The ATC Re-Brand: We Present the New, Upgraded ATC!
By Felicity Kay, ATC’s CEO
If you’re reading this, then you might have seen that things look a little bit different around here.
…not too different: we still have our super-cool cat logo, but otherwise, everything is new, improved – and even more awesome.
We’ve been incredibly busy changing absolutely everything about the way we run, for a variety of reasons. We’ve just finished planting the seeds…and now we’re seeing some epic, gorgeous shoots reaching the surface.
Here’s a brief overview of the awesome new upgrades we’ve been working on for you.
From Ad-Hoc to Relationship Building
When I first started this business as an accidental side-project, had no control over who contacted me, or any real selectivity over who we – then, I – worked with.
This approach continued over the months as I left my full-time job and plunged head-first into building the brand that later became known as All This Content – or ‘ATC’.
As you might already guess, running a business based on ad-hoc work requests was never going to be a good idea: for one thing, it didn’t allow us to do any forward-planning whatsoever…and even worse, didn’t really create the client-provider relationship that’s essential to, you know – providing awesome, high-level and meaningful content.
I quickly realised that, if my team didn’t see ‘the bigger picture’ – the marketing aims, the content distribution schedule, hell, even the end product of the piece we’d written, then there was really no use in doing anything at all.
In the past few months, we had to say goodbye to a fair few of our ad-hoc clients (which was a painful process in itself…) and worked on emphasising the relationship building-nature of our new, upgraded service.
And how! We implemented a few awesome changes to ensure that every new client is the start of a new, highly organized relationship, including –
- A dedicated Account Manager per client – someone to act as a point of contact, and to coordinate operations between clients and writers,
- An in-depth strategy session at the beginning of the working relationship, to ensure we’re all on the same page, and have a high-level understanding of the bigger picture.
- Regular check-ins with clients, to allow for a smooth feedback flow and allowing us to keep in touch.
And you know what? It really makes all the difference: we’re working with high-level clients who appreciate the above inputs, and we have a deeper understanding and appreciation of our clients’ needs…all of which makes for way better content!
From ‘First Class Content’ to ‘Content Experts’
You might have noticed that our tagline now looks like this –
…and ever since it did, we’re getting over 25% more leads clicking on the Request Content button.
Changing our entire positioning and our tagline is something that I do at least once or twice a week for clients, and yet, there was always something happening that distracted me from doing it for my own business.
Then, once I finally made time to sit down and get on with it – I had the biggest blank I’ve ever experienced. It turns out that it was easy for me to clearly encapsulate other business’ USPs in one epic sentence, but when it came to doing it for myself – absolute nada.
Over a long process of several days, I asked some trusted advisors for their opinions on 3 new taglines I’d created to encapsulate our new positioning. What you see now is a result of that.
So what makes us ‘the content experts’, then?
- We automated and lengthened our writer recruitment process, allowing us to only interview the top 10% of writers who apply to join us, thereby saving time and leaving the writers weren’t up to our (freakishly high) standards by the wayside.
- All writers are interviewed on their industry knowledge, and undergo a rigorous spelling and grammar testing before having a final interview with our core team (including me!).
- Only writers who have industry-specific expertise, a marketing background and a professional writing background make the cut.
Because really, going with something that the website designer (‘FIRST CLASS CONTENT THAT CONVERTS’ ) came up with because you were too busy to get to it was never really going cut it, was it? 😉
Fleshing Out Our Content Expertise: Becoming the Content Experts
Once I’d sat down to think about the services we were offering, and the pitches we were giving, a thought occurred to me:
‘If we truly are the content experts, then why are our services limited to just producing content and copy?’
As in, why don’t we develop other services that would solve content-related issues for anyone needing something content-related – and not just for outsourcing content creation?
And, just like that – our new Services page was born.
So what are the cool new services we’ve added?
- An in-house content writer training and mentorship track: we’ve hired so many in-house writers in our time, it’s just second nature: unfortunately, during the hiring process, actually testing an applicant’s content knowledge (beyond having them write a sample) just doesn’t go deep enough. Once there’s a new content-related employee, it can be difficult to bridge the gap between what they know (or pretend to know, as is sadly the case), and what they need to know in order to contribute and perform to the best of their ability. We know how to fix that – so we offer it as a service to you!
- In-house content writer recruitment: much like the above, but with this new service, we do all the heavy lifting for you. Consider us your content recruitment team! 🙂
- Content workshops and seminars: something I’ve been doing on the side for a while now, but never really made an official service: content workshops and seminars. You get all of my personal expertise (on a subject of your choosing), direct to you and your team. What’s not to love?
If that doesn’t scream ‘the content experts’, then I don’t know what does.
Alongside this, our next projects (to be completed for Phase 2 – end of Q2 19) is to develop a new service especially for agencies looking to outsource their high-quality and ongoing client content needs, and an awesome, highly-rewarding referral programme – stay tuned!
Building Up After Knocking It All Down: Your Verdict
They say it takes a lifetime to build something, and only as second to knock it all down – and ‘they’ would be right!
Even though I ‘only’ spent 2 or so years building up my business, destroying it (in order to reposition) was beyond heartbreaking – even though the decision to do so was all mine, and I knew it would lead to way better things ( alert: it did!).
The ‘old’ ATC was my first-born child. The ‘new’ ATC is its smarter, sassier, more focused and upgraded older sister.
But ultimately, this all means nothing if it doesn’t work for YOU.
Whether you have feedback or just want to touch in and say hi – get in touch today, or leave us a comment below!
All the best,
