Emphatic

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a small business consulting firm, and I work with small and mid-sized companies. I help them with everything from strategic planning to operational improvements and financial management. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Empathic?

My interest is in providing information and thought leadership in the small business strategic space. I want to promote and share information and articles that are written by other authorities. It takes a lot of time and research to do that and to see what’s out there, and this is why I hired Empathic. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

With Empathic, I tell the topic that I want to share, and they go out and search the web. They find articles about the topic, which I can see on a backend server. I can make notations on whether I want to share an article or not. The Empathic team also writes short captions for the articles, making them a little more reader-friendly and enticing. 

I only do 30–40 article posts each month. I can change the topic from time to time; if I want to talk about design in one week, they’ll pull those articles. If I want to talk about strategic planning in another week, they’ll consider articles on that topic in the next round of research. Basically, I tell them what I want and when I need it, and their researchers and writers take care of it. The information we post are from Forbes, Harvard Business School, and similar places. They contain articles that I never have the time to look for or the ability to write short captions for.

What is the team composition?

I work with one person. In the backend, there’s more than one researcher and writer.

How did you come to work with Empathic?

I found them on Google. I was searching for article writers and blog editors, and Empathic came up. I looked at them, and it looked like they were cost-effective. I thought that if the quality was there, we’d have a good partnership, so I tried them. They had large service packages; I could spend a thousand dollars with them if I wanted to. However, I started small and quick, and that was how we began.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent around $3,600 on them. 

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with Empathic in April 2019, and the engagement is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We track success through the results that come from LinkedIn, and I’ve seen a change in the number of people that follow me on LinkedIn based on what I’ve been doing with Empathic. I had around 40–50 followers a year ago, and since I started working with them, my LinkedIn network has grown considerably. Now, I have 1,100 direct connections and 4,400 followers on LinkedIn. What’s nice about that is that the services are very cost-effective.

How did Empathic perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management is automatic. Once I enrolled in their system, everything’s been fairly self-administered. I go into their system, tell them to write articles on a topic, and they write and bring the articles forward. 

For instance, if I ask them for 30 articles and I want 50% of them to be on marketing, 25% on strategic planning, and 25% on leadership, the articles will be under those particular topics. If I saturate my network with leadership articles for a month, I can switch gears and throw marketing articles after that. Each month, I get a notification telling me that it’s time to change topics. From there, I can go in and determine whether I want to change categories. If I don’t like the post, I can tell them to get another one. As a result, I’ve always been quite happy with their system. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Empathic is highly price-competitive. I’ve never actually found another provider for this work. Those providers should be more competitive in terms of pricing if they want me to consider replacing Empathic. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Empathic doesn’t provide any tracking or backend service support. If other providers do the same thing but also provide feedback and analytics, then that can add a little bit of flair to their offer. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Think about the topic that you want to communicate. Empathic can be really thorough in finding articles about a specific subject matter. If you’re looking to expand your recognition or professional appearance in a particular category, you should define that. The better you can do that, the better they can help you.