better? A lot of that comes down to the tone of your article. Our Content Boost writer has been able to master that, to get us to a point where we can get it where it needs to be. She gets us at a better starting point.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

Our first writer from Content Boost wasn’t the best fit for our company. I think there needed to be more of a fit selection process in the beginning or possibly a different type of onboarding procedure. A suggestion would be that potential writers come and meet with us, and really sit down with the team and get to know the authors behind the situations and, from there, we’d be able to select someone on their team that is the best personality fit, and might be able to really hone in on what we’re trying to do. We have a different type of business where our writing is not business writing. We keep our tone very casual and very loose. We want to be able to connect with the person on the other side in a way where they don’t have to feel like they’re reading a white paper. We really get that from our current Content Boost writer.