Marketers are always looking for new ways to do their tasks in less time or in a more streamlined way. And that might be the reason why a platform like WriterAccess always gets people’s attention.
WriterAccess allows you to scale your content creation with vetted creative writers, editors, designers, illustrators, and animators with flexibility on pricing, scope, and deadlines.
The platform helps you find the most qualified, industry-specific talent, with technical expertise to deliver superior ROI.
If you decided to give it a try and claim your 14-day free trial, this is the best place to find everything you need to know to make the most out of it.
If you have never heard of WriterAccess before, but I caught your attention, I have great news to share: you can sign-up for a 14-day free trial. All you need to do is subscribe here.
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A brief introduction
As soon as you complete the subscription process, this is the first screen that you will see: the WriterAccess dashboard.
This page won’t bring many insights at first because you have not interacted with the platform yet. But as soon as you start using it, it will give a comprehensive overview of your work: your plan, how many credits are left, the list of messages exchanged with talents, your monthly expenses, the top freelancers you work with, and some content suggestions.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the product also has an onboarding section called “Getting Started” that can help you during the first steps of this journey. But this article also has that same goal, so feel free to choose which channel you’d like to guide your discovery process.
How to look for talent
Before I explain how you can find your dream team of writers, let me share some details about our process for vetting the freelancers that we have in our software.
All of them go through a 4 step process:
- Application: Where they show interest in working with us and submit their personal data;
- Resume evaluation: Our team checks if that person really has the necessary qualifications to work with writing, proofreading, or whatever modality they have shown interest in;
- Portfolio Assessment: To understand the quality of the work of this professional;
- Proficiency Test: where we send a specific task to that freelancer.
Based on all this information, we were able to assess whether or not this professional should be included in our talent base and give them a score inside our rating system.
The rating goes from 2 to 6 stars:
- 5 – 6 stars: specialists and subject matter experts
- 4 stars and above: From here, you will already find professionals with proven experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
- 2 – 3 stars: generalists
This rating changes depending on the feedback we receive from customers and will impact the cost of their work. Generalists will charge around USD $0.02 per word, while specialists can ask for USD $0.10 or more (depending on the complexity of the request).
Now that you know the pillars of our system, we can start searching for your content soul mate. And it is so easy!
You have four ways to find the talents you need and I’ll start by presenting the easiest one:
- Ask the Client Success Management team to find your talent – Inside the Advanced Search screen you will find a button called “Request Recommendation”. As soon as you press it, we’ll notify our team to reach out to you to get information about your project and recommend talent that fits your needs and budget.
If you prefer to explore WriterAccess by yourself, there is another super easy way to find freelancers:
- Casting Call – Similar to a job posting, a casting call gives you space to describe your project. You can name your price, suggest a price for negotiation, or have the talent give you a quote. Available freelancers will respond with their specific qualifications. (This is the best place for niche topics!)
In a scenario where you haven’t decided which project you will use as a pilot for this free trial period, you might prefer to start by using the third option:
- Advanced Talent Search – Where you can search through the pool of freelancers using filters such as industry, rating, and keywords.
All freelancers have a profile that can provide a good overview of their education, experiences, and availability. You can also see if they are a specialist in a specific content type or industry.
When you click on a profile it defaults to their portfolio, which we feel is most important. On the industry tab, you can see which industries they work in and how often they are meeting/exceeding their clients’ expectations.
Their profile summary will tell you their assigned star rating, how long they have been with us, and where they are located.
Our hope is that this profile is detailed enough to determine if a writer is right for you, but if you have questions you can direct message them. They would love to hear from you!
Pro tip: If you find a talent that you really like, make sure to add them to your Love List. It will be very helpful once we learn more about placing orders inside the software.
Last, but not least, you can use your brand’s favorite piece of content to experiment with our AI functionality:
- AI Talent Search – Where an algorithm scans a content sample provided by you, predicts the psycho-demographic profile of its author and matches you up with writers that have written similar content at WriterAccess.
How to order content
The time has come for you to move to one of the main screens on WriterAccess: the order form.
Let’s say that you want to order a new blog post for your corporate blog. Go to “Place Orders” > “Launch Order” > And select the type of talent you need (in this case, a writer).
Then you’ll be brought to the order form. Don’t freak out! I’ll explain each section of it.
Order Details
This page will request several pieces of information to build a solid briefing for the freelancers. The more information you share and the more detailed you are, the greater the chances of you receiving the blog post you’ve dreamed of.
Details such as a branding guide, style information and buyer persona can be saved as templates to be used in future orders. In that way, you just need to spend time creating them once and in the future, all that hard rework can be avoided.
Oh! Have I mentioned that you can add as many templates as you want? Yes, count on WriterAccess to make that task less boring.
Pro tip: Try to invest at least 5 – 10 minutes to create a rich creative brief to ensure you are on the same page with our writers. This will reduce (or eliminate) the need for heavy revisions out of the gate. And as mentioned before, you can save the brief and use it repeatedly.
Read also: Craft a Killer SEO Content Brief with These Key Techniques
Eligible Talent
Before completing your request, you will need to decide who will be able to access this task. You will have 4 options:
- Crowd: This option will make your blog post request available to anyone at your chosen star rating.
- Match Me Up: This option allows the WriterAccess system to analyze your project needs and send emails to writers that fit your desired style. Then, any of those writers would have the opportunity to accept the order and complete it for you.
- Love List: This option will make your blog post request available to any of the freelancers previously added to your love list.
- Solo: A solo order goes directly to the writer you choose for the project. Since you are testing the product for the very first time, you might not want to use this option right now.
Pay method
Even though we already spoke briefly about freelancers’ payment, WriterAccess actually offers 2 types of pay methods:
- price per word
- price per order
Price per word is the most common, but if you have a very specific request or a rigid budget, you can use the price per order to find the best (wo)man for the job.
Pro tip: You can indicate a minimum and maximum volume of words for the freelancer and we recommend at least a 200-word gap in this field.
Giving writers creative wiggle room takes away constraints allowing them to get their point across. When placing the order you will pay for the maximum, but if the finished piece has fewer words, the difference will be refunded to your account to use on future orders.
Turnaround Time
WriterAccess standard turnaround is 5 days. Despite that, if you have an urgency you can request a faster delivery.
However, keep in mind that if the period requested is too short, the platform charges an additional amount that varies between 10% and 30% of the previously agreed amount.
Add-ons
You can also choose to have the writer provide social media posts that align with your blog topic, meta titles and descriptions, images, and a few other elements. Each add-on option that you choose comes with a small fee.
Pro tip: If your request is very specific or complex, you have the option of making a small conference call (billed separately) with the freelancer before they start working on that assignment.
Before launching your order, you will have to add funds to your account.
How to add funds
Adding funds to your WriterAccess account is easy. You can do it using a credit card, via Paypal or ACH.
As we are taking advantage of the trial period, we recommend that you add the exact amount you will need to create your blog post.
But as soon as you get comfortable with the tool and decide to include it in your digital marketing stack, you can add larger amounts or even schedule deposits of specific amounts every month.
How to get content ideas
Have you made it this far but still haven’t ordered your content because you are still not convinced about the topic of your next blog post?
Oh, my friend… it’s your lucky day! WriterAccess has you covered.
Click on the AI icon, on the left side menu, and you will find the AI Content Wizard – the fastest and most effective way to identify content creation opportunities.
This tool streamlines content research and gap analysis, reducing the time needed to find the best content creation opportunities from days to minutes.
With the AI Content Wizard you will receive tailored content brief suggestions that you can immediately use to make your first content order.
Read also: Supercharge Your Content Strategy with the AI Content Wizard on WriterAccess
Pro tip: This feature is available with all WriterAccess plans (including the trial) and you can use it as many times as you like. So, even if you have already ordered your first blog post, you should give it a try. Remember, our main objective here is to make the most out of this free trial period.
Evaluating the content requested
After you publish an order, you can go back to the main dashboard to see what has changed.
Now, the report under the “Workflow” section will show your order status:
- Inactive
- Pending Pickup
- In Progress
- Attention Required
- Pending Approval
- 100% Complete
When your order is ready, it will go under “pending approval” and you will have 5 days to review the content delivered and ask for revisions.
All content delivered will come with Copyscape results to ensure that there is no use of duplicate content or plagiarism.
If the content received is not up to your expectations, you can provide feedback to the writer and ask for unlimited revisions until you are satisfied.
WriterAccess allows you to do in-line comments, so you can be very specific about the excerpts that the writer needs to revise.
After requesting a revision, the freelancer’s turnaround time is up to 2 days.
How to publish the content created on WriterAccess on your website
Hooray! You just approved the content received from the freelancer writer. It’s time to show your new content baby to the world.
Are you ready to copy and paste it to your CMS?
Not so fast.
WriterAccess integrates with several martech tools and social media platforms to allow you to instantly publish your approved content straight onto them. For example, you can integrate it with:
- WordPress
- HubSpot
- GoogleDocs
- X (formerly known as Twitter)
- and many others.
Add at least one integration while doing your free trial, so you can understand how this can facilitate your routine.
Wrapping up your free trial
As you have seen in this article, 14 days should be more than enough to test WriterAccess.
After experiencing the main features, discover the wonders of AI inside our AI menu. We are investing a lot in this area and you can follow our latest AI-related launches and progress here.
If you still have questions after reading this blog post, you can always count on our support team and our help center.
You can also upgrade your account to include managed services and have a dedicated account manager to handle your content production by clicking here.